CONCRETE PUMPING · CONCRETE AND MASONRY · FIXED BY STEP 01

Grout, Diesel, and Payroll Go Out Before the Invoice

You mix grout and throw it away before you pump one yard you can bill for, and the busiest month is the thinnest month in the bank.

WHY IT IS A CONCRETE PUMPING PROBLEM

A trade that installs material bills the material it bought. You buy grout to throw it on the ground. Diesel goes in the tank to reach four addresses, and a bag of washout leaves someone else's site clean, but none of that carries a billable line big enough to cover it. The more pours you book, the more of it you fund, so a strong month pulls cash out before the first check on those pours comes in.

WHAT IT COSTS

The size of it

Peak season becomes the cash-poorest season, because every added pour funds its own prime, fuel, and payroll weeks before the check on it clears.

OVERHEAD AT $1M–$5M

16%

CFOS target 15% for concrete pumping.

GROSS MARGIN AT $1M–$5M

23%

CFOS target 25% for concrete pumping.

NET PROFIT AT $1M–$5M

CFOS target 10% for concrete pumping.

Every pour gets bought before it can be invoiced. Priming slurry is mixed and discarded at the start of every job against a primer line of $25 to $75, washout consumables run about $195 a bag, and when the site has no washout area you either eat the disposal or fight the customer for the $250 to $350 penalty. Add a full tank of diesel per truck-day, the hose and pipeline inventory riding on the truck, and weekly wages against a fully worked operator cost near $83K a year, and you fund all of it 45 to 75 days ahead of collection. The fuel surcharge of 7 to 12 percent gets applied to invoice value and not to the diesel you burned, so a standby-heavy day recovers almost none of it.

WHAT TO DO

Three moves, in order

STEP 01

Put prime, washout, fuel, and operator hours on the job cost record for every pour, so a pour with almost no billable yardage still carries what it consumed.

STEP 02

Reprice the primer and washout lines against what a bag and a load of grout cost you this month, and quote washout disposal separately when the site has no pit.

STEP 03

Build a thirteen week cash forecast loaded by pour week, not by revenue month, and check it the Friday before your two heaviest pour weeks of the year.

THE FIX

Step 01: Job cost structure

Seven cost categories and three levels of granularity, built so the estimate and the ledger use the same words.

CFOS-01 · CHAPTER 1

Job cost codes that match how you bid the work

What this step changes, what it depends on, and how to tell it's installed.

BENCHMARKS

Concrete pumping by revenue band

Every one of the 7 bands carries the CFOS target beside the published figure.

ACROSS EVERY TRADE

Cost codes the field ignores

You have 200 cost codes. The crews use four of them, and one is called Miscellaneous.

SAME TRADE

What else costs concrete pumping contractors money

CONCRETE PUMPING · CFOS-02

You Bill Hours. The Steel Wears by the Yard.

Two four-hour pours bill the same, and one of them wore out a whole pipeline. The invoice meters time; the machine meters yardage.

CONCRETE PUMPING · CFOS-02

A Back-Ordered Boom Part Parks Your Whole Revenue Unit

That truck is the whole shop. It sits three weeks waiting on a part, and the equipment note keeps clearing the whole time.

CONCRETE PUMPING · CFOS-05

Six Hours of Pumping, Eighteen Months of Retainage

You were on that job for six hours in March. Someone is still holding retainage on it two years later.

CONCRETE PUMPING · CFOS-04

The Cheapest Hour of the Day Is the One You Can't Skip

Half the day is windshield time at drive rate, and your operator is into overtime by ten in the morning on job two.

CONCRETE PUMPING · CFOS-06

Outrigger Damage Comes Back Netted Off Your Next Check

A letter reaches you in June about a driveway your outriggers cracked in April, and the amount comes straight off your next check.

SAME MECHANISM, OTHER TRADES

The same mechanism in other trades

CONCRETE

Ten Jobs Used Those Forms, One Job Paid for Them

Your yard is full of panels and shoring, every job report says you made money, and the bank account disagrees. The form buy hit job one and jobs two through ten carried none of it.

DEMOLITION

The Scale Wants Cash Today, The GC Pays In Sixty Days

Almost everything a demolition job costs goes out in the first two weeks, and the first pay application hasn't even been submitted yet.

FLOORING

You bankroll the mill six months before you get paid

The mill wants a check before it ships, the GC won't pay for stored material, and your cash sits in a warehouse for four months waiting on a space that isn't ready.

QUESTIONS

What concrete pumping owners ask

Concrete pumping cash flow tight in busy season?

You mix grout and throw it away before you pump one yard you can bill for, and the busiest month is the thinnest month in the bank.

What does it cost?

Peak season becomes the cash-poorest season, because every added pour funds its own prime, fuel, and payroll weeks before the check on it clears.

What do I do first?

Put prime, washout, fuel, and operator hours on the job cost record for every pour, so a pour with almost no billable yardage still carries what it consumed.

What are concrete pumping contractors supposed to be making?

Concrete pumping runs 23% gross margin, 16% overhead and 7% net profit before taxes at $1M–$5M. The all-trade average is 7%, so this trade sits right on it. The CFOS target is 10%.

Which part of the system fixes it?

The step is number 01, job cost structure. Seven cost categories and three levels of granularity, built so the estimate and the ledger use the same words. It comes from chapter 1 of CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System.

AUTHOR

JOSH LUEBKER

MASTER ELECTRICIAN · 150+ PROJECTS · $2.1B+ MANAGED

Josh Luebker ran commercial construction projects before he ran the numbers behind them, on data centres, military bases, hospitals, and high-rises. He wrote CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System, which is an eight-step framework for commercial subcontractors, and it publishes on October 1, 2026. He is a master electrician who moved into the office and kept the field vocabulary.

Sulphur Prairie Operations LLC maintains the benchmark reference behind these figures. Every edition is reconciled against the newest CFMA survey release before it publishes here. Where a figure changes between editions, the older edition keeps its year in the title so a citation to it stays correct.