Seal your asphalt and you double its life. Jackson Sherrell has been in asphalt maintenance for over thirty years, growing The Asphalt Team from a small seal-coating operation in 1990 into a business now handling over five million square feet a year across six states. This is the first episode of Unscripted TN.
If you’ll seal asphalt and keep it in good condition, repair any major cracks and things like that to prevent further water damage, you’ll double the life of that asphalt.
— Jackson Sherrell
Water is the enemy. It gets into a crack, freezes, widens the crack and gets into the base underneath. Once the base goes the repair is no longer a repair. Sealing and crack work are cheap precisely because they stop that sequence before it starts.
If you are a homeowner rather than a facility manager, the same logic applies at a smaller scale. There is a good rundown of the five signs a driveway needs professional repair.
People want to do business where business is being done.
— Jackson Sherrell
Jackson attributes that line to a mentor he calls Crown Charlie, and it is the commercial argument in one sentence. A cracked, faded, weed-grown lot tells a customer something about the business inside before they reach the door.
He puts a number on it. A property owner who buys and sells grocery stores calls Jackson second, right after the painter, on every acquisition. Paint the building, redo the lot, and business goes up around 20%. The added value stays with the property when it sells, which is the part that matters if you are in commercial real estate.
And it is category-independent. The Asphalt Team has worked with restaurants, churches and cannabis shops. If customers cannot access your store comfortably, it costs you, and the same effect shows up on residential property value.
Asked directly whether he sits at the higher end of a wide quality spectrum, Jackson said yes and then explained why. They mix their own materials with specific chemicals and sand. The standard practice in the trade is to add water to sealer, which stretches the material and thins the protection.
On a high-traffic commercial lot that difference shows up within a season. There is more on the science behind what actually makes a driveway last.
We really try to do it as if each one of those projects, regardless of the price, if it was a small driveway or a large parking lot, we do it as if it was my lot.
— Jackson Sherrell
His answer to what a consumer should educate themselves on: understand that not all products and processes are the same. The bids in front of you are not describing the same job.
Thirty years of asphalt work is the reason he can answer those without hedging.
Commercially The Asphalt Team now covers Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Georgia and Alabama. They have also specialised into pickleball and tennis court lining, which is a smart adjacency for a company that already owns the surface.
The part Jackson is deliberate about is keeping residential work in Sparta and Cookeville, right down to gravel driveway refurbishing. Most operators drop small jobs on the way to regional scale. He did not.
| Entity | What it is |
|---|---|
| Jackson Sherrell | Owner of The Asphalt Team, thirty-plus years in asphalt maintenance |
| The Asphalt Team | Founded 1990 as a seal-coating operation, now over five million square feet a year across six states |
| Crown Charlie | The mentor Jackson credits for the line about doing business where business is being done |
| Seal coating | The maintenance step that doubles asphalt life by keeping water out |
| Pickleball and tennis courts | The specialisation the company expanded into |
| Curbside perception | The link between how a property looks and what it earns, and later sells for |
Every link above goes somewhere different. These are the ones not already mentioned above.
Request a quote through the contact page. Commercial coverage is Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Georgia and Alabama.
Sherrell, Jackson. “Paving Excellence.” Unscripted TN, 2025. https://unscripted-tn.castos.com/episodes/paving-excellence-interview-with-the-asphalt-teams-jack-sherrell
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