WHY CONCRETE
CONTRACTORS
RUN OUT OF CASH.
Concrete contractors run out of cash because labor per yard is almost never tracked accurately, pour cycles create long gaps between cost and billing, and overhead is routinely underestimated by 10 to 20 points. A $4.9M concrete contractor was netting 3.3% — $161,000 — not because the work was bad but because the costs were invisible. Once job costing was installed, net profit was $1.1M. Same revenue. Same crews.
The cash problem in concrete is not the work. It is the financial operating system. Most concrete contractors have a bookkeeper and accounting software. Neither one is telling them what their labor actually costs per yard, which pours made money, or what their real overhead is. CONTROL installs the visibility.
Labor Per Yard Is Never Tracked — Until It Is Too Late
Most concrete contractors estimate labor per cubic yard at the bid level but never track it at the job level. By the time the pour is complete and costs hit the books, there is no comparison between estimated and actual labor per yard. If a pour ran 15% over on labor — because the mix was harder to work, because the crew was slower than estimated, because a pump broke down — you find out three months after the project closes. By then you have bid the next five pours the same way. The loss compounds silently.
Pre-Pour to Post-Pour Cash Gap
A concrete project has two distinct billing phases — pre-pour work (forming, rebar, embeds, blockouts) and post-pour work (stripping, patching, finish work). The bulk of your cost often goes out in the pre-pour phase. The bulk of your billing may not come until post-pour is complete and inspected. On a $500,000 pour package, that gap can be $150,000 to $250,000 sitting unfunded for 30 to 60 days. Multiplied across five active projects, it becomes a permanent cash deficit.
Ready-Mix Procurement Timing
Ready-mix suppliers want to be paid on 30-day terms. Your GC pays you in 45 to 60 days. That is a 15 to 30 day cash gap on every single pour just from material terms. On a project using $800,000 of ready-mix, that gap can mean $50,000 to $100,000 in float being funded by your line of credit continuously. Most concrete contractors know this exists but have never quantified how much it actually costs them.
Blaming the GC for Slow Pay
GCs do pay slowly. But the concrete contractor who bills on time, sends stored materials billing for rebar and embeds already on site, and sends notice of nonpayment on day 40 gets paid differently than one who does not. The timing gap is real but manageable with the right billing standards.
Thinking They Need More Volume
A $4.9M concrete contractor netting 3.3% does not need more volume. They need job costing. More volume at 3.3% net means more cash consumed, more payroll risk, and a faster path to the line of credit maxing out.
Assuming the Bookkeeper Is Tracking Job Costs
A bookkeeper records costs to accounts. Job costing is a structure — 7 categories, aligned to estimates, tracked by pour and phase. Most bookkeepers set it up the way they know how, which is rarely the way a concrete contractor actually needs it.
Looking at Revenue Instead of Margin
Revenue is a vanity metric until margin is right. The same $4.9M in revenue produced $161K net and $1.1M net in consecutive years for the same concrete contractor. Revenue did not change. The financial operating system changed.
- Chapter 1: Install job cost structure with labor tracked by pour type and phase — so you see labor per yard in real time, not months after the fact
- Chapter 3: Calculate real overhead — most concrete contractors discover they are at 18–28%, not the 10% they have been bidding
- Chapter 4: Align estimate line items to job cost codes so pre-pour and post-pour are tracked and billed separately
- Chapter 6: Build the SOV with pre-pour and post-pour as separate billing milestones — and bill stored materials for rebar and embeds on site
- Chapter 7: Run cost to complete every month by project — catch labor per yard overruns while you can still adjust
CONTROL Chapter 1 covers the 7-category job cost structure including labor tracking by work type and phase — the foundation of concrete contractor profitability. The $161K to $1.1M case study is the proof. Download the templates at constructioncfo.net.
WANT IT INSTALLED FOR YOU?
The CONTROL book teaches you how to build the system yourself. The Construction CFO — Sulphur Prairie Management — builds and runs it for you. Same system, same outcomes. Different path to get there.
Serving commercial subcontractors doing $1M–$12M across 24 trades. No payroll. No scope gaps. Everything included in a flat monthly fee.
The most common cause is overhead underestimation combined with no job-level cost visibility. A concrete contractor bidding 10% overhead and running 22% is losing 12% on every project before the crew leaves. Without job costing showing which pours are profitable and which are not, the problem compounds invisibly for years.
You need labor tracked in fully burdened dollars and hours by pour type in your job costing system, aligned to your estimate. Every pour should have an estimated labor per yard and an actual labor per yard. The difference is your variance. Chapter 1 of CONTROL covers the job cost structure that makes this possible.
Commercial concrete contractors typically run 18–28% overhead when calculated correctly. Chapter 3 of CONTROL walks through the exact calculation — every cost that keeps the business running when you are not building.
One full year. The job cost structure was installed in the first 60 days. The financial impact — nearly $1M in additional net profit — was realized within the first 12 months. Same revenue, same crews, same work. See the full case study at runoncfos.com/concrete-contractor-margin-recovery-case-study.
STOP GUESSING WHY YOU ARE BROKE.
CONTROL covers the financial operating system for concrete contractors — and 48 other commercial trades. Get the book.
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