Things in the world, the economy, and, subsequently, in our industry aren't as clear cut as you might like or hope them to be. The water is a bit muddied concerning who's growing and what exactly is helping them grow. One thing that seems clear is that the market is becoming an increasingly competitive environment. Contractors have to take advantage of every tool, trick, and tactic to gain an advantage over their competitors. And while there are plenty of parking lots, streets, and other asphalt surfaces out there for companies to bid against one another for, there does seem to be a little bit of caution in the air.
It's not all doom-and-gloom, however, the self-reported results from those who participated in the Top Contractor survey for 2024 show a healthy amount of individual growth, year-over-year. Also, while this was just the second year that the surveys were collected exclusively online through a digital form submission we saw an increase in overall participation from members of the industry. In 2023, when we switched away from paper submissions, there was a slight dip in the number of participants, likely due to the transition, but it looks to be on track to recover from that as people adjust to the new status quo.
The economic status of the pavement maintenance industry isn't easy to decipher, even the amount of information we collect for the lists only provide a peak behind the curtain. This year, that brief look behind the scenes was a little confusing. While every individual Top 50 category provided seemed to dip a little bit, in terms of their individual sales, the overall gross sales for the Top 50 contractors exceeded that of last year. One explanation for this would be that there was an increase in certain sales outside of our queried categories (paving, pavement repair, sealcoating, and striping) that we haven't accounted for yet by name.
That's something that we would like to hone in on and correct in future years. Rather than just leave it marked to "other" we would rather find out if there are emerging services that are growing to the point in the industry that make them important to document.
Top 50 Contractors: Pavement Repair
Top 50 Contractors: Sealcoating
Overall Sales Totals
For the Top 50 Contractors, based solely on gross total sales, we have our one, uncategorized point of growth from last year at a staggering $1.588 billion. In 2022, the Top 50 contractors totaled more than $1.544 billion, which was a point of shrinkage from 2022's total of $1.674 billion. Taken into context, these three figures are all hovering around each other pretty closely, and it's important to know that the really high total from 2022 was based on the 2021 sales figures. That was the first full year after the major shutdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic. It may have spiked that year a little bit, as people didn't spend as much according to the 2021 Top Contractor survey, which showed a total sales number of only $1.096 billion.
There's one thing we must do, however, because in previous years we excluded the "other" segment in this figure and simply added up the categorical segment totals. We want to show apples-to-apples, not apples-to-oranges.
Calculated under the previous method, the gross sales total of all categories is $1.374 and that represents a contraction of almost 11% or a difference of $214 million. That might seem somewhat alarming, but I believe that the "other" category is something we need to take a more detailed look at in years to come, in order to better understand the numbers.
Let's take a brief look at each category, including the mysterious "other" lurking in there, and their TOTAL gross sales:
- Paving Top 50: $1.614 billion in 2024 total sales compared to $1.723 billion in 2023
- Striping Top 50: $1.435 billion in total sales compared to $1.583 billion
- Sealcoating Top 50: $1.448 in total sales compared to $1.590 billion
- Pavement Repair Top 50: $1.544 in total sales compared to $1.672 billion
- The "Other" category from the Top 50: $221 million in total sales for 2024 compared to $213 million in 2023
Ok, so we can see this is really making a big difference. We also must note that the "other" category grew by $8 million. The differences between 2024 and 2023's gross total sales is made up by the "other" sales, erasing what looks to be a year-over-year loss. I think that, at least in part, the contractors responding to our survey are doing more diverse work than ever before, rather than simply selling less. What we must do in the years going forward is figure out a way to quantify and capture this data better.
Looking at the four primary Top 50 categories things don't look as blatantly positive as they did a year before. All four categories saw at least some contraction, bringing in less in their respective segmented-only sales. However, as you will see, we do try to decipher why this is the case, as well as, why it might not be a sign for panic.
Paving-Only sales dropped to $844,813,039 compared to $913,190,892 in 2023
Striping-Only sales dropped to $89,944,736 compared to the $130 million generated in 2023
Sealcoat-Only sales dropped to $152,812,614 compared to $186,110,524 the previous year
Pavement Repair-Only sales dropped to $285,633,743 from the all-time high of $315 million in 2023
The Average Top 50 Contractor
The average contractor in our Top 50 generated an average $32 million in gross total sales, which is a drop from last year's average of $35 million. However, it remains far about the two years before that, which came in at $23 million in 2022 and $14 million in 2021. That's still an upward trending figure. Their average segmented revenue streams breakdown as follows:
- Paving: 49%
- Striping: 10%
- Sealcoat: 12%
- Pavement Repair 18%
- Other: 8.85%
- Hot Mix Asphalt Sales: 1.4%
- Surface Treatments: 0.75%
The average contractor's time was split up as follows:
- Driveways: 4%
- Highways: 3%
- Parking Lots: 72%
- Residential/City Roads: 17%
- Other: 4%
The average contractor's customer mix broke down as follows:
- Commercial/Industrial: 60%
- Municipal: 13%
- Multi-family/HOA/etc: 19%
- Single Family: 6%
- Other: 2%
In one of the few growth areas for all of 2024, the Top 50 Contractors earned an average of 27% of their gross sales working as a subcontractor for someone else. That is an increase over last year's previous high of 24% and continues the upward trend from 2022's 17%.
