Concrete Yard Calculator

Concrete cost per yard delivered is not flat across order sizes. Ready-mix plants add a short-load fee below a minimum order, since the plant still sends a full truck and driver regardless of how little concrete is on it.

That threshold is 3.5 cu yd, and the fee is a flat $67 to $133. Both figures are calibrated from published cost guides. See the parameter levels page for how every number here is graded.

A 2.5 cu yd job falls below the threshold and totals $295 to $586, or $118.02 to $234.59 once divided by volume. A 6 cu yd job clears the threshold and totals $547 to $1,090, at a unit price about 23% lower.

Of that smaller total, $228 to $453 is material and $67 to $133 is the fee itself. The larger order has no fee line at all, just $547 to $1,090 of material.

The fee is a flat charge added once, independent of order volume. That is why it shrinks fast as a share of the total once an order grows past the threshold.

From the plant's side, sending a truck costs close to the same whether it carries a small order or a full load. The fee recovers some of that fixed cost when there is not much concrete to spread it across.

A 10×10 ft pad at the standard 4 in thickness orders only about 1.3 cu yd once the waste allowance is included, well under the threshold. A 20×20 ft pad orders about 5.2 cu yd, comfortably over it. The crossover falls around 270 sq ft, roughly a 16×16 ft square, at that same thickness.

This fee does not change by region the way material and labor do; it is a flat national figure. Only the material rate underneath it moves with your selected region.

Small jobs can go either way: bags mixed by hand, or a delivered order from a ready-mix plant. The right call mostly comes down to how much volume the job needs and how much mixing labor that means.

The short-load threshold works out to about 158 bags of 80 lb concrete, using the same 45-bag yield this site uses for one cubic yard elsewhere. A 2.5 cu yd job, still below that line, is about 113 bags on its own.

Mixing that many bags by hand still leaves placing and finishing the concrete to do once it is mixed. A delivered order skips the mixing step entirely, at the cost of the short-load fee for a job this small.

Once an order clears the threshold, delivery avoids both the fee and the mixing labor, which is why larger jobs favor a truck. A job well under the threshold, such as a single fence post footing, often still favors bags, since a delivered order's minimum charge outweighs a small amount of hand-mixing.

Bag counts round up in practice, since a partial bag still needs opening. Buying a couple extra beyond the math above is standard practice, to cover spillage and an uneven mix.

A rented mixer speeds up hand-mixing for a mid-size job without changing the bag count or the math here. Placing and finishing the concrete once it is mixed still takes the same manual work either way.

This is our estimate for a 5 cu yd ready-mix order in the Minneapolis, MN area. A contractor's written quote can come in above or below it.

This page prices delivered material only, so the region's material rate is the entire reason this total differs from the national figure. The Midwest rate here runs about 8% above the national baseline.

Both ends differ from the national $456 to $907: the low end is about 8% higher and the high end about 7% higher. This range is narrower than the national one because local cement mason wages have a tighter spread than wages nationwide, per BLS OEWS wage percentiles.

Switch the location in the calculator above to price a delivery to your own area.