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.
A labor trade's four hours costs four hours of labor, every time. Your four hours costs whatever the mix, the yardage, and the slick line took out of the steel, so a 120-yard high-rise pour on 300 feet of line with a stiff mix destroys many times what a 40-yard driveway slab does. Both of those invoice at roughly the same four hours, and the money leaves at the parts counter weeks later.
The size of it
Gross margin per pour swings 20 to 30 points with nothing on the ticket to explain it. The whole cost goes into one undifferentiated repairs and maintenance line that ties to no truck and no pour.
Two four-hour tickets can have completely different steel costs, because the invoice meters pump hours and the machine meters cubic yards and feet of line. Revenue is hourly pump time plus a small per-yard adder, usually three to four and a half dollars a yard on published rate cards. Cost is the S-tube, wear plate, cutting ring, reducers, elbows, end hose, and twin-wall boom pipe worn away by yardage and system length, and manufacturers write wear parts out of the warranty on purpose. Until yards pumped and feet of line get written on the same ticket as the hours, nothing in your books tells you the difference is there.
Three moves, in order
Step 02: Equipment cost basis
A correct internal rate per machine covering ownership, maintenance, fuel, and transport, charged to the projects that used it.
What else costs concrete pumping contractors money
The same mechanism in other trades
What concrete pumping owners ask
How to track concrete pump wear parts cost per pour?
Two four-hour pours bill the same, and one of them wore out a whole pipeline. The invoice meters time; the machine meters yardage.
What does it cost?
Gross margin per pour swings 20 to 30 points with nothing on the ticket to explain it. The whole cost goes into one undifferentiated repairs and maintenance line that ties to no truck and no pour.
What do I do first?
Add three fields to the pour ticket and make the operator complete them before he leaves the site: yards pumped, feet of system line, and mix or slump.
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 is right on it. The CFOS target is 10.5%.
Which part of the system fixes it?
The step is number 02, equipment cost basis. A correct internal rate per machine covering ownership, maintenance, fuel, and transport, charged to the projects that used it. It comes from chapter 2 of CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System.
Everything on this page is something you can install yourself, andCONTROL is the order to do it in. If you would rather buy the finished result, SPM The Construction CFO does this work for concrete pumping contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, run by the same author.
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.