Concrete driveway waiver

Fivepoints said:
What sized cranes are you guys wanting to put on driveways? We have a 35 ton crane that weighs 65,000 lbs. We have cracked two already cracked driveways with it in taking down 140 trees with it since we bought it. We have also used a 70 ton link belt rental crane repeatedly that weighs around 100,000 lbs. We have cracked a couple of driveways with it as well. Even it doesn't turn a driveway to gravel.

There's no way I'm going to build driveway replacement into all of my prices as it would drive my bids up to the point of being non competitive. We have our driveway waiver ad part of our standard contract. We also point it out to clients as well.

You just never know when you will need it to cover you. I was walking off a clients front porch and the stone step broke under my weight. I'm 220 lb so I'm not huge. Someone had not put any mortar under that whole corner and the stone was a bit over an inch thick.
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Agree adding layers is for rare situations unlikely to be commonly used.

Have experienced similar to stone incident with laid stone paths which were set in unpacked gravel and then grouted to appear they were set in concrete. Squished when very little weight applied after rain - unprofessional install. Discussions were difficult.

I always list accepted damages to be repaired by ourselves to a professional standard on the quote. Is a good term to put on quite as clients seem to be appeased by it (to a large degree)
 
That's not necessarily realistic. We have a lot of wooded or semi wooded areas here. Your not going to drive through the yard with a crane in a lot of cases due to rocks and trees. There's lots of houses on 5 acre lots. Most of the powerlines are above ground so sometimes those are in the way when trying to go from the road. There's also a lot of deep ditches just off the road in our area so you would end up having to close the road a lot. How many bids do you lose because you need to use a 210 ton crane setup in the road for $5000 when a 40 ton crane would work on the driveway for $1200?
 
Fivepoints said:
That's not necessarily realistic. We have a lot of wooded or semi wooded areas here. Your not going to drive through the yard with a crane in a lot of cases due to rocks and trees. There's lots of houses on 5 acre lots. Most of the powerlines are above ground so sometimes those are in the way when trying to go from the road. There's also a lot of deep ditches just off the road in our area so you would end up having to close the road a lot. How many bids do you lose because you need to use a 210 ton crane setup in the road for $5000 when a 40 ton crane would work on the driveway for $1200?
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I concede your point. I was saying generally I don't put cranes on concrete.Different areas have different setups. I was generalizing about and average neighborhood. For the most part a 90 will get what you need from the street. I understand the situations you outlined. Back where I am from there is a lot of that so we do them manually because we cant get cranes in. Your point is valid, but concrete is expensive to replace. I understand there may be situations where a crane is the only way and putting it on concrete is the only way, but for me that is a last resort. And for those situations which don't happen often sometimes its better to pass on the job than get into a huge head ache.
 
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It can be a headache, and sometimes long-established customers look to you. specifically, to fix their headache, in a no-other-choice scenario.

Also, people may be planning to replace a paved driveway either right away, after tree removal (as soon as I finish a current job, they are paving) or in an acceptable time-frame.


More than just concrete driveways...I just was at a Starbucks with new asphalt. POROUS asphalt. I wonder how that stands up over time, and how it would handle crane-loading on outriggers.

Regular asphalt driveways can easily get damaged as well, so a broader waiver might be needed.


In your collective experiences, what causes the most damage?
Are there good specific pavement-industry terms for pre-existing material conditions? I don't know how to describe concrete. I've seen surface flaking (probably a proper concrete industry term out there), slabs/ loose pieces shift, undercut edges, etc.
 
When working in older infrastructure with lines everywhere and huge, overmature trees over houses stacked on top of each other, big crane is a no go, and conventional rigging isn’t realistic (coming from the guy who runs around with 1500 ft of rope and 5 lowering devices). 45 ton in the driveway is what we will be contracting until we have the possibility of buying our own 30t (if/when). Local utility is all over us with this stuff, have to take it small and alternate drop zones/processing areas. We did one last week and were able to keep the already cracked driveway intact by layering level with 1/2” plywood and then using a layer of 3/4” under the wheels. Went well.
 
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