Most concrete suppliers will not tell you what a small load costs until you are on the phone with a salesperson. That is frustrating when you are trying to budget a patio, a footing or a trench repair. So here are the actual numbers.

Everything below comes straight off our pricing page. Prices move with material costs, so call to confirm before you write a check, but this is the structure and these are the figures as of today.

What you are actually paying for

A small concrete delivery has three parts, and understanding them is most of the battle.

The concrete itself, priced by the cubic yard and by strength:

Mix	Price per cubic yard
3,000 PSI	$195
4,000 PSI	$215
5,000 PSI	$225
GDOT DOT-A	$225

A short load fee of $200 on orders under 6 cubic yards. Every supplier in the business charges something like this, and we will come back to why in a minute.

A fuel and environmental charge of $75 per delivery.

Then there are add-ons only if you need them: fiber reinforcement at $7, a line pump at $25 per cubic yard, retarder at $4.50 per percent, and accelerator at $10 per percent for a 1% dose or $20 for 2%. Yardage is sold in half yard increments, and anything we batch on site after the original order carries a 10% surcharge on those extra yards.

Three real examples

A 3 yard patio slab, 3,000 PSI.
Concrete: 3 x $195 = $585
Short load fee: $200
Fuel and environmental: $75
Total: $860, which works out to about $287 per yard delivered.

A 4 yard driveway section, 4,000 PSI.
Concrete: 4 x $215 = $860
Short load fee: $200
Fuel and environmental: $75
Total: $1,135, about $284 per yard.

A 1 yard footing or set of post holes, 3,000 PSI.
Concrete: $195
Short load fee: $200
Fuel and environmental: $75
Total: $470.

That last one shows the thing nobody explains. On a 1 yard order, the concrete is less than half the bill. The fees are not a penalty, they are the cost of sending a truck, a driver and a plant’s worth of material to your address, and those costs are nearly the same whether you order 1 yard or 5.

A 4.5 yard pad in Austell, 3,000 PSI. This is the job in the photo above.
Concrete: 4.5 x $195 = $877.50
Short load fee: $200
Fuel and environmental: $75
Total: $1,152.50, about $256 per yard.

When a truck beats bags

If you are under about 2 yards, bagged concrete from a big box store may still be cheaper on materials alone. What it is not cheaper on is your weekend, a rented mixer, inconsistent batches and a cold joint down the middle of your slab because you could not keep up. Somewhere between 2 and 3 yards, a truck stops being a luxury.

Why ours is different on small jobs

We run volumetric mixers. The truck carries sand, stone, cement and water in separate compartments and mixes your concrete on site, by the yard, as it comes out. We are not opening a batch plant and sending out a drum truck, which is why we can price a 2 yard pour at all and why we can take odd hours work that other suppliers decline. There is more on that in our piece on why plants turn down small loads and in our write up on after hours road and utility pours.

It also means you are not racing a clock. Concrete mixed at a plant starts curing the moment water hits cement, and the industry works to roughly a 90 minute window from batching to placement. Ours is mixed at your site, so the only clock that matters is the one you are working to.

What to have ready when you call

• The address and whether a truck can get within reach of the pour
• Your yardage, or your dimensions so we can work it out
• The strength you need, or what the job is so we can recommend one
• Whether a GDOT DOT-A mix is specified
• Your date and time window, including nights and weekends

Not sure on yardage? Use our concrete calculator, or just give us the measurements and we will do the math with you.

Call or text us at (470) 880-8544, or send us a message and we will come back with a number for your job.