A culture of contribution
Pavement maintenance makes a difference to how long a road lasts, and it takes a whole industry to get that right. Contributing to it is not one person's job here: three of our people sit on a single committee, and that is one association of several.
Why a materials company gives its time to the industry and not only to its own products.
Published December 13, 2021 · Updated September 30, 2026
A materials company could show up only when it has something to sell. It would be cheaper, and for a while nobody outside would notice.
Instead, our people volunteer their time and energy to the industry. They sit on association committees and boards. One was chosen for the leadership team of a chapter that did not exist in this state five years ago. Others stand up at conferences and present what the laboratory knows. None of it ships a pallet.
Pavement maintenance only keeps its budget if it works. A repair that fails is an argument against the whole practice, made in front of the agency that was deciding whether to fund any more of it, and it takes work away from everybody, including the people who would have done it right.
Boards and committees
Maxwell is an associate member of the Utah Asphalt Pavement Association, and three of the people who work here sit on its pavement preservation committee. That committee is a good deal of the state's industry in one room, contractors and suppliers and engineers alongside the association's own technical staff.
Our representative in northern California sits on the board of the Western Regional Association for Pavement Preservation, whose members are the contractors and agencies doing slurry seal, chip seal, micro surfacing and crack treatment across the western states.
A board seat is meetings and a committee seat is more meetings, and neither is a place to sell anything. What they buy is a hearing, and the questions that come up are the ones a materials supplier ought to want asked. Whether a method is being taught right. Whether a specification is asking for something no product can do. Whether a practice that has always been done a certain way still makes sense.
A chapter that did not exist
In 2021 the Utah chapter of Women of Asphalt was new, and Nicole Maxwell, our sales support manager, was selected to its leadership team. The Utah Asphalt Pavement Association's magazine interviewed her about it that year.
Her answer to why it mattered was not about fairness. It was about arithmetic. The industry cannot hire the people it needs, and it has spent a long time being invisible to half of the people who might have come.
The following July, members of that chapter were on the cover of Asphalt Pavement, the National Asphalt Pavement Association's magazine, under the line Branching Out: Women in Asphalt. Six of them on a job site in hard hats, which is a more useful recruiting argument than anything a company could write.
“There are endless possibilities for training and growth for women in this industry. Right now hiring is a big issue, and will continue to be. Any level of experience or education has a path and home in the pavement world.”
Nicole MaxwellSales support manager, Maxwell Products, in On the Road, 2021
Standing up in front of people
The other half of it is speaking. Maxwell's people present at association events, which is the least comfortable and most useful thing a supplier can do, because a room of contractors will tell you immediately when you are wrong.
It is also the only honest use of what the laboratory knows. A company that runs numerous tests and publishes the limits on every data sheet has something worth presenting, and keeping it for the sales call would waste it. The same instinct produced this library of articles.
We would prefer the work is done right, not just done with our products. That is not generosity. A repair that fails is an argument against the whole practice, no matter who supplied the material.
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