Lazaro Paving Corporation

Lazaro Paving has been laying driveways out of Shirley since Bernard J. Lazaro started it in 1963 — the company's own telling, now a third-generation family business — and the jobs customers describe are the long, unglamorous kind: a 350-foot driveway, a shared drive for three houses, a town street. Posts on the Fitchburg subreddit name Lazaro Paving on street jobs there, including milling Electric Ave in April 2025 and full-depth reclamation of Arn-How Farm Road in July 2026. Several reviewers single out the front end. A July 2025 homeowner had two estimates only $400 apart and went with Lazaro for the detail of the proposal, then described the job in two stages: the old asphalt off and the surface prepared, then the paving. People get named here — Peter the estimator in an August 2025 review, Kyle the paving supervisor who came out for the quote in one from May 2025. A September 2021 customer had a gravel driveway that pooled water at the smallest rain; Lazaro paved it and added a drain, and the reviewer wrote that there had been no water issues at all, even through multiple tropical storms. It gets harder after the crew leaves. A July 2026 reviewer with a 300-foot driveway and two parking areas said the asphalt has been cracking since it went in ten years ago, and that after several calls the company came to look and told them these things happen to asphalt. Two one-star reviews from September 2025 are blunter: won't fix issues, won't return calls. In a 2022 two-star review, a customer said they flagged areas of concern days after the job and were told a crew would come back in early spring with an infrared heater, and that they would be put on the list. A separate complaint comes from people who live near the work. Six of the one-star reviews were written by people who never hired the company: a Reading resident in May 2025 whose street became a staging area and whose walkway had heavy machinery parked on it, two neighbors of a 2023 job — one blocked out of their own driveway, one who lost an hour of street access and had to cancel an electrician — and drivers who passed a crew in Clinton in 2023 and on Route 3 in 2021. Its BBB page is an A+, accredited since 1998, and lists licence HE-131684 from the Massachusetts Department of Public Safety and Inspections. A sound call for a big residential job — a long drive, a shared drive, anything where grading and drainage matter as much as the top coat. Before signing, get the callback terms in writing: who comes back for cracking or settling, how fast, and what the company counts as a defect. If your neighbors are close, ask where the trucks and machines will sit on the day.