TradesConcretersPricing and profit

Concreter Business PricingThe slab looked great and the job made nothing. That is a pricing problem, not a concrete problem.

Pricing for concreting businesses. Cubic metres, square metres, pump hire, formwork, labour on pour day and the overhead nobody puts in the quote, all built in so the number you send actually leaves you a margin.

A painted scene of two concreters walking power floats across a freshly poured slab

The week this is about

Sound Like Your Concreting Business?

You price off what the bloke down the road charges

Someone told you the going rate per square metre, so that became your rate. You have never built it from your own costs: concrete supply, steel, formwork, pump hire, labour, the ute, the insurance. You are copying a number that might not even work for him.

The extras eat the job after you have quoted

The site needs more fill than you allowed. The pump has to come because the truck cannot reach. You order an extra half metre so you do not run short on the day. None of it was in the quote, and by then the price is locked.

Markup and margin are not the same thing

You add a percentage on top of your costs and call it your margin. It is not, and the gap between the two is the difference between a year that pays you and a year that just keeps the crew busy. Nobody ever sat you down and showed you.

Every job you underprice gets paid for out of your own hours, and you will not see the damage until the year is finished and the money is not there.

A trade business owner working alone at the kitchen table late at night, laptop open and paperwork spread across the table, work boots and tool bag by the door

Pricing and profit

Here Is What We Do About It.

The Profitable Pricing Masterclass rebuilds your rates from your own costs, per cubic metre, per square metre and per hour, so every quote carries the overhead and the margin. The Profit & Freedom Masterclass takes it further into what the business must earn to pay you properly, and Greg keeps you holding the price.

Free tool, no sign-up

Charge-out rate calculator

Put in what labour costs you, how many hours you can actually invoice and what the business spends, and it builds the rate that covers all of it and leaves a margin. It runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere.

Work out your rate

How it works

Three Steps, Starting Tonight.

Step 1

Work out what an hour really costs you

Not the wage. The wage plus the ute, the insurance, the phone, the unbilled hours and the time you spend quoting. Most owners have never put that number on paper.

Step 2

Price off the number, not off the last bloke

The Profitable Pricing Masterclass takes you through building a rate that carries your overheads and a margin, so you stop pricing against whoever is cheapest this month.

Step 3

Hold the price and watch what happens

The Profit and Freedom Masterclass covers the part nobody warns you about: what to do when someone pushes back, and why losing the wrong job is a win.

Greg Allan mid-explanation with his hands open, talking to a trade business owner across a desk

Why Greg

You speak to the owner who has already done it.

Greg built Response Electricians in Perth into a 30+ staff business with 1,950+ five-star reviews. A general manager runs it.

He has trained 9,000+ trade business owners across Australia and New Zealand.

He grew a coaching company to 35 staff, a CEO and 15 coaches, then cut it back so every owner deals with him directly.

Most coaching companies hand you to a salesperson, then to a coach who has never run a trade business. Here you get the owner.

Read how Greg built a trade business that runs without him

What changes for you

The old way. The new way.

Illustration: a trade business owner standing over three office staff buried in paperwork at night.
The old way

More customers meant more people doing the computer work, and more wages nobody invoices.

Illustration: a tradesman shaking hands with a homeowner in her driveway, his phone showing jobs quoted and invoiced.
The new way

You stay with your customers and your team. The office stops landing on you.

The old way

More jobs. More paperwork. Less of the owner left.

Most trade businesses grow the same way.

More jobs means more quoting, invoicing, chasing and scheduling.

None of it gets paid for.

So the owner does it at night, after a full day on site.

Or hires an office person to do it.

The office grows. The wages grow. The margin does not.

And the owner is still the one everything waits on.

Where we take you

More work. More profit. More of you left.

The phone rings with the jobs you want, at the price you set.

You grow when you're ready, never faster than the business can carry.

Every job is priced to make money, so the busy months show up in the bank.

The best tradies in your area want to work for you, and they stay.

The chasing, the paperwork and the 9pm admin stop landing on you.

The business runs the day. You pick which parts of it you're in.

Bigger, without the headaches. Getting bigger stops meaning getting busier.

What changes

What Concreting Business Pricing Actually Changes.

Three things concreting business owners walk away able to do.

Build your charge out rate from your real costs, not from the going rate

Quote a slab or driveway with pump hire, waste and overhead already in it

Know the difference between markup and margin and price on the right one

A trade business owner watching his child play sport on a Saturday morning, coffee in hand and phone face down
Nights and weekends back
A trade business owner and his partner in the kitchen looking at a tablet showing the numbers going up
Work that actually pays
A trade business owner shaking hands with a new apprentice in the work yard
A good hire who stays
A trade business owner standing calmly in the yard while his crew load two utes behind him
Out of the middle of everything
9,000+tradies trained4.9★Google rating4.9★App Store rating

Questions

Concreter Business Pricing, Answered.

How much should a concreter charge per square metre?
There is no national number that is safe to copy, because your concrete supply, travel, crew cost and overhead are yours alone. The right rate is built from what a job actually costs you, then loaded with the margin the business needs. That is exactly what the Profitable Pricing Masterclass walks you through, using your own figures.
How do I stop losing money on concrete supply and pump hire?
Put them in the quote as calculated line items rather than a rounded allowance: the volume with waste, the grade, the delivery windows, and the pump whenever the truck cannot reach. Then price pour day labour properly. The pricing training shows you how to build a job up cost by cost, so nothing gets quietly absorbed.
What margin should a concreting business be making?
Enough to pay you a proper wage, cover a quiet month, replace equipment and still leave a profit at the end. That is a number you work out from your own overhead, not one you borrow off a forum. The charge-out rate calculator on this site works it through from your own costs.
A painted scene of a trade business owner home before dark, sitting on the tray of his ute while his son runs to meet him

Join the Waitlist to Work With Greg.

The Crew, daily Q&A and starter courses. Free with an active ABN. No card, no trial clock.

The Academy is at full capacity. Join the waitlist and when a place opens, Greg interviews the owners who look like the right fit.