Oilfield & Industrial Paving in the Permian Basin

Oilfield work is different from paving a driveway, and pretending otherwise is how contractors end up rebuilding the same road twice. A lease road carries loaded water trucks, vac trucks and rig moves over the same wheel paths day after day. The surface rarely fails from the top down. The base gives way underneath, and everything above it follows.

West Tex Paving has built and maintained oilfield surfaces across the Permian Basin since 1975. We handle the dirt work, the base, and the surface with one crew, so you're not coordinating an excavator, a caliche hauler and a paving contractor separately and hoping the sequence lines up.

The money goes in the base, not the surface

A loaded truck puts many times the load of a pickup through the same footprint, and it concentrates that load exactly where the wheels track. Build a thin surface over a marginal base and you'll see ruts along those lines inside a season. Once water finds the ruts it gets into the base, the base softens, and the failure spreads outward from there.

So we build from the bottom. Proper excavation and grading, caliche to the depth the traffic actually calls for, and compaction that gets checked rather than assumed. Drainage designed so water leaves the road instead of sitting in it, on flat ground that means building crown and fall deliberately, because it won't happen on its own.

Get that right and the surface on top becomes a choice rather than a gamble. Get it wrong and no amount of asphalt saves it.

We work around your operation

Nobody can shut a location down while a road gets rebuilt. We phase the work so access stays open where it can, building one lane at a time, staging material off the travel way, and scheduling the disruptive stages around your windows rather than ours.

Tell us the constraints when you call: what has to stay open, what traffic the route carries, and when your quiet periods are. That shapes the sequence more than anything else, and it's cheaper to plan for than to work around after the fact.

We also handle ongoing maintenance rather than only new construction. Regrading, pothole and washboard repair, re-sealing and dust control on an interval keeps a road working far longer than letting it degrade and rebuilding it.

What does a caliche lease road cost per mile?

There isn't a useful per-mile figure without seeing the route. Cost depends on width, base depth, how much grading and drainage the ground needs, and haul distance for material. That last one moves the number more than anything else. We drive the route with you and give an itemized written estimate before any work starts.

Do you do the dirt work as well as the surface?

Yes. Excavation, grading, drainage, base and surface are all in-house. That matters more on oilfield jobs than most, because the base is where the road is won or lost, and splitting it across contractors is how accountability disappears when something fails.

Can you maintain a lease road you didn't build?

Yes, and it's a good share of our work. Regrading, re-sealing, pothole and washboard repair, and drainage corrections on existing roads. We'll tell you honestly whether maintenance will hold or whether the base is far enough gone that rebuilding is cheaper over the long run.

Should a lease road be caliche, chip seal, or asphalt?

Most lease roads want caliche. It carries heavy loads, costs least over distance, and you repair it in place. Chip seal over that base kills the dust, seals out water, and is often the smartest spend on a road that sees constant traffic. Hot-mix asphalt is worth it for shop aprons, facility yards and high-traffic entrances, but rarely over long distances.

How long does a chip-sealed access road last?

Over a properly built base, several years before it wants re-sealing, and the re-seal costs a fraction of the original build. Traffic volume, load weights and drainage decide where in that range you land, roads that hold water fail early no matter what's on top.

Do you build well pads and locations?

Yes, site preparation, grading, drainage and surfacing for pads, locations and laydown yards. We're an asphalt, caliche and dirt-work contractor and don't do concrete work, so a job specifying concrete pads isn't one for us.

Can you work around an active operation?

Yes. We phase the work so access stays open where possible, build one lane at a time, stage material off the travel way, and schedule the disruptive stages around your windows. Tell us what has to stay open when you call and we'll plan the sequence around it.