Ask The Pro: Putting 20 Years of Asphalt Expertise at Your Fingertips

Built exclusively on The Asphalt Pro’s archive of vetted industry content, The Pro gives contractors, producers and pavement professionals a faster way to access two decades of technical knowledge, best practices and project experience.

For nearly two decades, asphalt professionals have turned to The Asphalt Pro for technical guidance, best practices, project insights and expert perspectives.

Beginning August 1, they’ll have a new way to access that knowledge.

“It’s important to us that we created The Pro to pull exclusively from The Asphalt Pro content because we know we’ve vetted this information over the years.”— Sandy Lender, Editor, The Asphalt Pro

The Pro is a new AI-powered assistant built exclusively on The Asphalt Pro’s published content, allowing users to ask questions in plain language and receive answers drawn from the magazine’s extensive library of articles, archives and industry resources. Available through both an embedded website widget and a dedicated full-screen experience, The Pro is designed to help contractors, producers and pavement professionals find information faster while maintaining the trust and credibility that have defined The Asphalt Pro for 20 years.

Whether the goal is understanding a new technology, troubleshooting a plant issue, researching a specialty paving project or training the next generation of workers, The Pro transforms decades of vetted industry expertise into an interactive resource that is available whenever questions arise.

Why We Built The Pro

Since 1993, The Asphalt Pro staff has worked alongside contractors, producers, consultants, engineers and industry experts to document best practices, showcase innovative projects and share technical knowledge with asphalt professionals. During that time, the magazine has built an extensive library of articles, digital magazine archives and educational resources covering nearly every aspect of asphalt production and paving.

That depth of knowledge has always been one of The Asphalt Pro’s greatest strengths. But as the library continued to grow, finding the right information at the right moment became increasingly challenging. Valuable answers often existed within the archive—they just weren’t always easy to locate when a contractor needed them.

“The Asphalt Pro has been committed to bringing the latest innovations to the asphalt industry for the last 20 years,” said Chris Harrison, publisher of The Asphalt Pro. “Investing in The Pro continues that tradition by positioning the magazine as a technology leader with the mission of helping our readers run their businesses better.”

The opportunity, Harrison explained, wasn’t simply to organize information differently, but to make decades of proven industry knowledge immediately accessible. Rather than spending time searching through articles, professionals can ask a question and quickly find answers, best practices, equipment insights and business guidance drawn directly from The Asphalt Pro’s trusted editorial archive.

“The Pro transforms decades of trusted industry knowledge into an instant, interactive resource that will help contractors, business owners and industry professionals get answers faster, discover relevant content and make better decisions,” Harrison said. “It’s a strategic investment in delivering the next generation of industry expertise.”

Try ‘The Pro’ today at ask.theasphaltpro.com or via the widget in the bottom right corner of this page.

How It Works

Using The Pro is designed to be as simple as asking a question.

Users can access the tool through an embedded widget on The Asphalt Pro website or through a dedicated full-screen experience, available both on desktop and mobile devices. From there, they can ask questions in plain language, whether they’re looking for information on a new technology, troubleshooting a plant or paving issue, researching a project or helping train a new employee.

The Pro then provides an answer based exclusively on information from The Asphalt Pro’s published content and includes links to the source material used to generate the response. Users can review the original articles, explore related resources and continue asking follow-up questions to dig deeper into a topic.

“I did some trials against ChatGPT and found [The Pro] to be more accurate, due to the fact that The Asphalt Pro team is more knowledgeable in this field.”— Rod Stephens, President & CEO, All Roads Construction

Early users have already found practical applications for the tool. During testing, paver operator Dusty Bailey (@asphalt_space_ranger) asked The Pro to calculate trucking logistics on a project.

“I asked [The Pro] to calculate how many trucks I would need to put down 1,500 tons of asphalt within 10 hours being 35 minutes away from the plant, and it gave me a full breakdown of the logistics of that,” Bailey said. “That’s a huge time saver.”

Whether users are searching for best practices, learning about emerging technologies or looking for information buried within two decades of archives, The Pro is designed to make finding answers faster and more intuitive.

Built on Trusted Industry Expertise

One of the most important distinctions between The Pro and general-purpose AI tools is the information it relies on to generate answers. Rather than searching the broader internet, The Pro draws exclusively from The Asphalt Pro’s published content, ensuring responses are grounded in information that has been developed, reviewed and shared by industry professionals over the past two decades.

“It’s important to us that we created The Pro to pull exclusively from The Asphalt Pro content because we know we’ve vetted this information over the years,” said Sandy Lender, editor of The Asphalt Pro. “We’ve worked with industry experts to create, fact-check and present the content in the most accurate format possible for the education of an industry.”

The distinction is especially important in a technical industry where decisions are often based on specialized knowledge, established best practices and real-world experience. By limiting responses to The Asphalt Pro’s vetted content, The Pro is designed to provide users with answers that are both relevant and traceable to original source material.

“Our audience already trusts what they find in our pages and on our site; now they can apply that trust to what our chatbot is providing to them,” Lender said.

That approach resonated with early users who compared The Pro’s responses with those generated by other AI platforms.

“I did some trials against ChatGPT and found [The Pro] to be more accurate, due to the fact that The Asphalt Pro team is more knowledgeable in this field,” said Rod Stephens, president and CEO of All Roads Construction. “ChatGPT just cross-references the internet, and with some inaccurate information out there, its results are not as reliable.”

Industry consultant, technologist and Pavewise CEO Bryce Wuori reached a similar conclusion after testing the tool with a series of challenging questions.

“Overall, I put a series of difficult questions through [The Pro] and was pleasantly surprised with its accuracy and references,” Wuori said. “I even tried to stump it a bit and get biased answers, and it passed.”

For asphalt professionals making decisions in the field, the trust and transparency behind The Pro may be just as valuable as the speed of the answer.

8 Ways to Put ‘The Pro’ to Work

Sharing Knowledge Across Generations

While The Pro can help experienced professionals find information more quickly, it may have an even greater impact on those who are newer to the industry.

Whether someone is learning the basics of asphalt production, stepping into a new role on a paving crew or trying to understand a technical concept for the first time, access to reliable information can help shorten the learning curve while building confidence.

“I see The Pro helping all levels of the asphalt industry,” Lender said. “From filling in training gaps to helping an operator get best practices sorted out to reminding techs about lab procedures, this is a niche tool that gathers multiple decades of industry experts’ knowledge from The Asphalt Pro data and hands specific answers to the new guy; or to the veteran worker who wants to double-check a technique.”

Lender believes one of the industry’s greatest opportunities is making technical knowledge easier to access and share.

“Since I began covering the asphalt industry, I’ve noticed that some veteran operators tend to gatekeep knowledge, and some company owners tend to gatekeep information,” Lender said. “By providing a chatbot like The Pro where decades of knowledge can be called on to answer specific questions for the user, The Asphalt Pro has made it possible for everyone to learn and use technical, how-to information more easily.”

That idea resonated with Bailey, who sees The Pro as a way to help newer workers gain access to knowledge that might otherwise take years to acquire.

“It’s nice because I see a lot of older generations gatekeeping knowledge and tricks of the trade out of fear of being replaced, so I see younger people struggle to get established in this industry,” Bailey said. “But [The Pro] gives people of all ages access to knowledge and shatters the barriers that prevent them from being successful.”

By putting decades of best practices, technical guidance and industry experience within reach of anyone willing to ask a question, The Pro has the potential to make learning easier for both the next generation of asphalt professionals and the people helping train them.

The Bigger Opportunity

For Wuori, one of the most compelling aspects of The Pro is its ability to make The Asphalt Pro’s vast library of knowledge easier to access and apply.

“Having access to fast and reliable paving knowledge through the AI chatbot is transformative when seeking insights on best practices or relevant information through The Asphalt Pro’s vast resources,” Wuori said. “Combining this wealth of shared experience, articles, knowledge and resources into a chatbot is revolutionary for those looking to enhance their daily paving practices or expand their expertise.”

By bringing together decades of trusted industry expertise in a single conversational tool, The Pro creates new opportunities for asphalt professionals to learn, solve problems and build on the collective knowledge that continues to drive the industry forward.