Guide
What size boom pump do I need? 20m to 60m+ explained
Book too small and you're pumping short. Book too big and you can't fit through the gate. The boom size classes from 20m to 60m-plus, in plain English.
What size boom pump do I need? Every builder asks it, half of them guess, and the wrong guess costs everyone money. Book too small and you're dragging rubber across a deck all day or standing the job down. Book too big and you're paying for metres you never used — if the truck even fits through the gate. Here's how the sizes actually break down.
The size classes, in plain English
20m to 24m: the suburban workhorses. House slabs, footings, driveways, tight streets. Smaller trucks, smaller footprint, quicker setup, and they'll squeeze into jobs a big boom can't even look at.
28m to 32m: the bread and butter of the industry. Most residential and light commercial work lands here — enough reach to sit on the street and cover a decent block, without the weight and footprint of the big gear.
36m to 42m: proper commercial territory. Warehouse slabs, apartment jobs, big rafts — sites where you need to reach over scaffold and obstructions and hold one setup for the whole pour.
47m up to 60m-plus: high-rise, civil, and the pours where moving the pump mid-job isn't an option. Serious reach, serious truck, serious setup requirements — these units need room, proven ground, and planning weeks out, not a phone call the night before.
Every one of those classes shares the same physics, though: the bigger the boom, the harder it loads its outriggers and the fussier it gets about ground. Reach is never free.
Metres on paper aren't metres on site
A 32m boom doesn't give you 32 metres of useful reach. Knock off the height of the structure, the scaffold you're reaching over, the trees, the site shed someone parked in the perfect spot. Vertical reach and horizontal reach are different numbers, and the fold type matters too — some booms unfold low and tight for under-awning work, some need clear sky just to open up.
Then count what the bigger boom costs you. Heavier truck, bigger outrigger loads, wider stance, tighter access maths, higher hourly rate. A 60-metre unit is not a 20-metre unit with more reach — it's a different machine with different demands. Sometimes the smart call is a smaller boom in a better position, or a line pump doing the last awkward stretch.
The rule that saves the day
When it's line-ball, go one size up. An unused ten metres of boom costs a little extra on the invoice. A boom that comes up short costs hours of pipeline, extra labour, a blown program, and a builder telling everyone you got it wrong — even though he supplied the site plan drawn in crayon.
Measure the reach from where the pump can actually stand, not from where you wish it could. And if you're hunting for the right unit for a specific pour, PumpXchange (pumpxchange.com) exists for exactly this — finding and booking the pump that fits the job instead of ringing six blokes hoping one has a gap.
