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Cycle time and how many you need
Order too few trucks and the pour stops. Order too many and they queue in the street going off. The number sits between the cycle time and how fast you can actually take the load — and it is worth knowing before 5am.
Adding trucks does not always help
It only helps if trucks are the constraint. If the pump can place 30 m³ an hour and the crew can
finish 25, then the crew is the bottleneck — and a seventh truck just means six of them waiting.
The calculation below shows you which one is actually limiting the job, because that is the only thing worth
spending money on. The other half of the answer is what happens when a truck is late: if your cycle
has no slack, one breakdown becomes a cold joint.
Questions
How many concrete trucks do I need?
Enough that one arrives before the last finishes discharging — the cycle time divided by the discharge time, rounded up. Fewer and the pour stops; more and they queue and start going off.
What counts in the cycle time?
Everything one truck does between leaving site and being ready to discharge again: travel out, load, travel back, wait, discharge and turn around. The waiting is the part people leave out and it is often the biggest number.
Why does the bottleneck matter?
Because it tells you where money helps. If the pump or the crew cannot take concrete any faster, extra trucks change nothing except the queue.
Does it store my figures?
They stay in your browser on your device.
Related free tools
The cycle is only half of it
Getting the trucks right matters less than the pour being able to start at all. Obras runs every gate behind the pour — SWMS, VOC, plant, hold point, permit — and gives one answer before the concrete is on the road.
