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.

• 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.

• 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

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.

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.

People want to do business where business is being done.

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