5 Red Flags When Hiring a Driveway Paving Contractor

The Driveway Scam Playbook Is Older Than You Think

Every paving season, the same scam rolls through Oregon neighborhoods. A truck pulls up, someone offers to pave your driveway cheap because they have "leftover asphalt from a job down the road," and they want cash today. By the time the thin, under-compacted surface fails — sometimes within weeks — the crew is long gone and unreachable.

Driveway paving is a legitimate trade full of honest, skilled contractors. But it also attracts opportunists, because most homeowners only buy a driveway once or twice in their lives and cannot easily judge quality. Learning the warning signs protects you from paying for a surface that fails. Here are the five biggest red flags, and what an honest contractor does instead. For the positive checklist, pair this with our guide on how to hire a paving contractor in Oregon, and for the engineering, the complete Oregon asphalt driveway guide.

Red Flag 1: The Unsolicited Door-to-Door Pitch

The classic scam begins with a knock on the door or a truck slowing at your driveway. The pitch: a crew is "in the area" or "finishing a job nearby" and can pave your driveway right now for a special price.

Legitimate contractors do not work this way. They are booked weeks ahead, they quote in writing after measuring, and they do not pressure homeowners into same-day decisions on the curb. An unsolicited, here-right-now offer is the single most common opening move of a paving scam. Real demand-driven paving is scheduled, not impulse-sold.

Red Flag 2: "Leftover Asphalt From Another Job"

The "we have extra asphalt left over" line is a hallmark of the scam. It does two things: it explains the suspiciously low price and it creates false urgency ("we have to use it before it cools"). In reality, hot-mix asphalt is ordered to spec for each job and does not show up as a random surplus a crew is trying to offload door to door.

What these crews actually lay is often a thin skim of poor-quality material over no real base, with no compaction. It looks like a driveway for a season, then ravels, cracks, and crumbles — because there is nothing underneath it. A proper driveway requires a real base and proper compaction, neither of which a "leftover asphalt" job includes.

Red Flag 3: Cash Only, Full Payment Up Front

Demands for full payment in cash before work begins are a major warning sign. Cash leaves no paper trail, and full payment up front removes any incentive to finish well — or to finish at all. Some scam crews collect the money, do a fast, shoddy job, and disappear; others take a deposit and never return.

Legitimate contractors accept traceable payment, typically a reasonable deposit with the balance due on completion. They do not pressure you to hit an ATM. If a contractor insists on all cash, all up front, walk away. How payment should work is covered in detail in our hiring guide.

Red Flag 4: No CCB License, No Insurance, No Paper

In Oregon, paving contractors must be licensed by the Construction Contractors Board (CCB). A scammer will dodge the question, give a fake number, or claim they do not need one. They typically carry no liability insurance and no workers' comp either, which means any property damage or worker injury on your site could become your problem.

Always ask for the CCB number and verify it on the CCB's online license search. No verifiable license, no certificate of insurance, no written contract — any one of these is reason enough to refuse. The license and paperwork are exactly what scammers cannot or will not produce.

Red Flag 5: High-Pressure Tactics and Vanishing Quotes

The fifth flag is the overall pressure pattern: a price that is "only good today," refusal to put the quote in writing, vague or no answers about base depth and thickness, and reluctance to provide local references or a business address you can verify. Scammers rely on rushing you past the questions a careful buyer would ask.

An honest contractor gives you a written, itemized quote, answers questions about base and thickness specifically, provides references and a portfolio, and lets you take time to compare. Anyone who treats reasonable due diligence as an obstacle is telling you who they are.

Red Flags at a Glance

If you see any of these, stop and verify before paying anything.

How to Protect Yourself

Protecting yourself is straightforward. Never agree to paving on the spot from an unsolicited pitch. Always verify the CCB license online. Insist on a written, itemized quote and a contract. Use traceable payment with the balance on completion. And get more than one bid so you have a basis for comparison — a real understanding of what driveways actually cost in Oregon makes a suspiciously cheap offer obvious.

The contractors worth hiring will welcome every one of these precautions. The ones who resist are showing you the red flag themselves. When you are ready for a legitimate, written quote with a verifiable license behind it, we are glad to provide one — request a free quote.