Unpaved county roads are crucial to America’s transportation network. In fact, about one-third of our public roads are dirt or gravel.1 Most agricultural and heavy industrial goods—including food, lumber, and mined materials—travel these roads on their way to market. Residents rely on them to reach jobs, stores, schools, healthcare, religious centers, loved ones, and other essentials.
This reliance on unpaved roads puts a lot of pressure on you to manage and maintain them well, but that’s often a struggle. Unpaved roads require constant gravel and grading. Let’s walk through why those methods fall short and how you can achieve long-term, low-labor road stabilization.
Most current maintenance guidelines for unpaved roads call for the same treatment: gravel. Applying a gravel topcoat provides a harder, more durable surface than dirt. It keeps dust down and provides traction, thereby improving safety. Gravel helps drain water toward the side of the unpaved road, away from traffic. However, as you well know, gravel is costly and labor-intensive over time. Here’s why.
Water washes gravel off the road’s surface, turning the exposed soil into mud. As traffic passes through the mud, it creates ruts and potholes that dry in deformed shapes. (Remember as a kid when your mom said not to make a funny face because it would freeze that way? That’s what’s happening on the road, only nothing’s funny about it.) Meanwhile, the lost gravel clogs drainage ditches and waterways, causing standing water to back up onto the road and harming local wildlife.
Even in arid climates, traffic works gravel into the road or throws it off to the side, so dry roads still suffer material loss. It’s just sneakier!
Due to frequent material loss, most counties re-gravel some or all of their roads up to three times per year. Gravel costs range from $10 to $50 per ton, and most counties use thousands of tons annually. One town in New Hampshire used 3,300 tons of gravel on just 14 miles of roads in 2022.2 At the average prices, that could cost anywhere from $33,000 to $165,000 for material alone—not accounting for hauling and application. For counties that manage more roads, gravel costs could rise well above $1 million per year.
Grading repairs ruts, washboarding, and other flaws in unpaved county roads, making it an integral part of maintenance plans for over a century. In fact, before the advent of the modern motor grader, people used horse-drawn graders beginning in 1885. It’s no wonder that today, motor grader sales are an estimated $4.27 billion-a-year industry.3 However, there are some problems with grading—like the amount of time and labor it requires.
Fun fact: In 1885, a blacksmith from Chicago named Richard Austin invented the first road grader: the aptly-named Austin No. 1. It was horse-drawn and had an adjustable blade.4
Grading is one of the most time-consuming components of road maintenance. While motor graders can reach top speeds of 30 miles per hour (mph), they should never run wide open with their blades down. Caterpillar recommends speeds of three to 9.5 mph for road maintenance.5 The worse road conditions are, the slower grading speeds need to be—usually around three to five mph. Going too fast can make the blade “duck walk,” bouncing unevenly over the road’s surface. This can worsen problems like washboarding, or it can break components on the grader.
Operators typically have to make multiple passes while grading, especially since most roads are wider than their blades. Additionally, gathering materials and traveling to and from work areas take time. So, even short roads (think three miles or less) can take a full day to grade.
Grading often requires multiple crew members. You’ll need a motor grader operator, a traffic controller, and possibly more people to drive water trucks, lay gravel, operate a compactor, or clear debris from the road. Many rural counties have small road crews—sometimes as few as three people—so grading a road may require everyone to work on the same job. That leaves zero chance of completing projects concurrently.
Even large crews may not be large enough. Oakland County, Michigan, reported having 750 miles of unpaved roads to maintain in 2024, but they only had 19 graders.6 With all graders running simultaneously, that’s still almost 40 miles of road for each operator—plus the man hours for other crew members to support them.
Like gravel, operating a motor grader isn’t cheap. Off-road diesel fuel cost an average of $4.21 per gallon in 2023.7 Given that the fuel capacity on a Cat 140 is around 110 gallons, that’s almost $500 to fill up.8 Then there’s machine maintenance: one New England town spent nearly $7,000 maintaining a single machine in 2022.9
Finally, replacing a motor grader doesn’t just cost an arm and a leg—it’s more like a lung and a kidney. Used machines can run upwards of $200,000, while the sticker price on a brand-new machine can easily approach half a million.
When an unpaved road has problems, residents and local businesses aren’t shy about letting the county know. But when the complaints roll in, what do you fix first? Maybe one road gets significant business traffic, but another road is so washed-out that the school bus can’t pick up a child. The child’s education and the business are both important, but with finite resources, the county road commission must decide which need is more urgent. Whatever you choose, somebody will be unhappy. And if road conditions get bad enough to cause property damage or physical injury, you could be looking at a lawsuit.
Numerous other factors can impact whether your grading crew’s work does or doesn’t last. Here are some things that make a difference:
Encounter enough of these factors, and you’ll have to grade more—potentially as often as every 30 days.
Whether you’re applying gravel once or three times a year, or grading monthly or quarterly, the results are the same: you’re spending too much time, labor, and money doing the same maintenance over and over. It’s time to try something different!
With Perma-Zyme, your unpaved county roads will last 10 years or more with little to no maintenance. Here’s how it works and how to use it.
Perma-Zyme is an enzyme solution that bonds soil particles together to create a hard, concrete-like surface up to 13 times stronger than soil alone. This allows any unpaved county road to stand up to traffic without ruts, potholes, or washboarding. Perma-Zyme is water-resistant, so you can say goodbye to erosion and mud. It also significantly decreases dust for better visibility and fewer dust control treatments.
We make Perma-Zyme with food-grade, 100% organic ingredients. It’s entirely natural, non-toxic, and non-hazardous, so you can be confident it’s safe for your crews and your community.
Applying Perma-Zyme is simple, and you can do it with the equipment you have on hand. Here are the basic steps:
This simple process will decrease your maintenance effort and expense for years to come. Some of our customers only do one light seasonal grade per year, while many no longer perform any grading or graveling after using Perma-Zyme. Think of the labor and money you’ll save on unpaved road stabilization over the course of 10 years without gravel or grading!
Using Perma-Zyme for unpaved road maintenance saves you thousands of dollars each year and frees up hundreds of man hours so your crews can work on other essential projects. Best of all, a single treatment lasts for over a decade, so the savings accumulate over time—even during economic recessions, workforce shortages, or rising gravel costs. Perma-Zyme offers residents a stable, sustainable road, so they can rest assured their county is that much safer.
Looking for info about gravel driveways, unpaved haul roads, or dirt access roads? Check out our resources for homeowners, heavy industries, and renewable industries.
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