The Crew That Builds The Base First

Where it comes from

James Mahlangu operated plant before he owned any. Eleven years on rollers and pavers around the East Rand — Germiston, Boksburg, Benoni, the industrial belt down the R21 — laying surfaces for other people’s companies.

What got to him was the rework. He would come back to a yard eighteen months after laying it and find the surface alligatored and sunk in the wheel tracks. Not because the tar was wrong. Because somebody had priced the job to win it, skipped the base, and put 30 mm of asphalt onto ground that moved.

He started Tar Surfacing Johannesburg in 2011 with one second-hand tandem roller, a bakkie and a rule he has not broken since: the base gets built, or the job does not get taken. The crew still calls the current roller “the old girl”, out of habit.

The Highveld problem

Johannesburg gives a surfacing crew two enemies and they arrive in opposite seasons.

Summer brings the afternoon thunderstorms that can ruin a lay in ten minutes. That is why we start before sunrise from about October, so the asphalt is down and rolled before the sky turns. It is also why we will phone and move you rather than gamble your driveway on a cloud.

Winter brings frost and cold ground. Asphalt that goes down cold never compacts properly, and a surface that was not compacted properly is a surface that will fail — just slowly enough that nobody blames the day it was laid.

“We would rather move you to Thursday than come back in two years.”

— James Mahlangu

What we will not do

Stated plainly. It is more useful than a list of things we will do.

• We do not surface over soft or unprepared ground. It is the rule the company was started on.
• We do not quote over the phone. Somebody comes out and measures.
• We do not subcontract the lay. The crew that quotes is the crew that arrives.
• We do not chase pothole-only call-outs. We patch as part of a job. If that is all you need, there are people better set up for it.
• We turn work down. If the ground needs civil work we are not set up for, we say so and tell you who does it.