The Shift Away From Diesel
By Matthew Rigsbee
Everyone knows that the asphalt industry is old, outdated, and full of guys who are stuck in their old ways of doing things, right?
I’d honestly be shocked if you wholeheartedly answered “yes.”
You see, it’s a common misconception across all construction industries that companies are stuck in the Stone Age when it comes to their practices. Sure, we hear folks say they do things a certain way because “it works” or “it’s the way we’ve always done it.” But, surprisingly to most folks, the asphalt industry is shifting into a tech-forward and environmentally aware industry rather quickly.
Remember that old piece of paper drivers used to have to get from the plant? Now, we’ve got digitized e-ticketing and logs. Remember when knowing if a mat was compacted correctly meant sending a guy out with a nuclear gauge and hoping for the best? Now, rollers carry GPS and sensors that tell the operator the density in real time instead of finding out the bad news later when the core samples come back.
Notice a pattern? The industry keeps quietly swapping “the way we’ve always done it” for something better, and most of us don’t even clock it as innovation.
The Innovation of Asphalt Release Agents
Now let’s talk about the holdout. Walk onto almost any asphalt job, and you’ll still find diesel fuel doing double duty as a release agent and a solvent on paving equipment. It’s been the industry’s gold standard for decades. After all, it’s readily available and costs just dollars per gallon.
Here’s the problem: diesel was never designed to be an asphalt release agent. It’s a crude oil that just so happens to do the job, and the industry has been treating “happens to work” like “built for the job” for hundreds of years.
That gap is exactly why a growing lineup of purpose-built asphalt release agents is slowly taking the industry by storm—not because they’re trendy, but because they were engineered to do the one thing diesel never was: clean and prevent asphalt buildup.
Effectiveness: Diesel Burns Up in Minutes
Diesel fuel has a flash point of right around 125°F. Spray it on a truck bed or a paver hopper filled with 300-degree-plus mix, and it begins evaporating almost instantly. When your release agent starts to evaporate, it’s no longer your release agent because it disappears.
That’s why diesel only gets you one load per application and why a crew can burn through hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel in a day trying to prevent asphalt from building up.
But there’s an even bigger problem: What does diesel fuel do to the asphalt when it comes into contact with it? In the simplest terms, diesel fuel is an oil, and oils dissolve other oils. When you’re working with asphalt, which is derived from crude oil, what do you think will happen? It strips the binder right out of the aggregate, weakening the bond over time while it takes months for the diesel fuel to biodegrade out of the pavement. That’s why DOTs and plants increasingly won’t accept a load if there’s diesel in the bed of the truck.
Purpose-built asphalt release agents tend to have higher flash points, meaning they stay on your equipment longer, and are non-petroleum-based, meaning they are not going to harm the integrity of the mix, and the DOT won’t give you any issues.
Safety: Diesel Fuel Is Dangerous
Spraying a highly combustible fuel onto your expensive equipment full of 300°F hot mix near employees and customers’ businesses isn’t a risk anybody should shrug off. Add in the carcinogenic fumes, and you have a dangerous concoction on your job site, exposing your company to unnecessary risks, dangers, and fines.
It’s also why diesel falls under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the federal law governing hazardous waste handling and disposal.
The newer release agents avoid these issues. Their non-petroleum-based formulas have fewer fumes (or none), higher flash points, making them far safer, and less regulatory exposure, all while avoiding asking a crew to change how they work.
Environmental Impact: Diesel Fuel Can Lead to Regulatory Violations
Not everyone in this industry is going to sign up for a sustainability pledge or care deeply about their carbon footprint, and that’s fine. But there’s a difference between debating the small stuff and spraying petroleum all over equipment and letting that run off into the environment.
The Oil Pollution Act and the Clean Water Act weren’t written to make a contractor’s life harder—they exist because diesel in the stormwater system is a straightforward problem with consequences: contaminated soil, groundwater exposure, and EPA fines that can run into the tens of thousands per violation.
The good news is the fix isn’t a big change. Some non-petroleum release agents biodegrade in just days. They’re not sitting in the ground for weeks, and they’re not on an inspector’s radar when they show up on-site.
The Future of Asphalt: Electric Equipment and AI
The next shift is already showing up at trade shows: electric equipment and AI.
Rollers and pavers from major manufacturers are shipping with battery systems that charge up overnight and are zero-emission, and plants are starting to run AI as a kind of co-pilot, flagging mix problems before they become a failed load.
Overseas, fully autonomous paving demonstrations have already run on real road projects. None of that replaces a domestic crew anytime soon, but the direction is obvious, and it’s the same direction every other “that’ll never change” piece of this industry has gone.
So, Are We Stuck in the Stone Age?
Hardly. We’re an industry that doesn’t make noise about change. Instead, we slowly adapt, then act surprised when somebody points it out. The clipboard is gone. Things are going electric. And the diesel bottle on the paver is next out, whether the old folks want to admit it or not. That’s what happens when something finally shows up that does the job better than the “old ways.”
Matthew Rigsbee is the Director of Marketing at Chemtek, Inc. and can be reached at Matthew.Rigsbee@chemtek.us.
