Parking at home

My driveway is 750’ long 14’ wide. 4” thick with #4 (1/2) CMC rebar on 12” squares. Parking lot between house and shop is 12,000 square feet. Cost us $75,000 in 2003. Trucked in some 3/4” chopped limestone base dropped 6” thick directly down on black gumbo clay ex-plowed corn field soil. 20 years and lots of traffic. Just a little settling here and there but still holding up well. 6 cow trucks can be parked on it at one time no worries.

 

It is.

But a lot less work than pulling out a semi that sunk down to it's axles because the "gravel driveway" didn't hold. And still cheaper and quicker than pouring concrete.

I should have explicitly stated "it all depends on what your soil conditions are. Some soil conditions require much more preparation before either graveling or putting down solid surface".

 

Don't overthink this or get too crazy with it. I say you should scrape the grass off the top before you put rock down but in this parking spot in the pics I made I didn't do that. This was a job I did in a hurry a few years ago that turned out nice and still looks/works good.

I ordered one truckload (about 21 tons +/-) of inch and half rock (about $425 delivered) and had it dumped inside of where I spray painted the lines where I wanted the rock pad. The driver backspread it for me which saved me some extra work spreading it with my little tractor grading blade.

Once I spread that like I wanted I used the steer tire of my big truck to "push it in" driving back and forth over it several dozen times. Then criss crossed it like that.

Then I ordered a truck load of crusher run gravel. 21 tons+/- for about $350 delivered. Crusher run is finer gravel and powdery lime dust when dry. It washes into the bigger rock as it rains or you can water it and kind of binds/cements it all together over time. So the driver backspread the crusher run as he dumped it then I smoothed that out to my liking with my grader blade. Then I used my bobtail truck to again drive back and forth over the gravel criss crossing it and pushing in that crusher run.

Then I rented a roller from the local equipment rental place. It has a water tank you fill that adds weight and also vibrates and sprays water as you roller over the gravel. This thing did a fantastic job compacting and washing in that crusher run material.

I built this parking pad almost 4 years ago in a day for under $1,000. It's about 6" thicker, taller than the ground it's on. It'll park two bobtail trucks. It's still solid, like concrete now. I figured with about 6 or possibly as much as 8 more loads of rock it could have been expanded enough to get one 53' trailer in there.

 

I have the bonus of living in solid sand but my parking spot is 4" of class 5 (which is 3/4" crushed rock, the fines from crushing the rock, then basically pit run 3/4 minus and clay mixed in for a binder, then a load of class 2 granite on top of that and I park my bobtail on it and it won't leave a mark on the spot, I had to try And move some with a skid steer and it took about 1/2 the day to just start chipping it away enough to break into it to dig some of it out. My driveway is 4.5" concrete under the same class 5 base and is also rebarred in, I don't hesitate to drive on that bobtail and have had a loaded end dump on it also