Concrete Cost Per Cubic Yard: A Contractor's Bid Reference
Concrete is the cheapest line on a concrete bid. The truck, the pump, the rebar, the form labor, and the finishing crew are where the bid lives or dies. The contractors winning bids are the ones who price the job, not the yard.
What ready-mix actually costs
In mid-2024 the national average for standard 3,500 PSI ready-mix sits between $150 and $190 per cubic yard delivered. That range is misleading. Pacific Northwest yards run closer to $210 because aggregate freight is long. Gulf coast yards run $130 because aggregate is short and the cement plants are local. Bid the yard you actually buy from, not the national average.
The line items most bids miss
The bid breaks down to:
- Ready-mix: $150-$210/CY
- Short-load surcharge: $40-$120 if under 8 CY
- Saturday/Sunday delivery: $75-$200 per truck
- Pump truck: $1,000-$1,400/day or $25-$35/CY for long pours
- Rebar: $0.65-$1.10/lb at current prices
- Form lumber + ties: $1.20-$2.40/sq ft of form face
- Form labor: 0.15-0.25 hrs/sq ft for a flat foundation; 2-3x for stem walls
- Finishing: 0.05-0.10 hrs/sq ft of slab
- Cure + protect: blanket rental, plastic, sealer
Add a small-pour minimum, an environmental fee, and an overtime clause if the pour starts after 2 PM and you have a real bid.
A worked example
A 1,200 sq ft monolithic slab with 4" depth, #4 rebar 16" OC, and standard finish:
- Concrete: 14.8 CY × $175 = $2,590
- Pump: 14.8 CY × $30 = $444
- Rebar: ~1,800 lb × $0.85 = $1,530
- Form: 138 lf × $9.50 lf installed = $1,311
- Slab finish: 1,200 sf × $1.10 = $1,320
- Cure + protect: $220
- Subtotal direct: $7,415
- Markup at 28%: $2,076
- Bid: $9,491 ($7.91/sq ft)
That's a defensible number. The contractor who bids $5,800 because they back-of-napkin'd the yard cost is the contractor who eats the pump truck.
Where contractors lose margin
Three failure modes show up in nearly every too-low concrete bid:
- The forms get bid by the linear foot of perimeter, not the square foot of form face. A 4-foot stem wall has 8 sq ft of form per linear foot. Bid the form face.
- Pump truck is treated as a "maybe" line item. If your standby crew is sitting on a 20-yard pour with no pump, you'll lose a day chasing wheelbarrows.
- The minimum-load fee gets eaten by the contractor. Most yards have an 8 CY minimum for free delivery. A 5 CY footing pour is a $100 surcharge before the truck rolls.
How Estimate.Pro handles it
The concrete estimating template inside Estimate.Pro carries ready-mix pricing as a live cost library item — when your local yard updates pricing, the bids you draft pull the new number. The pump surcharge, short-load minimum, and Saturday fee are toggleable line items so a junior estimator can't accidentally forget them. And AR measurement on the form face means a 4-foot stem wall is bid as 8 sq ft of form per LF, not 1.
The bottom line
Concrete bids are about the labor and the logistics, not the material. Build a template that captures both and you stop losing pours to contractors who don't know what their truck actually costs.