READY MIX SUPPLIER PRICING STRATEGY: POUR DAY ECONOMICS
A pour is a live event. Trucks are sequenced against a set clock, the whole crew plus finishers stand ready, and any slip cascades: waiting trucks bill standby, cold joints threaten the spec, and weekend pours add $50 to $300 per load in delivery premiums. One badly sequenced pour day can erase the line item's margin.
This page covers one problem. The full picture for this trade, including the other places margin leaks, is on the concrete operating system page.
WHERE THE MONEY GOES.
Covered in full in the quick answer above. The sourced numbers and what controls it are below.
THE COST, SOURCED.
Saturday and holiday deliveries add $50 to $300 per load; ready-mix runs roughly $125 to $195 per cubic yard delivered; plant-to-plant pricing spreads $20 to $40 per yard within the same market. (2026 ready-mix cost guides, logged below)
THE NUMBER TO MEASURE IT AGAINST.
Concrete contractors run about % net profit at $1M to $5M, rising to roughly 9% at $5M to $10M. The CFOS target at $1M to $5M is10%, set at 10 percent before taxes or 3.5 points better than your trade's average at your revenue, whichever is higher. A problem like this one lives in the distance between those two figures rather than in a loss on any single job.
Gross margin over the same bands runs % to 22%, against a CFOS target of 10%.
THE SYSTEM THAT FIXES THIS.
Cost codes built against the estimate, so a job can be read while it runs.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
