Ready-Mix Concrete Delivery

What you are actually ordering

NRMCA publishes a short guide to ordering ready-mixed concrete, and it lists what the purchaser is responsible for specifying. This is worth knowing because if you do not specify, somebody else decides for you.

• Strength. "Specified strength of 3,500 to 5,000 psi is typical for most concrete applications." For exterior slabs facing freezing and de-icing salts, NRMCA's separate guidance is 4,000 psi with 6 percent total air. See concrete psi for which number your job needs.
• Air content. Specify it, or at least tell the plant what exposure the concrete faces. In freeze-thaw country this matters more than strength.
• Slump. "For most applications slump required is 3 to 5 inches." Asking for wetter concrete than that on site is how you end up with a weaker slab.
• Aggregate size. The nominal maximum size should be smaller than the narrowest dimension the concrete has to flow through, which matters for footings, walls and anything congested with rebar.
• Quantity. Order "4 percent to 10 percent more than an estimate calculated from the plan dimensions."
• The logistics. Tell the producer the street address, the location and nature of the placement, how fast you can take it based on your placing method, and when you want it.

One detail from that guide worth remembering if a dispute ever arises: the producer is responsible for the specified slump "for a period of 30 minutes after the requested time or the time the truck arrives at the site, whichever is later." After that, the clock is on you.

What delivery costs

The concrete itself runs roughly $119 to $195 a cubic yard depending on where you are, and the ready-mix industry's own benchmarking survey puts the average selling price at $160. Our concrete price per yard guide breaks that down and explains why the published figures disagree by nearly 40 percent. Delivery sits on top of it.

Suppliers price delivery by zone, not by the mile. The clearest published example charges $120 to $350 per load depending on which service area you are in. Consumer cost sites quote $55 to $65 per load for a full truck, which is closer to a plant that includes delivery in a nearby radius. One site states its per-yard price includes delivery up to 20 miles.

Ignore any per-mile figure you see. The published numbers run from 50 cents to $9.50 a mile, with one site contradicting itself by roughly a factor of ten between two of its own pages. No supplier we found publishes a per-mile rate at all, which is probably why the estimates are so unstable. Ask your plant which zone you are in.

The full fee schedule

Two observations about that table. First, the well-evidenced charges are the waiting time ones, because two suppliers and one cost site independently agree the allowance is 5 to 7 minutes per cubic yard and the rate afterwards works out at $2 to $5 a minute. On a 10-yard load you get about an hour. If you are placing by wheelbarrow, that hour is the constraint that decides whether you need two smaller loads instead of one big one.

Second, the environmental fee is the one where the supplier number is worse than the estimate. The one plant publishing it charges $55 a trip, nearly double the $10 to $30 the consumer sites suggest. Saturday, fuel and washout charges are confirmed to exist by suppliers who decline to publish an amount, so treat the aggregator figures there as indicative.

Minimum loads and short-load fees

A standard truck is usually described as holding 10 cubic yards, and "the minimum" is generally framed as a full truck, with a penalty below it. The reality is looser than that.

NRMCA's survey of its own members reports an average load size of 8.5 cubic yards per delivery, and dividing the industry's 400 million yards by 50 million round trips gives about 8 yards a load. So the average real delivery is not a full truck. Some suppliers have no minimum at all: one volumetric operator states plainly "there is no minimum order," while a cost site suggests plants willing to do small loads generally want at least 3 yards.

The structure of the short-load fee matters more than its size. Cost sites present it as $40 to $60 per yard under the minimum, which on a 2-yard order sounds ruinous. Three separate figures also get run together here, the minimum quantity, the short-load threshold and the truck capacity, and we pull them apart in the truck minimum is three different numbers. The suppliers who actually publish a policy charge a flat fee instead: $100 or the value of the shortfall, whichever is less, in one case, and $50 to $150 on orders of 1 to 5 yards in another. A flat fee is far kinder to a small pour, and it is the more common structure. Ask how yours is calculated before you assume a 2-yard patio is uneconomic.

For the reasons a truck rarely runs at its rated capacity, and how many trucks your job needs, see how many yards are in a truck of concrete.

Mini mix and volumetric trucks

If your pour is small, there are two alternatives to paying a short-load penalty on a full-size truck.

Mini mix trucks are smaller drum mixers, built in 3, 4, 5 and 6 yard sizes, and cost sites describe them as carrying 1 to 5 yards. They fit where a full truck cannot and they exist precisely for small residential work. No mini mix supplier we found publishes a per-yard price, so the premium is whatever their short-load policy says it is.

Volumetric trucks carry the cement, aggregate and water separately and batch on site under computer control. The main US manufacturer's mid-range model produces up to 60 cubic yards an hour and carries 8 to 10 yards of materials per load, so the capacity is comparable to a drum mixer. The advantages are different: mixing starts when the truck arrives, so the discharge clock is not a factor, and you pay only for what you actually discharge, which is why a volumetric operator can offer no minimum order. Cost sites put mix-on-site delivery at $20 to $25 a cubic yard on top of materials, or $500 to $800 a day to rent the truck, though those figures are aggregator-derived rather than published by any operator.

For pours small enough that either sounds like overkill, compare against bags: it takes 45 bags of 80 lb mix to make a cubic yard, and the concrete cost calculator will price bags against delivery for your volume. Our bags per yard guide has the counts.

The discharge clock, and the 90-minute myth

You will read everywhere that ASTM requires concrete to be discharged within 90 minutes of mixing. That has not been true since 2021.

The standard did impose a 1.5 hour limit from the start of mixing to the completion of discharge, and had done since the 1930s. The current version removed the default: the purchaser now states the time limit, and if the purchaser does not state one, the manufacturer establishes and communicates it. Either way it appears on the delivery ticket.

What happens in practice is that specifiers still impose the old limits. A current state agency specification, effective October 2025, requires that "discharge/placement of the concrete shall be completed within 1 1/2 hours after the introduction of the mixing water," with a maximum of 300 drum revolutions of which no more than 100 may be mixing revolutions, the concrete temperature kept under 90 degrees, and an absolute cutoff at 120 minutes with documentation at 90, 110 and 120 minutes.

So the practical guidance is unchanged even though the standard moved: plan to have the load placed within about 90 minutes of batching, read your delivery ticket for the limit that applies to your load, and do not let anyone add water after discharge begins. On site, your own allowance is the 5 to 7 minutes per yard covered above, which is a separate clock.

Can the truck reach your pour?

This is the question that catches homeowners out, because the answer decides whether you are paying for a pump.

On size, work from the legal envelope rather than from any single model. Federal rules cap commercial vehicle width at 102 inches, which is 8 feet 6 inches, and there is no federal height limit, with state limits generally running from 13 feet 6 inches to 14 feet. So assume a mixer needs roughly 8 and a half feet of width and 14 feet of overhead clearance, and remember that the drum is wider than the cab. Measure the narrowest point of the approach, look up at the branches and wires, and confirm with your supplier.

On reach, the chute is the limit. Chute sections are 4 feet each, which is confirmed by mixer manufacturers' own equipment lists, and a standard rear-discharge truck carries three of them. That gives a practical reach of around 18 feet from the back of the truck with everything straight. Swing the chute to one side and the reach drops to roughly 12 feet. Pouring down into a basement costs about a third of it. A custom 16 foot extension can take total reach to about 34 feet. Those reach figures come from a contractor source rather than a manufacturer, so treat them as practical guidance.

If the truck cannot reach, you pump. A pumping contractor publishes line pumps at $150 to $250 an hour and boom pumps at $200 to $300 an hour or more, with most companies setting a minimum covering the first 2 to 4 hours. Cost sites broadly agree: line pumps from $150, boom pumps from $200, with minimum charges of $400 to $600 for a line pump and $800 to $1,000 for a boom. Worth knowing that the operator we cite says day rates are not standard in the pumping industry and that most companies, including theirs, bill hourly.

The cheap alternative is wheelbarrows, and the thing to remember there is the waiting-time clock. A 10-yard load gives you about an hour before standby charges start, and you will not move 10 yards by barrow in an hour.

Washout and cleanup, and whose job it is

Concrete washout water is not ordinary runoff. The EPA puts its pH at close to 12, noting for comparison that liquid drain cleaner is 13.5, against a safe range for freshwater aquatic life of 6.5 to 9. It is caustic, and where it goes is a regulated matter.

EPA guidance is that washout facilities should not be placed within 50 feet of storm drains, open ditches or water bodies, should be inspected daily and after heavy rain, and should be pumped out or allowed to evaporate once they reach 75 percent of capacity.

On responsibility, the EPA is clear that the duty sits with the site rather than the driver: the site should make drivers aware of where the washout facility is, and "concrete washout requirements should be included in contracts with concrete delivery companies." In plain terms, on a residential job that means you decide where the chute gets rinsed, and it should not be the storm drain at the end of your drive or a corner of the lawn near it. Agree it with the driver before the pour starts, and expect some suppliers to bill a washout or environmental fee for handling it themselves.

What to have ready before the truck arrives

1. The volume, calculated and confirmed, with 4 to 10 percent added. Use the yardage calculator or, for a slab, the slab calculator.
2. The mix specified: strength, air content, slump and aggregate size, given to the plant when you book rather than argued about on arrival.
3. Forms set, braced and checked for level and slope, and reinforcement chaired up off the ground so it stays in the upper third of the slab.
4. The base prepared and compacted, and dampened rather than bone dry, so it does not wick water out of the mix.
5. Access confirmed: width, overhead clearance, and how far the chute has to reach. Arrange a pump in advance if it will not make it.
6. Enough people. The waiting allowance is 5 to 7 minutes a yard. Placing and finishing is a crew job, and the concrete does not wait.
7. A washout spot agreed, well away from drains and water.
8. Tools ready: screed, bull float, edger, groover, and something to cover the slab for curing. Read how to pour a concrete slab and concrete cure time before the day, not during it.