A few days after Christmas in 2023, a crew from the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) met up before dawn on a remote stretch of US-60, northwest of the Phoenix metro area. The asphalt highway showed cracking along the outside wheel path from age and heavy truck traffic, but repaving wasn’t an option due to budget constraints. As an alternative, the crew had gathered to test Crafco Mastic One, a hot-applied, asphalt-based repair material designed for a variety of pavement distresses. After the success of that test, the ADOT crew returned to install six miles of mastic, protecting that part of the highway from further deterioration.
This is just one of numerous success stories over the past 20-plus years involving the use of mastic for pavement patching. Mastic offers a unique combination of versatility, durability, simplicity and speed, which is driving its adoption for a variety of jobs – from small parking lots to airport runways.
So, what is it? Mastic is a hot-applied, flexible repair material containing aggregate for load-bearing properties. Conventional black mastics like Crafco’s Mastic One are typically made with asphalt, polymers to enhance performance across temperatures, process oils to protect against oxidation and recycled rubber for flexibility and retention of the process oils. Crafco also offers TechCrete, an innovative, gray-colored mastic for repairing concrete or oxidized asphalt. TechCrete is a proprietary blend of polymers, resins, oils and minerals that give it the perfect blend of strength and flexibility.
Why should you consider adding mastic to your tool kit? Mastic is fundamentally different from the rigid repair materials often used to repair asphalt and concrete pavements. Rigid materials often fail because they can’t cope with the thermal expansion and contraction of pavement throughout the seasons. As a result, rigid materials often crack or pull away from the pavement, and they may even cause further damage to the surrounding pavement. But mastic remains flexible throughout its service life, allowing it to absorb thermal movement while maintaining its load-bearing properties.
Durability is extremely important, because repeatedly fixing the same distress wastes time, labor and money. Crafco Mastic One has been specially engineered to withstand environmental stresses such as oxidation as well as traffic-related wear, and Mastic One repairs have continued to perform more than five years after installation. Crafco’s gray-colored TechCrete mastic has exceeded 10 years of service life in some cases.
Mastic also has the advantage of speed. Only basic surface preparation is required to ensure the pavement is clean, sound and dry. And unlike most other solutions, there is no “cure time” with mastic. It’s ready for traffic as soon as it cools – often within an hour. Mastic is also simple to apply. It requires a smaller crew than repaving, with no field mixing or compaction. And there are several methods available for application, ranging from buckets and drag boxes to Crafco’s industry-exclusive EZ Patcher skid steer attachment.
Mastic can be used for a wide variety of problems like potholes, wide cracks, rutting, fatigue cracking, crumbling longitudinal joints, leveling around manholes, transitioning between pavements, filling rumble strips and more. Patching with mastic is a versatile, cost-effective solution that covers numerous issues you face every day, reducing the complexity of your operation without sacrificing capability.
What follows are mastic success stories that give a glimpse of how this innovative material is changing pavement repair for jobs of all sizes.
Small Jobs
More than 60,000 cyclists raced in the RAGBRAI Bicycle Tour across Iowa in 2023. The route changes every year, but that year, a deteriorated two-lane concrete bridge deck in rural Greene County presented an extreme safety risk for the riders. Built in 1959, the 43-foot concrete bridge spans a small creek, and the deck has deteriorated rapidly over the past decade. Failed patches from the past gave way to bare rebar in many places. Obviously, a reliable repair solution was needed before the race could begin.
With mastic, the full repair took less than two days. The Crafco territory manager and representatives from local Crafco distributor Logan Contractors Supply performed a product demonstration for the Greene County Highway Department, which then completed the installation. Mastic One provided a fast, low-cost repair solution on short notice, allowing the race to proceed. More than a year later, the repair remains in good condition, significantly slowing deterioration and extending the life of the bridge.
Medium jobs
The roads in Upstate New York take a lot of punishment in the winter from snowplows, deicing materials, tire chains and months of repeated freezing and thawing. Around 2019, the Madison County Highway Department needed a quick, durable solution to repair spalling, alligator cracking, potholes and deteriorated joints on County Route 67. They tested Mastic One because of its versatility, fast application and cost-effectiveness compared with hot mix shimming.
After the success of their initial test, Madison County adopted Mastic One as a central part of their pavement preservation arsenal. Thanks to the durability of mastic, Madison County can chip seal over the repairs without any reflective cracking. And thanks to the minimal crew and simple preparation required for mastic application versus other repair options, the county has reduced labor and overall project costs.
Big Jobs
For a busy international airport, taking a runway out of service for extended repairs can be a logistical nightmare – not to mention prohibitively expensive. So, when the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport had to address the worn concrete panels on a two million-square-foot runway, they needed a clever, flexible solution.
Replacing the concrete was deemed unfeasible, so project engineers decided to use a hot mix asphalt overlay. But the gaps between the 40-year-old concrete panels were too large to simply pave over. The original attempt to fill the gaps with a sand-emulsion mixture failed due to poor adhesion to the local aggregate. Several other attempts to fill the gaps also failed.
Finally, the team tried Mastic One on a small test section because of the material’s strong adhesion, flexibility and ability to withstand the varied Texas climate. The successful test gave way to a fast-paced installation, with the mastic crew running two of Crafco’s 200-gallon Patcher II mastic melters in tandem to keep ahead of the HMA crew. The overlay was immediately placed over the hot mastic to maximize adhesion. In total, 302,400 pounds of Mastic One were installed to repair 180,000 linear feet of cement panel joints – all with no reflective cracking in the overlay, and without having to replace the entire runway.
In the 20-plus years since mastic was introduced to the pavement preservation industry, it has steadily earned converts on jobs of all sizes because of its versatility, durability, simplicity and speed. Mastic has even gained enough recognition to be incorporated into the ASTM specifications, giving users confidence both in the specific material they’re using and in mastic as a repair method. If you’ve never investigated this innovative material, you owe it to yourself to see how mastic could save you time, labor, money and frustration.
For more information, visit crafco.com/mastic-one.
