If you have ever driven down a freshly milled road and watched the trucks hauling away the old asphalt surface, you might have wondered where all that material goes. The answer is that it gets a second life, and in Florida, recycled asphalt millings have become one of the most popular and practical aggregate materials available.
What Are Asphalt Millings?
Asphalt millings, sometimes called RAP (reclaimed asphalt pavement), are the ground-up remnants of existing asphalt surfaces. When a road, parking lot, or driveway is resurfaced, the old asphalt layer is milled off using specialized equipment. The resulting material looks like coarse, dark-colored gravel, but it behaves very differently than natural stone.
Why Florida Builders Love Them
Millings have a unique property that makes them especially well-suited for Florida’s climate. The residual asphalt binder in the material softens in our warm temperatures and actually helps the millings bond together over time. Once compacted and exposed to Florida sun, a millings surface essentially re-cements itself into a semi-solid layer. That makes it more durable and erosion-resistant than loose gravel while being significantly less expensive than new asphalt paving. They compact into a firm, stable surface that resists washout, they are priced well below new stone or fresh asphalt, they drain well while still providing a solid driving surface, and they are an environmentally responsible choice that keeps old asphalt out of landfills.
Common Applications
Millings work well for driveways (especially long rural driveways), temporary construction roads and staging areas, parking lots for commercial properties, farm roads and equipment access paths, and base stabilization under new paving. They are not the right choice for every application. If you need an engineered base for a structural project or a FDOT-specified road base, limerock or crushed stone is typically required. But for surface applications where you want something better than gravel at a fraction of the cost of new asphalt, millings are hard to beat.
Sustainability Angle
Recycling asphalt reduces the need for new aggregate mining, keeps material out of landfills, and requires less energy than producing new asphalt. In a state as environmentally conscious as Florida, that matters. Many commercial and municipal projects now specifically look for recycled material options, and millings fit the bill perfectly. T. Disney Trucking delivers asphalt millings throughout Florida from our network of yards. If you are considering millings for your next project, our team can help you determine the right quantity and application approach.
Interested in asphalt millings for your project? Contact T. Disney Trucking for delivery anywhere in Florida. Visit disneytrucking.com/contact or call us for current availability.
