How to price concrete jobs from the yards, the forms and the pour-day crew

Concrete customers shop by the square foot, and plenty of contractors price that way too: one number per foot for a broom finish, a bigger one for stamped, a call to the plant for the yard price. That shortcut hides what really decides whether a pour makes money: the slab's thickness, how much old concrete comes out and how heavy it is, how many people you need when the truck arrives, how many separate trips the job takes, and what the weather does to all of it. This guide builds a concrete price from the takeoff up, for driveways, patios, walks, steps and decorative flatwork. Pour-day pricing only works once you know what a crew hour costs you, and how to price service jobs walks through that number.

What units drive a concrete price?

Square feet is the customer's unit. It is a weak cost unit on its own, because two slabs with the same area can need very different amounts of concrete, labor and hauling. Break every job into the units your costs actually follow:

• Cubic yards of concrete. Area times thickness, converted to yards, plus an overage for uneven subgrade and spillage. A thickened apron or a turned-down edge adds yards that a per-foot price never sees.
• Linear feet of forms. Perimeter drives forming time and form material. A curved walk or a patio with many corners takes far longer to form than a rectangle of the same area.
• Area and thickness of tear-out. Old concrete is heavy. Its thickness, and any steel in it, set your breaking time, your loading time and the number of loads to the recycling yard.
• Base stone. Depth of compacted stone under the new slab, plus extra excavation where the old base was soft or missing.
• Reinforcement. Sheets of mesh, or linear feet of rebar on a grid, with chairs to hold it at the right height in the slab.
• Linear feet of saw-cut joints. Count them from your joint layout. Cutting often needs its own trip, because the window to saw opens after the finishers have gone home.
• Finish upgrades by area. Stamping, integral or broadcast color, exposed aggregate and sealer each add labor, material and risk, and each deserves its own line.
• Items by count. Steps by riser, landings, drains, sleeves under a walk for future wiring, and approaches that tie into a city sidewalk.

Give the customer a total, and show a per-foot figure if they ask. Build it from these units underneath, so you can explain every dollar of the difference between your bid and the cheapest one they got.

How do you turn a takeoff into crew hours?

Concrete labor runs in phases, and each phase has its own crew size and speed. Estimate them one at a time:

1. Tear-out and haul. Breaking, loading and hauling. Speed depends on thickness, steel, machine access and the distance to the dump trailer.
2. Excavation, grading and base. Cutting to grade, bringing in stone, compacting in lifts and checking slope for drainage.
3. Forming and reinforcement. Setting forms to string line, staking, placing mesh or bar on chairs, and installing isolation material where the new slab meets the house, the garage floor or the walk.
4. Pour, finish and cure. Placing, screeding, floating, edging, tooling joints, finishing and applying cure.
5. Saw cutting, stripping and cleanup. Cutting joints, pulling forms, backfilling the edges and cleaning the street.

Pour day behaves differently from the rest. Its crew size is set by how much concrete arrives, how fast it sets and how far it travels from the chute, not by the slab area. A small patio still needs enough hands to place and finish before the concrete gets ahead of them. That makes pour-day labor partly fixed, and it is a big reason small pours cost more per foot.

Joint sawing has a timing window. The NRMCA's sheet on joints in slabs on grade says conventional saw-cut joints should be run within 4 to 12 hours after the concrete has been finished. If the joint edges ravel under the blade, the sheet says sawing must wait; wait too long, though, and sawing gets difficult and uncontrolled cracking may occur. In practice someone stays late or comes back early the next morning. Either way it is paid time and often a separate drive, so it goes in the estimate.

Estimate each phase from your own production logs. After every job, write down crew size and hours by phase, plus the yards poured, the feet of form set and the conditions that day. A season of those notes tells you more about your crew's speed than any rule of thumb from someone else's market.

Weather, safety and site rules that change the number

Cold weather. The NRMCA's cold weather concreting sheet sets the bar at a compressive strength of 500 psi, which it puts at about two days after placement; until a new slab gets there, it needs protection from freezing. The sheet names insulated blankets and tarps as common measures, with enclosures for harsher conditions, and it warns that accelerating admixtures do not prevent concrete from freezing. So an accelerated mix from the plant is an added line, never a replacement for the blankets. Count blankets you buy and store, a trip to cover the slab and a trip to uncover it. Late-season pours should carry all of those lines.

Hot weather. The NRMCA's hot weather sheet says concrete sets faster at higher temperatures, calls for enough people to place, finish and cure, and advises avoiding the hottest part of the day. On a hot day the same slab may need an extra finisher and a dawn start. Price summer pours with the crew a summer pour really takes.

Rain days. A cancelled pour still costs you: the crew may be paid, the forms are set, and the next job slides. Rather than adding a weather fee to each quote, count the days you expect to lose when you figure billable hours for the year. Fewer billable hours spread the same overhead thinner, and the hourly rate calculator shows how much that raises your floor.

Silica dust. Sawing joints, cutting out old slabs and grinding all put respirable crystalline silica in the air. Table 1 of OSHA's construction silica rule, 29 CFR 1926.1153, assigns control methods task by task; for walk-behind and handheld saws, that means a saw with an integrated water system feeding the blade continuously, and for jackhammers and handheld chipping tools used in tear-out, a continuous stream or spray of water at the point of impact. Employers also need a written exposure control plan and a competent person who inspects the work. Water-fed saws, water on site and slurry cleanup are part of what every cut costs.

Utility locates. The 811 Before You Dig program asks anyone digging to contact 811 a few business days ahead and to wait until every utility has responded and marked its lines. The service is free, but the wait shapes your schedule, and hand digging around marks near the house is slow work. Record the locate ticket on the job.

This is general information, not legal advice. Permit, right-of-way and safety rules differ from one state and town to the next; confirm the ones that apply where you pour.

Worked example: replacing a driveway

The numbers below are all hypothetical. The dimensions, crew hours, wage, overhead, supplier prices and margin exist only to demonstrate the math; do not read any of them as a market price or a benchmark. Replace each one with your own takeoff, logs and supplier quotes. The math follows the same formula as our job price calculator: hours times labor cost, plus materials, plus hours times overhead, divided by one minus the margin.

Read the table from the bottom up. The per-foot figure is the last line, a result of everything above it. Had you started from a per-foot number borrowed from a competitor, you would have no way of knowing whether it covered this crew, this tear-out and this disposal bill. Now change one input. Make the old slab thicker, and tear-out hours and disposal both climb. Add a hot-weather finisher, and pour-day hours climb. Every change moves the price for a reason you can explain to the customer.

Materials: margin, markup and the ready-mix ticket

Concrete is the biggest material line and the easiest to get wrong. Order from the measured volume plus overage, never from area alone. Running short mid-pour is worse than paying for a little extra, because a second truck means waiting, a cold joint, or both.

Ask your ready-mix plant for its full price sheet, not only the price per yard. Find out whether it charges for small loads, for time a truck waits on site beyond what is included, for admixtures such as accelerators, retarders and fibers, and for cancellations. Any of those can turn a profitable small pour into a loss, so the ones that apply go on the estimate as their own lines. If the truck cannot reach the forms, price a pump or a power buggy and the people to run it.

Then apply profit the same way to every line. The job price calculator divides total cost, materials included, by one minus your margin. If you prefer a markup on materials, remember that a markup on cost works out to a smaller percentage once you measure it against the selling price. Pick one method, print it on your price sheet, and stop switching from job to job.

Sell reinforcement honestly. The NRMCA's sheet on cracking concrete surfaces says wire mesh and reinforcement cannot prevent cracking, though properly placed reinforcement can reduce crack width. Price rebar or mesh as its own line, explain what it does, and never present it as a crack-proof upgrade.

Decorative work has its own cost profile: stamp mats and release, color, extra finishers on pour day, a return visit to wash and seal, and a higher chance of a redo. Price stamped and colored work from its own production logs, never as a flat add-on to a broom finish.

Minimums, mobilization and route density

A concrete job is a string of visits. A replacement might involve an estimate visit, a tear-out day, a forming day, pour day, a return to saw joints, and a trip to strip forms and backfill. Each visit means loading the trailer, driving, setting up and cleaning up. Count mobilizations as their own line, or fold them into the hours by phase, but do not let them disappear.

Your minimum charge should cover at least one full mobilization of the pour-day crew, any small-load charges from the plant, and your margin. A landing pad or a short walk repair will hit that minimum, and that is the point of having one. Offer to combine small items (a pad for the trash cans, a walk extension, a step repair) into one pour so the customer gets more for the trip.

Route density works differently here than in mowing or cleaning, but it still pays. Houses on the same street were often built together, with slabs of the same age, and a ready-mix truck on the block gets neighbors talking about their own driveways. Two pours on one street can share a mobilization, a dump run and sometimes a pour day. Price the second job at your floor with the shared costs removed, and the neighbor gets a fair price without any cut to your margin. Distance from the plant matters too: the NRMCA's hot weather sheet notes that extended-set admixtures may be used for long hauls, which is another line on the ticket.

Should you quote concrete from photos?

Use photos and satellite measurements for a preliminary range, and to decide whether the job is worth a visit. Ask for a wide shot of the whole area, a close-up of the slab edge where its thickness shows, the path a truck would take, and any spot that holds water after rain. That screens out projects that don't fit your crew before you burn an evening driving to them.

Set the final price on site. The things that move a concrete number are hard to see in a picture: grade and drainage, soft soil, tree roots, how close the truck can get, whether the old slab has steel in it, where the downspouts discharge, and what the new slab has to meet at the garage, the walk and the street. Bring a level, a tape and a probe, and photograph what you find for the job record.

Some conditions only show up after tear-out. Write unit prices into the contract for them, such as extra excavation and base per cubic yard where the subgrade is soft, so the customer approves the rate before anyone finds the problem. The roofing pricing guide uses the same approach for rotten decking.

Recurring work in a one-time trade

Most concrete work is one-time, so every finished slab is a lead for future work if you keep the records. Sealing, joint sealing and crack repair are natural follow-up services; offer them on a schedule that fits your climate and the sealer manufacturer's directions. Commercial sites need trip hazards ground down and sections of walk and curb replaced as routine upkeep.

Price recurring work from logged time like everything else. A resealing visit is mostly cleaning, setup and drying, so the fixed share is large and your minimum applies. Sell sealing with the original job as a scheduled follow-up, and the second visit is booked before you leave. Property managers with several sites often prefer a yearly agreement with set unit prices for each type of repair. Price those units from your logs, and see the recurring service billing guide for how to invoice them.

Warranty and callbacks

Concrete cracks, and the industry says so plainly. The NRMCA's cracking sheet states that completely crack-free concrete is not possible, and that most random cracks appearing at an early age, although unsightly, rarely affect structural integrity or service life, with two named exceptions: freeze-thaw D-cracks and cracking from alkali-aggregate reaction. Its joints sheet describes joints as pre-planned cracks: they exist to decide where cracking happens.

That is why your warranty needs plain words. Say what you will come back for (for example, settlement traced to your base work, or a finish that fails) and what you will not (hairline cracks between joints, damage from heavy equipment the slab was not built for). Have a lawyer read the final wording. Put curing and care instructions on the invoice, since a customer who knows when to drive on the slab and how joints work calls less.

Then track every callback: hours, materials and trips. Divide the year's total by the slabs you poured and carry that as a reserve on each job, as the worked example does. If most callbacks trace to one cause, such as a crew skipping compaction or sawing late, fix the cause before you raise the reserve.

Concrete pricing mistakes that cost the most

• A per-foot price with no takeoff. Thickness, tear-out and forming move cost in ways a per-foot number can't see.
• Ignoring tear-out weight. A thick or reinforced old slab means more breaking hours and more loads.
• Staffing pour day like a forming day. Pour-day crew size follows the volume and the weather.
• Forgetting return trips. Joint sawing, blanket removal and form stripping are separate visits.
• Leaving plant charges off the quote. Small loads, truck waiting time, admixtures and pumps belong on the estimate.
• No unit prices for hidden conditions. Soft subgrade found after tear-out becomes an argument instead of a line item.
• Rain days missing from overhead. If your billable hours assume you pour every working day, every price is short.
• Never comparing quoted hours with actual hours. Check them on every job and update your phase rates.

For how homeowners find and choose a flatwork contractor, see our concrete industry page, and if you are still setting up, read the guide to starting a concrete business. This method works over time only if the takeoff, phase hours, plant tickets and callbacks live on one job record. A custom CRM can be built to hold all four together; we built the first one for our own companies. Open bids are worth chasing as well; a homeowner who isn't ready this fall may be ready in spring, and our quote follow-up guide covers how to stay in touch.

Frequently asked questions