Asphalt Paving Contractor in Smyrna, TN

What Smyrna's limestone and clay do to a driveway

Smyrna sits on limestone. Around town the NRCS soil survey maps mostly Talbott and Bradyville soils, with rock outcrops between them. Both carry a clayey subsoil, and the bedrock often sits only two to four feet down. That clay swells when wet and shrinks when dry, and a thin stone base over it moves with it.

The weather adds the second load. The NOAA station six miles south of town averages 54 inches of rain a year and near 100 freezing nights. Water gets into a crack, freezes, and pries the asphalt apart. So the base depth, the drainage pitch and crack sealing matter as much as the asphalt itself.

Lots change across town. Short town-lot driveways around Front Street and the Smyrna Depot are one kind of job. Acreage lots toward Rocky Fork Creek and the south end of Almaville Road have long drives and culverts. A long rural drive is often a better fit for chip seal than hot mix asphalt, and we build both.

Do you need a permit to pave a driveway or a lot in Smyrna?

Inside the town limits, building permits come from the Town of Smyrna Building Safety Department. The Town's guidance says normal maintenance and repairs need no permit. A driveway becomes a permit question where it meets the street. Town code is plain on curb cuts.

Nobody may cut or build a driveway across a curb or sidewalk without a permit from Public Works. The same code caps the width at 35 feet at the street edge and keeps the apron off the street. The Town's own page says to contact Public Works when a cut curb or a drainage culvert is involved. We name the office that applies when we quote the job.

Outside the town limits, a Smyrna address falls under the Rutherford County Department of Building Codes. The county's FAQ says a concrete or asphalt driveway needs no county permit. It only asks you to stay off the neighbor's property. Lowry Street, Nissan Drive and Almaville Road are state routes, so a new entrance there is a TDOT question too.

Commercial lots inside town go through site plan review with the Planning and Zoning Department. The land development handbook asks for the layout of every paved area and the total impervious surface. Paving shown on an approved site plan has to be in place before the certificate of occupancy. In a mapped floodplain, placing fill needs a development permit from the Town Planner first.

Parking lot paving along Sam Ridley Parkway, Lowry Street and Nissan Drive

Smyrna's business strip runs along Sam Ridley Parkway from the I-24 interchange east to Lowry Street. South of it sit the Nissan plant and Smyrna Airport. The airport authority calls it the busiest general aviation airport in Tennessee.

Retail lots, church lots and industrial yards along these roads all take truck traffic. The asphalt ruts first where trucks turn in the same spot every day. Milling and repaving a lot from the base up is a different project from an overlay. We mill small sections with our own skid steer attachments.

A whole lot takes a full-size milling machine, which we bring in for the job. Once the new asphalt cures, parking lot striping lays out the spaces, the accessible stalls and the fire lanes. Sealcoating later on keeps the surface closed against water and sun.

Smyrna passed 60,000 people in the Census Bureau's 2024 estimate, up from about 53,000 in 2020. A quarter of the town's homes went up in 2010 or later. Every new rooftop adds a lot or a drive, and every older one comes due for upkeep.

Sealcoating and asphalt repair in Smyrna's 1980s and 1990s neighborhoods

Blair Farm, Johnstown, Hunters Point and Living Springs are older subdivisions off Sam Ridley Parkway. Many of their homes date to the 1990s. We serve those streets and the subdivisions across town, from Hidden Hills to Foxland Forest and Cedar Hills. A driveway that age without a seal coat goes gray and rough.

Gray asphalt is dry asphalt: it sheds fine stone, and small cracks spread into alligator patterns. Sealcoating is the upkeep step for a driveway that is still sound. Crack sealing comes first, then a sealer coat that closes the surface against water and sun. Potholes, sunken edges and spider-web cracking call for asphalt repair instead.

We cut out the failed section, rebuild the stone base under it, and patch with hot mix asphalt. A sound older driveway with a tired surface can take an asphalt resurfacing overlay instead of a tear-out. A full-depth patch disturbs the ground, so Tennessee 811 gets three working days' notice before we dig. Sealer, millings and wash water stay out of the storm drains.