The Cheapest Way to Pave a Driveway

This post may contain affiliate links, view our disclosure policy for details.

If you’ve ever had to install a new driveway on a piece of land (or redo an existing driveway) you know how expensive this project can be. In this post, I’ll share with you the cheapest way to pave a driveway. We saved a lot of money using this method!

crushed asphalt driveway

Update…

I wrote this post back in 2013 when we purchased our farmland. Over the years, millions of people stopped by here to read this information. I decided to keep the original text with all the original prices and info (and the not-so-great images… sorry!). You might ask yourself… “Is this still relevant today?” I feel like it’s even MORE relevant today since prices for everything increased so much lately.

Today, a dump truck load of gravel cost between $500-600 in central NC (where I live). This is pretty much double what it cost in 2013. Maybe prices for the alternative materials went up too (I didn’t check so I’m not sure), however, I am pretty confident that they are still much cheaper than gravel. So read on, I hope that you’d get some ideas, and I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments below. Let’s start…

Lady Lee’s Note…

Forget everything you know about driveways… Asphalt, concrete, crusher run gravel, railroad ballast, paving stones… If you have a long driveway, or if you need a system of driveways on a farm, and you plan to go with those common methods of paving a driveway, you are going to need a separate mortgage just for the driveway (or driveways).

Believe me, I’ve been there. But no worries, I have a better idea for you. With a little bit of resourcefulness and work, you can cut your driveway expense significantly.

My affair with driveways started after we bought our 20 acres of farmland. There was no access to the land, so for a while, we used the neighbor’s driveway every time we came to visit. This could not last of course, so I started researching how to build a driveway.

I was very ambitious, I wanted to be able to park our RV at the end of the field, so we wouldn’t be too close to the road. I thought “come on, how much can a 400 ft driveway cost? Surely not too much, it’s just a bunch of rocks…” Well, try thousands!

How Much Does a Driveway Cost?

Asphalt, concrete and paving stone were out of the question – we couldn’t afford any of them. And who needs a concrete driveway on a farm anyway?

So we were left with railroad ballast (the larger rock) and crusher run gravel (the smaller rock that we see on most gravel driveways) and the widely known way of building a driveway. But wait, even then we couldn’t afford a 400 ft driveway, every truckload of rock cost $350-$400 (back in 2013), and each truckload only covers about 50 ft.

You need a layer or two of railroad ballast (the professionals told me), depending on how packed your ground is, and on top of that a layer or, more likely, two, of gravel (4”-6”). This adds up, and don’t forget the price of a hired tractor man and his machine, cause you aren’t going to rake it around, ain’t nobody got time for that! 

culvert with gravel on top

Paving a Gravel Driveway…

**Please forgive me for the quality of the next few pictures, it’s a long story, but some pictures are better than no pictures.

So anyway, we compromised on a 50 ft driveway (as if we had any other choice, pahh!), and I convinced myself that maybe it wouldn’t be that bad to park that close to the road.

A 15-inch concrete pipe had to be installed in the ditch. It cost $322.60 delivered, I was happy to find out that the local DOT people would install it for free if I didn’t mind waiting a few days. I didn’t.

a dump truck dumping gravel

We have hard red clay around here, so we decided to dump the railroad ballast stone on top of it and skip the ground scraping step (if we had soft ground here, we would have had to scrape the top layer of the soil).

a box blade scraping the gravel

After the dump truck had dumped the stone, the tractor man used the box blade attachment to move the stone and create the driveway. His charge was $150 (which is rather low at $50 an hour).

railroad ballast rock for driveways

Here is a closer look at the railroad ballast. The rock is larger than crusher-run gravel, and it is washed clean (no sand mixed with it). It’s supposed to make a good base for the gravel.

first 50 feet of a common driveway

This is the length of the driveway one truckload makes (a truckload is about 17 ton). Approximately 50 ft long, 12 ft wide, and 2” thick (this is just the layer of railroad ballast). We had another truckload delivered which we used to widen the end of this strip so that we could maneuver the RV.

The total cost for the two loads was $822.66 + $150 for the hired tractor + $322.60 for the pipe = $1295.26 for a 50 feet driveway. And this is without topping the driveway with crusher run and finishing it all the way…

I was sitting at my house, happy to finally have access to the land, but realizing that my vision of a future house by the wonderful, clear-water, creek at the back of the property was in jeopardy. 

It is at least 2500 ft to the back of our rectangular-shaped property. We just spent more than $1000 on 50 ft, and this is without the gravel since we decided to let the railroad ballast pack a little before we ordered the gravel.

There must be a better, “not normal”, creative alternative, I thought. I just had to find it… Then I did.

Cheap Driveway Alternatives…

A few weeks after we installed this driveway, we went to visit friends in Virginia. They have a beautiful 50-acre farm on the river with lots of outbuildings connected by driveways. The moment I stepped out of my truck I noticed their driveways were different. They were black, almost like asphalt but not exactly.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s grated asphalt,” our friends said and then explained that they have a friend who drives a dump truck. He was called to work with a road construction company, and after they had filled his truck with the grated asphalt, he was looking for a place to dump it. They paid him $100 a truckload to dump it on their farm.

It was the first time that I’d heard of an alternative driveway material. I had never considered it before and in my research, I did not find much information about it anywhere online.

Since that weekend, I’ve never looked at a dump truck driver the same. They were all my potential friends now.

a crushed asphalt driveway

What do you know, only a few days after we came back from that trip it happened. A construction company came to repave the parking lot next to our locksmith shop. My ex-husband (wasting no time), practically jumped on the dump truck driver.

using crushed asphalt for driveway paving

We got three (as in 3, just to make sure we are clear on that) full dump trucks of grated, scraped or whatever you want to call it parking lot asphalt for….. Wait for it…. Wait…. $50 (as in 50 dollars for all three, just to make sure we are clear on that).

Then we used our new tractor and box blade to shape the material into a driveway (since we now had access to the land we wanted to start working it so we purchased a tractor). 

In the image above is our 200 ft or so driveway in town (we don’t live there anymore), which was also suffering. You can see that we still had some work to do, organizing the rocks on the sides, smoothing it further and so on.

I want to point out a few things…

  • First, of course, is the difference in money spent ($1000+ vs. $50).
  • Second, the first driveway is 50 ft, and this one is 200 ft.
  • Third, since the railroad ballast is a bigger and cleaner rock, weeds grow in between the rocks so I had to deal with them. The parking lot grated material has sand mixed in it, so weed seeds don’t see the sun, therefore, I don’t see the weeds, we don’t meet, no one needs to kill anyone and everyone is much happier.
larger pieces of crushed asphalt

Lastly, this was not perfectly milled asphalt, it was what came out straight from the parking lot.

We ended up with a pile of bigger asphalt pieces. In the beginning, I was a bit terrified, it didn’t look good in the driveway and our neighbors gave us the evil eye (we shared the driveway with two other families). But we ended up removing the larger pieces by hand.

Where to Get Cheap Driveway Materials? 

Since the visit to our friends in Virginia, and this driveway saga a whole world had opened to us. We ended up purchasing a dump truck and we started building driveways for others on the side for extra income. We were able to save a lot of people a lot of money. We don’t do this anymore but I sure learned a lot from the few years we installed driveways. 

Obviously, we had to find a reliable supply of cheap driveway material. We looked around and found a quarry in our city that recycles asphalt. We were able to get it for $8 a ton (compared to $17 a ton for gravel. Those were the prices at the time of my writing of this post in 2013 or 2014. Obviously things might have changed).

I still think that the best thing is to get in touch with someone who drives a dump truck and ask them to notify you if they are called for a paving job. You can ask friends on Facebook if anyone knows a local truck driver. 

As far as I know, a lot of these drivers are independent contractors. It’s their responsibility to find a place to dump the waste and in most cases, they need to pay to be able to dump it. If you offer to pay them instead… It’s a big win for them. 

But if you can’t find a willing dump truck driver, call quarries around where you live and try to find a place that recycles. You will then have to find a truck driver to haul the material for you. 

You can, in some cases, find drivers on Craigslist, but you can also ask the quarry if they provide this service. If they don’t I am sure that they can give you a few numbers of drivers that they know. 

Even if you live out in the country, I am pretty sure that you can save some money by purchasing the asphalt millings and paying a driver to dump it at your place. 

Another idea is to call paving companies around your town and ask if they are looking for a place to dump their waste. Many of them will be happy to dump it at your place instead of paying to dump it somewhere else. 

Other Costs Associated With Paving a Driveway…

Please don’t forget that material is not your only expense when paving a driveway. After having some experience and learning how to pave a driveway I have to admit that, more than anything, you have to make sure your driveway is not going to wash out. 

You can buy the more expensive rock or the cheaper driveway alternatives, but if you don’t dig that ditch on the side of the driveway, or if you didn’t lay enough material so your driveway is higher than the land around it, the material is going to wash. 

So take into consideration the cost of ditch-digging (if you need one), soil scraping, the cost of a concrete pipe (if you need one), the cost of the material and the hauling of the material, and the cost of the spreading of the material if you don’t have a tractor and a box blade and can’t do it yourself. 

We were able to save a lot of money because we were able to do all the work ourselves. I hope this post will give you some ideas. Even if you end up saving just a little bit, I’m happy I shared this info with you. 

One Last Note About Cheap Driveway Paving…

After we started working with the local quarry, we found out that they were also recycling concrete. Recycled concrete was even cheaper than asphalt millings ($6 a ton) and we ended up installing a crushed concrete driveway for the farm and using it in many other jobs. Both recycled materials packed and held very well. 


Please take a moment to scroll through the many comments below. Many people have great ideas and thoughts on this cheap way of paving a driveway. And if you are the kind of person who likes to think outside the box, you might also like my alternative building methods post which goes over 12 alternative ways to build structures. 

More DIY Projects on the Farm…

Please share this content if you like it. Thank You!

Similar Posts

180 Comments

  1. As I look at the finished driveway, I had a proud vision of this father’s children bringing current and future friends (future partners, children as well) over to the home and saying “…. and this is the driveway we all put in ourselves one really hot and fun, long summer weekend!” This is the best DIY project I’ve seen in a while

  2. Michael Neubauer says:

    What base did you have to put down beneath the asphalt millings? How is it holding up over the years?

    1. We actually didn’t put anything, just scraped the topsoil. It held up beautifully for 4 years before it needed another layer of material (not sure how often you have to regravel a regular driveway…) Also, looking back, we should have put a little more material there to begin with and, we should have managed water better. Most of the material that we lost on the driveway was due to rainwater washing it away. I think that it would have stayed perfect if we took the time to dig a few ditches. Definitely a lesson learned!

  3. This is the best info I have seen regarding driveways. I never thought of shredded asphalt or crushed concrete. Wish you had shown a photo of the shredded asphalt driveway.

    1. I’m happy it was helpful! It’s still a good option if you can figure out how to DIY some of the process.

    1. Thank you for stoping here and allowing me to do that!

  4. Thank you so much for all of this information. I wanted to also let people know that Companies also drive around and come to your home to offer deals on asphalt milling, please beware!
    Being new to buying large farm land I wasn’t aware about calling around and pricing milling. (hadn’t heard of it before). But I was desperate to fix our driveway. Needless to say about 200 feet cost me $4000.00. At first he said 1or two trucks would do it but!!!!!! It’s thick in places and so thin on others that a lot of it washed away. I wish I would of had your information in the beginning. I still have to fix my driveway ?

    1. I hear you! I was lucky to find this option before we did anything on our farmland. Since then, I got divorced and sold a lot of farm equipment. I no longer have the dump truck. I also need to add some materials to my driveway now. I’ll have to see if I can get someone to haul it for me.

  5. I realize it’s cheaper but it looks like hell. 1” gravel here is $20 a ton with a $75 delivery fee. I bought 4 tons of 1” gravel and spread it myself. Looks great and packs well, I even added sand to help it pack better.

  6. Lina Lum-On says:

    Thank you for sharing we have a long drive way and i was trying to find a cheaper way as it cost my $5000. last time and did last 6 moths

    1. Driveways are expensive! I hope that you’ll find affordable material in your area!

      1. Definitely never considered this before. Some great ideas! Alex

  7. Kenneth Millstein says:

    If you are in a winter snow area, how do you deal with removing the snow in a driveway like the ones pictured?

    1. I live in the South so I don’t know much about snow removal but I think that you will do the same as for any driveway. There is no difference.

  8. montrell Hale says:

    Thanks for taking the time to write this, this will help me with my
    landscaping company in Wilson nc because there have been times when they asked if we could create them a new driveway

  9. Benedict Siddell says:

    Bookmarked!, I enjoy your site!

  10. What were the steps after having the asphalt dumped, as far as packing and such?

    1. We just used the box blade to spread it. Driving over it with the car packed it well.

  11. Well I just paid $1,200 for a 28 ft wide driveway that is 150 ft deep plus a 28 ft long culvert in Kentucky. It’s better to use crushed rock around your culvert then clean 57 in your driveway then go with some chip rock so it’s a smooth ride. North Carolina sure is proud of their gravel that’s way too much money.

    1. Thanks for the information, John. It’s interesting to see the differences in building costs from state to state. It is expensive here…

  12. Using asphalt Millings is not a new thing however you can go a few steps further; using a rented roller machine and a roofing propane torch compress to a smooth surface then seal it like a regular asphalt drive. Lasts much longer and looks awesome

  13. Ridiculous. Your way to install an affordable driveway is to jump a dp truck driver and miraculously convince him to give you loads of gravel for nothing. I dont know where you are or how a gravel truck just magically “appeared” when you needed it, then, agreed to give you gravel for nothing..but thats a lucky, one in a million break you got. So shut your mouth and be thankful instead of telling everyone else they should be getting free gravel too, and all they have to do is flag down dump trucks? Worst article ever.

    1. Wow… So sorry you feel this way. I was telling my story is all.

  14. I needed where can I reach bulldozer for crushed driveway. my zip code is 48063

    1. You’ll have to check locally in your area… I am in NC so I can’t be of much help to you.

  15. Thank you so much for the great article!
    I am in the same place now as you were back then. I have vacant land and it needs a huge drive way so I will be looking into these guys. I am not sure how to get to them but I will research

    1. Yeah, you’ll have to do some asking around. It all depends on what’s available in your area.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *