Seal your asphalt and you double its life. Jackson Sherrell has been in asphalt maintenance for over thirty years, growing The Asphalt Team from a small seal-coating operation in 1990 into a business now handling over five million square feet a year across six states. This is the first episode of Unscripted TN.

Key takeaways

• Maintenance doubles pavement life. Seal it, repair the major cracks, keep water out.
• Parking lot appearance moves revenue. One property owner Jackson works with sees roughly a 20% lift from paint plus a redone lot.
• That value stays with the property at sale. Which turns maintenance from an expense into an investment.
• Not all sealer is the same. The Asphalt Team mixes its own with specific chemicals and sand rather than the standard practice of adding water.
• The lowest bid hides the real question. Ask what is in the material and what the process is.
• From 1990 to six states, and still taking residential driveways, which is the part most regional operators drop first.

On this page

• Why maintenance doubles the life of asphalt
• Where business is being done
• What separates a good asphalt job from a cheap one
• What to ask before you accept a bid
• Staying local while going regional
• People, ideas and sources mentioned
• Questions this episode answers
• Go deeper

Why maintenance doubles the life of asphalt

If you’ll seal asphalt and keep it in good condition, repair any major cracks and things like that to prevent further water damage, you’ll double the life of that asphalt.

— Jackson Sherrell

Water is the enemy. It gets into a crack, freezes, widens the crack and gets into the base underneath. Once the base goes the repair is no longer a repair. Sealing and crack work are cheap precisely because they stop that sequence before it starts.

If you are a homeowner rather than a facility manager, the same logic applies at a smaller scale. There is a good rundown of the five signs a driveway needs professional repair.

Where business is being done

People want to do business where business is being done.

— Jackson Sherrell

Jackson attributes that line to a mentor he calls Crown Charlie, and it is the commercial argument in one sentence. A cracked, faded, weed-grown lot tells a customer something about the business inside before they reach the door.

He puts a number on it. A property owner who buys and sells grocery stores calls Jackson second, right after the painter, on every acquisition. Paint the building, redo the lot, and business goes up around 20%. The added value stays with the property when it sells, which is the part that matters if you are in commercial real estate.

And it is category-independent. The Asphalt Team has worked with restaurants, churches and cannabis shops. If customers cannot access your store comfortably, it costs you, and the same effect shows up on residential property value.

What separates a good asphalt job from a cheap one

Asked directly whether he sits at the higher end of a wide quality spectrum, Jackson said yes and then explained why. They mix their own materials with specific chemicals and sand. The standard practice in the trade is to add water to sealer, which stretches the material and thins the protection.

On a high-traffic commercial lot that difference shows up within a season. There is more on the science behind what actually makes a driveway last.

We really try to do it as if each one of those projects, regardless of the price, if it was a small driveway or a large parking lot, we do it as if it was my lot.

— Jackson Sherrell

What to ask before you accept a bid

His answer to what a consumer should educate themselves on: understand that not all products and processes are the same. The bids in front of you are not describing the same job.

• Ask what is in the sealer and whether it has been cut with water.
• Ask how cracks are prepared before anything goes over them.
• Ask what happens to the base if water has already got in.
• Ask how long the contractor expects the work to last, and what that estimate assumes.

Thirty years of asphalt work is the reason he can answer those without hedging.

Staying local while going regional

Commercially The Asphalt Team now covers Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Georgia and Alabama. They have also specialised into pickleball and tennis court lining, which is a smart adjacency for a company that already owns the surface.

The part Jackson is deliberate about is keeping residential work in Sparta and Cookeville, right down to gravel driveway refurbishing. Most operators drop small jobs on the way to regional scale. He did not.

People, ideas and sources mentioned

Questions this episode answers

• How often should asphalt be sealed?
• Does sealing really double the life of a parking lot?
• Does a parking lot affect how much business a store does?
• Is parking lot maintenance an expense or an investment?
• How do I tell a good asphalt contractor from a cheap one?
• What should I ask before accepting an asphalt bid?
• Does a driveway increase home value?

Go deeper

Every link above goes somewhere different. These are the ones not already mentioned above.

• Ryan Steva on modern homesteading, the other long-form Unscripted TN interview.
• From a bucket to a business empire, the longer written version of how Jackson built this.
• A second interview with Jackson, on going from childhood interest to driveway expert.
• Oklahoma Heat, Air and Refrigeration, referenced in the episode as another owner-run trade business.

Find The Asphalt Team

Request a quote through the contact page. Commercial coverage is Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Georgia and Alabama.

Cite this episode

Sherrell, Jackson. “Paving Excellence.” Unscripted TN, 2025. https://unscripted-tn.castos.com/episodes/paving-excellence-interview-with-the-asphalt-teams-jack-sherrell