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True Trade Cost

Concrete Estimate Calculator: Price a Slab From Your Own Costs

Updated

A 960 sq ft broom-finish driveway with asphalt tear-out, at 66.24 crew hours, comes to $10,821.22, or $11.27 a square foot, at a $58 break-even rate with 20% profit. Change the yellow boxes to your own slab and the price moves as you type.

This concrete estimate calculator prices a slab from its area, your crew hours per square foot and what you spend on concrete, steel, base and dumping. The starting numbers are a simplified version of the 24 x 40 ft driveway in the Concrete Pricing Calculator spreadsheet, so you see a real flatwork quote first.

1. The job
sq ft

A 24 x 40 ft driveway is 960 sq ft.

hrs

Tear-out, base, forms, pour, finish, saw-cut and strip, every person added up.

$

Everything you buy or dump for the slab, divided by its area.

2. Costs that come with every job

The ones owners leave out most. Put 0 if it doesn't apply.

$
$
$
3. Your rate and profit
$/hr

What each labour hour has to bring in to cover wages and overhead.

%
%

Don't know your break-even rate? Work it out in two minutes with the true hourly rate calculator.

Job price$10,821

Forming, pouring and finishing hours per square foot

In the example, 0.069 crew hours a square foot covers the whole driveway: tearing out and hauling the old asphalt, grading and compacting 4 inches of gravel, building forms and setting a rebar grid, the pour with four people on the finish, saw-cutting joints and stripping forms. It also carries the drive to the site each day and the trip back to seal.

A new patio on bare ground with no tear-out needs fewer hours per foot. A pour with a long wheelbarrow run or a pump truck needs more. Change this box to the slab in front of you before you look at the price.

What sits inside $3.94 of materials per square foot

The materials box is everything you buy or pay to dump, divided by the slab area. For the example that is about 12 yards of air-entrained ready-mix with fees, the rebar and chairs, about 17 tons of gravel from the pit, form lumber and stakes, cure and seal, and around 18 tons of old asphalt and soil taken to the dump.

The dump fees surprise people: on a tear-out they are a real part of the materials line. A slab on fresh ground with no tear-out can drop well below $3.94 a foot. The extra yard on the order sits in its own box, because running short in the middle of a pour costs far more than a yard left in the truck.

When the $3,500 minimum takes over on a small pad

The permit, the extra yard and the machine costs total $826 and are paid once, so small slabs cost more per foot:

Slab Crew hours Price Per sq ft
960 sq ft driveway, example 66.24 $10,821.22 $11.27
400 sq ft patio 27.6 $5,087.04 $12.72
300 sq ft pad 20.7 $4,063.08 $13.54
200 sq ft pad 13.8 $3,500.00 (minimum) $17.50

At 200 sq ft the math lands below $3,500, so the minimum sets the price. A pour day still means a truck, a crew and a finish whatever the size, and the minimum is what keeps a small pad from losing money.

What the concrete spreadsheet adds to reach $11,782

Every number above runs on $58 an hour, which is what the example flatwork outfit needs to cover its finishers, trucks and insurance over its pouring season. Put your own figure in, from the break-even rate tool, before you send a driveway price.

The spreadsheet then charges the skid steer, dump trailer, crew truck and saw by their own running hours, adds waste on the order, a small cushion, fuel, saw blade wear and an allowance for hidden concrete found under the asphalt. It lists each material from a price list, prints a customer quote and tracks hours against the estimate in the job log, the habit explained in the job costing guide. That is why its version of the same driveway comes to $11,782 instead of $10,821.22. The concrete pricing guide walks through that quote.

How the math in the Concrete & Flatwork calculator is checked

Every version of the concrete & flatwork spreadsheet goes through an automatic test before it ships. The test rebuilds the file, recalculates it in a separate spreadsheet engine, and fails the release if any of these is off.

  • The example's break-even rate, $57.83 an hour, is worked out a second time outside the spreadsheet and the two have to agree to the cent.
  • The total for the customer has to equal the price plus sales tax, and the customer quote has to show that same total.
  • The example quote ($11,782 total) has to earn more per labour hour than it costs to run the business. It earns $101.84 an hour against the $57.83 break-even.
  • Then the test tries to break it: every yellow box on the quote emptied, nobody on the crew billable, a material price 400 days old, an order of zero. No cell may show an error, and the checks box has to flag the missing customer name and the out-of-date price.
  • The formulas only use functions that work the same way in Excel and Google Sheets.

Last test run: Concrete & Flatwork passed, along with 39 of the other 39 trades. The example job and the list of easy-to-miss costs come from research into 9 videos of concrete & flatwork owners explaining how they price. More on how the calculators are built.

Questions owners ask

How do I use a concrete estimate calculator for a driveway?

Enter the slab area, the crew hours per square foot, the materials per square foot and the permit and machine costs, then your break-even rate, markup and profit. The 960 sq ft example driveway comes to $10,821.22, or $11.27 a square foot.

How many crew hours per square foot does a concrete driveway take?

About 0.069 in the example, or 66.24 crew hours for 960 sq ft including tearing out old asphalt, base, forms, the pour, saw-cutting and travel. A slab with no tear-out takes fewer.

Why does my small concrete pad show the same price as a bigger one?

Because the $3,500 minimum is on. In the example a 200 sq ft pad works out below it, so the calculator shows $3,500. Set your own minimum to what a pour day really costs you.

Does this concrete calculator work out the yards I need?

No. It prices the job, not the order. Work out yards from length, width and thickness first, then put the concrete cost per square foot into the materials box.