Gravel to asphalt, long rural drives, repairs and sealcoating across Johnston County: Clayton, Smithfield, Selma, Benson, Four Oaks, Archer Lodge, Kenly, Pine Level, Princeton, Micro and Wilson's Mills. Johnston is where the Triangle turns into farm country, and its driveways are longer, more often gravel, and sitting on different ground from Raleigh's. Here is what we have confirmed.
Smithfield, by the county's own history, was Johnston's first town and its second county seat. The county lists eleven incorporated towns: Archer Lodge, Benson, Clayton, Four Oaks, Kenly, Micro, Pine Level, Princeton, Selma, Smithfield and Wilson's Mills. Census counts went from 168,878 in 2010 to 215,999 in 2020, growth of more than a quarter in ten years.
Outside the towns, much of the county is still fields, woods and homes set well back from the road. That is gravel drive territory, and a lot of the asphalt work here is turning a few hundred feet of washed out stone into a drive that stays put.
Johnston lies largely in the Coastal Plain, according to the State Library's NCpedia, with the older county soil surveys describing sandy soils across much of it. Sandier ground drains faster than the clay a few miles west, which helps a base stay firm. It also washes and shifts more easily, so the edges of a drive and the shoulders beside it need attention, and a culvert at the ditch has to be sized and set properly or the first heavy storm undercuts the end of the drive.
The Neuse River runs through the county past Smithfield, and low ground near it and its creeks stays wet longer. A drive crossing a low spot gets its drainage worked out before it gets asphalt.
North Carolina counties do not maintain roads, so outside the towns the public roads in Johnston are NCDOT's. For a single home, NCDOT's driveway access policy says a permit is normally not required, though it encourages owners to contact the District Engineer to sort out safety and the driveway pipe. That pipe matters here: plenty of rural Johnston drives cross a roadside ditch, and an old crushed pipe is a reason to fix the crossing before paving over it.
For Selma, Benson, Four Oaks and the smaller towns we could not confirm current rules from their own pages, so the town is asked before any apron work. Sealing a drive in place is not what these rules are aimed at; replacement and new connections are.
A long rural drive is a different job from a suburban one. The existing stone usually becomes the base once it is regraded, topped up and compacted. The crown and the side ditches decide whether storm water runs off or along the drive. Trucks need somewhere to turn. And there is a real choice about scope: pave the whole length, or the stretch from the house to the first bend and leave the rest as stone for now. Each is priced separately so the choice is yours.
Farm use adds its own wear. If tractors, grain trucks or a horse trailer will use the drive, say so, because it changes the thickness the drive needs.
Two big road projects run through Johnston. The former US 70 Clayton Bypass now carries I-42 for ten miles between I-40 and the US 70 Business interchange, and NCDOT is widening I-95 to eight lanes through the county, with completion projected for 2028. New roads bring new subdivisions, new commercial lots and new driveways onto old roads, which is much of why Clayton and the western edge of the county keep changing.
The service area is about thirty miles around Raleigh. Clayton, Archer Lodge and Smithfield sit inside it. Benson, Four Oaks and Kenly are at or past the edge, so jobs there are taken when the size of the job makes the trip sensible, and you will be told honestly either way rather than quoted a number padded for the drive.
Sealing is one price per square foot covering crack filling, small patches and lot restriping. Paving is priced per job after a look. The work is done by local independent contractors. See gravel to asphalt paving and the North Carolina season.
