The agi line-up: managing concrete trucks on pour day

Managing concrete trucks on pour day is the difference between a pour that flows and a day that eats you alive. Get the agi line-up wrong one way and you've got four bowls turning in the street, drivers clocking demurrage, and the first load creeping toward the end of its window. Get it wrong the other way and the pump sits dead, the edge is drying out, and you're praying the next truck beats a cold joint.

Nobody on site owns that spacing unless you own it.

Set the spacing to the pour, not the plant

The plant batches at whatever interval got typed in the day before. That number rarely survives contact with the actual pour. A structural deck full of heavy reo pumps slower than a housing slab. Long line runs, a sticky mix, a crew one screeder short — everything changes the rate you can actually place. Your job is to work out real cubes-per-hour early in the pour and get the call-off matched to it before three agis stack up, not after.

First load sets the tone for the whole day. Confirm it the arvo before. If the first truck lands late, everything behind it lands wrong until knock-off.

One person makes the call

The worst pours have three people ringing the plant. The builder ordering more, the foreman pushing spacing out, the operator saying something different again. The plant hears chaos, so the plant delivers chaos. Agree before the pour: one voice calls the plant. Usually that should be you, because you're the only one standing where the line pressure, the crew and the concrete all meet.

Waiting time is real money — both directions

If agis stack up because the site can't take concrete, that's demurrage someone has to wear. If the pump waits because concrete isn't coming, that's your hourly ticking with nothing hitting the invoice — unless your terms say otherwise. Waiting time starts when you arrive. Put it in the terms before the job, log times against every docket as they happen, and there's no argument at invoice time. Write it down at the truck, not from memory at smoko.

When the pour is bigger than the pump

Some pours are simply too big for one unit. Big slabs on a stinking hot day, high-rise decks, anything where a breakdown mid-pour turns into a disaster. That's when you line up a second pump or a standby unit before the day, not during it. PumpXchange exists for exactly that — finding and booking a pump when yours isn't enough, or isn't available.

The agi line-up isn't the plant's problem and it isn't the builder's problem. A pour is a rhythm, and the operator holds the drumsticks. Set the beat before the first truck rolls in, and the whole day follows it.