Concrete is a planned purchase and a trip hazard, on one phone number
A flatwork contractor’s office work is built around the ready-mix plant and the forecast. Pours are booked against the truck schedule and the overnight lows, estimates are walked in the afternoons, forms and base stone are ordered for next week, and an apron that meets the street brings its own paperwork. The phone keeps ringing through all of it, with the two very different calls below, and a crew on a pour cannot stop to answer either.
The first call is a driveway she has been putting off for three years. She is not booking anything tonight; she wants to know whether it is four thousand dollars or twelve before she gives up a morning for an estimate. Without a number, she moves on to the next company.
The second call is nothing like it. A slab has lifted at a joint, somebody has caught a toe on it, and she is ringing the concrete companies at the top of the search results. They should not share a form. On NapkinPrice™ they are separate services under one account — the pour asks ten questions and puts a range on the screen, the repair carries your trip charge inside the number instead of springing it at the door, and a foundation goes down a third path that never guesses a price at all.
The last question asks whether she has a photo of the area and the way in from the street, because access is what decides the pump. Her answer is on the lead, so you ask for the pictures on the callback; the image coming in with the lead itself is on the roadmap, so it carries no tick.
The eight things that set a concrete number
Seven of these are a pick-one or a yes/no, which the homeowner can answer without leaving her chair. The eighth is square footage, which she has to work out, and the help text shows her how instead of pretending it is easy.
Square footage
The base number: her total multiplied by your per-square-foot rate, and the only genuinely per-unit line on the pour. It is also the one place the engine asks her to do arithmetic, because there is no length-by-width box — no rule multiplies one answer by another. So ask for one total and let the help text teach: length times width, a 12 by 16 ft patio is 192, and awkward shapes get added up in rectangles. Give the answer a smallest and a largest value, and a number outside them goes back to her with a request to check it, never quietly trimmed to fit.
Slab thickness
Four inches for anything you only walk on, five for a car and the occasional delivery truck, six for a pickup with a trailer or a shop floor. It belongs on a percentage rather than a line item, because thickness changes the concrete, the depth of the base and the time on the screed all at once. On our own demo card that is nothing, plus 8% and plus 18%.
Finish
Broom, integral color, exposed aggregate, stamped and colored. Broom is the baseline on the demo card. Stamped is a day of handwork with mats, release powder and a sealer, and it carries much the biggest percentage on the card — plus 45% on the demo. Set the number your own crew really earns on a stamped patio, because that is the job that either pays for the month or ruins it.
Mesh or rebar
A percentage, not dollars, because reinforcement scales with the slab: it is bought by the square foot and tied by the hour. A yes/no with your own percent behind it. The help text is where you say what reinforcement actually does — it does not stop concrete cracking, the control joints decide where it cracks; it holds the two sides of a crack level so nobody catches a toe on it.
What the ground needs
Reuse the stone base under the old slab, a new crushed base compacted, regrading and fill where it slopes, or excavating with the dirt hauled away. This is the half of the job nobody ever sees and the half that decides whether the slab stays flat. Four tiers as a pick-one percent; if she does not know, the help line points her to the new stone base, and you true it up once there is a shovel in the ground.
Tear-out of the old slab
Two questions, on purpose, and this is the one seam in the engine worth understanding. A yes/no with a flat amount covers the breaker, the skid-steer and the dumpster, and it is added ONCE FOR THE JOB however much comes out — no rule kind multiplies one answer by another. The concrete itself is a separate per-square-foot rate on a plain number question, which is the genuinely per-unit half. That split is what lets the engine price a tear-out honestly, and the help text on both halves says which is which.
Pump and access
A mixer chute only reaches so far past the truck. A garden behind the house, a slab the far side of a fence, or a driveway a loaded truck cannot back down all mean hiring a line pump — a flat amount added once for the job, which happens to be exactly right here, because a pump is hired once however many yards go through it. Tell her to say yes if she is not sure and you will take it off if the truck reaches.
Travel zone
Fairfax, Falls Church and Fairfax County are home on the demo; Arlington, Alexandria, Loudoun and Prince William are the ring beyond, and a catch-all zone takes everywhere else the trucks will go. Every zone is whole ZIPs or three-digit prefixes with a flat charge, a percentage or both, and her ZIP is priced by the most specific one. Mark a zone out of area and a ZIP in it gets a plain note instead of a price, while the lead still reaches you. The job minimum backs it up, so a small patio forty minutes out still pays for the drive.
A two-car driveway, from her first answer to her range
Ten questions, in the order our concrete demo account asks them, answered for a 600 sq ft two-car replacement driveway in Fairfax. The total at the bottom came from the live pricing engine for those answers, not from anybody writing it into the page.
| # | What she is asked | What she answers | What it does to the price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | How many square feet are we pouring? | 600 | 600 sq ft at $8.75 on the demo: $5,250 |
| 2 | How thick does the slab need to be? | 5 inches — driveways and parking pads | +8%: more concrete, a deeper base, longer on the screed |
| 3 | What finish do you want? | Broom finish, the standard grey | The baseline finish: +0%. Stamped would be +45% |
| 4 | Mesh or rebar in the slab? | Yes | +6%, because reinforcement scales with the slab |
| 5 | What does the ground under it need? | Needs a new crushed stone base, compacted | +10% across the job |
| 6 | Is there an old slab to break out and haul away? | Yes | A flat $450 for the job — the breaker, the skid-steer and the dumpster, once however much comes out |
| 7 | How many square feet of old slab comes out? | 600 | 600 × $2.25 = $1,350 — the per-unit half of the tear-out |
| 8 | Does the truck need a pump, or is access tight? | No | Nothing; the $650 pump is added only on a yes |
| 9 | Does the new concrete meet the street or a public sidewalk? | No | Nothing. A yes would not add dollars either; it lifts the job minimum to $3,500 |
| 10 | Got a photo of the area and the way in? | Offered | Nothing. It tells you how the truck gets in |
| The arithmetic, in the order the engine runs it | $5,250 + $450 + $1,350 = $7,050, then the three percentage answers pool into one and +24% applies once to all of it → $8,742 | ||
| She sees | $8,043 – $9,441 | ||
| What lands in your inbox, the second she submits | Her name, mobile and ZIP, the nine priced answers, and whether she has photos of the area and the way in | ||
The $8.75, the $450, the $2.25 and the percentages are Truelevel Concrete’s, our demo company, not a Tailgate Office price list. On your account every one is yours, and a per-square-foot rate changed the morning the ready-mix price moves is quoting on your website straight away. The total is the engine’s: $8,043 to $9,441 for those answers, and the demo gives you the same in about a minute.
Truelevel Concrete is an example company we built, and NapkinPrice quotes live on its website from the real engine, on a page that is not ours. Price the Fairfax driveway there and you get $8,043 to $9,441 in the pouring season.
Try the live demo site (opens in a new tab)Three rules that never add a single dollar
Concrete has a four-month hole in the middle of its year, a county right of way at the end of every driveway, and a size past which no honest person quotes off a form. All three of those are rules in the dashboard, and not one of them works by adding money to a line.
The winter rate is a discount, and it has to be
You cannot pour into frozen ground or under a freezing overnight low, so from the middle of November to the middle of March a flatwork crew in northern Virginia is looking at an empty calendar. There is a service mode that simply refuses to quote, but it refuses all year, which is the wrong answer for a trade that pours from spring through autumn.
So the demo account uses a seasonal rate instead: 15 November to 15 March at minus six per cent. That range wraps the year end — the start is later in the calendar than the finish — and the engine spots that and matches it across New Year without anybody entering two ranges. Book in the dead months, we pour when the ground thaws, and the disclaimer says exactly that rather than dressing a discount up as a cold-weather surcharge. The same 600 sq ft driveway priced on 15 December comes back $7,560 – $8,875.
One answer raises the floor instead of the price
The apron where a driveway meets the road, and any crossing of a public sidewalk, sits in the county right of way. That can mean a county permit, a bond and an inspection before the truck arrives — paperwork that costs the same whether the slab is eighty square feet or eight hundred. So that question raises the job minimum to $3,500 on the demo and adds no dollars at all: an eighty-square-foot apron whose arithmetic comes to about $700 quotes $3,500 – $3,780, because the low end of the band clamps up to the floor rather than sitting below it.
And a size past which it stops guessing
A service that quotes can carry a ceiling, and the demo pour’s is $20,000: twelve hundred square feet of six-inch stamped and reinforced concrete over an excavation works out to a $28,743 midpoint, and rather than publish a number that big off ten answers the widget stops, says so, and hands you the lead to quote by hand. The repair service’s ceiling sits at $4,500, because past that the honest answer is a new slab and not a bigger repair.
The travel zones stack on top of all of it, and they are the same five engine runs on the same ten answers with nothing changed but the date and the ZIP: Fairfax 22030 in the pouring season is $8,043 to $9,441, booked on 15 December it is $7,560 to $8,875, Arlington 22201 in the outer ring is $8,121 to $9,533, Frederick 21701 in the catch-all zone is $8,606 to $10,102, and a ZIP in a zone you mark out of area gets no price, only a polite note, while the lead still reaches you.
The pour and the repair get a range; the foundation gets a visit
A driveway, a sealing call and a foundation are three different conversations. Running them through one form is how you end up quoting footings like a patio.
New pour — quotes instantly
Driveways, patios, walkways and shed pads. No trip charge on this one, because the estimate visit sells the job; instead it carries a job minimum, so eighty square feet of plain broom finish never comes back under what a truck and a crew cost you — $1,750 on the demo, and the low end of the band is that floor rather than 8% below it. The range shown is the midpoint plus or minus a percentage you set, and a midpoint above the ceiling is not priced at all: she reads that it is bigger than can be priced online, and the lead is yours.
Sealing, cracks and slab lifting — quotes instantly
The trip charge is the service's base fee, $145 on the demo, added once whatever she answers, so even a form of zeros carries it, and it sits inside the range rather than appearing at the door. A 400 sq ft driveway washed, etched and sealed quotes at $749 to $915; add sixty feet of cracks cut out and filled and one sunken section lifted back level and it is $1,556 to $1,902; the cheapest answer set possible works out at $201 and floors at the $450 minimum. This service carries no season on purpose — sealer needs a dry slab and warm enough days to cure, so in January the work does not happen at a discount, it does not happen, and the disclaimer says so.
Foundations and commercial — site visit, never priced
A site visit takes the whole description and prints no number, which is the right answer for footing depths, rebar schedules, retaining walls and an inspector standing at the hole. It still asks what you are pouring, roughly how big, whether there is a drawing or an engineer’s letter already, how a truck gets to it and for a photo — and not one of those answers moves money. They tell you whether this is one day with one truck or a fortnight with a pump and six people. Her confirmation screen says a job like this is seen first, and your lead carries every answer for planning the visit.
Neither priced service can be switched on until it has a base fee or a minimum above zero: the pour has its $1,750 minimum, the repair its $145 trip and $450 minimum, and no homeowner is ever quoted $0.
You cannot answer the phone on a pour
Once the trucks are rolling the job does not pause. Concrete goes off on its own schedule, you have four people kneeling on it, and the phone in the truck rings out. Only 52% of callers to home-service businesses speak with a person (Invoca, 2026 (opens in a new tab)), and fewer than 3% of callers sent to voicemail leave a message (Invoca, 2024 (opens in a new tab)). If she cannot reach you, the next concrete company is one tap down her list, and on a week of pours that is a lot of taps.
| What a missed concrete call is worth | On the demo account |
|---|---|
| A 600 sq ft replacement driveway, old slab out | $8,043 – $9,441 |
| A 400 sq ft stamped and colored patio, pumped round the back | $6,147 – $7,216 |
| Cracks cut and filled, one sunken section lifted, the slab sealed | $1,556 – $1,902 |
| Callers sent to voicemail who leave a message | Under 3% (Invoca, 2024 (opens in a new tab)) |
| A driveway you would have lost pays for | 40 months of the bundle |
| One recovered repair pays for | 7 months |
Once texting is switched on, CallMitt™ sends her a text when the pour keeps you off the phone; the first text she gets from you names the company, and her reply sits on the thread with her driveway quote. The message is picked by the hour and the day, against the hours you actually keep — the demo yard runs 6am to 4pm, because the plant opens at six and a slab you start at four finishes in the dark, so a call at 4:40 honestly gets the after-hours version instead of one claiming you are on site.
Nothing is texted before your texting number is live, though. The forwarded-call piece is built and is waiting for it, so until then a call that rings out during a pour is one you log yourself afterwards, and whatever reply was queued is retired, never sent, once your carrier registration clears. Already running: your five messages and the 6-to-4 yard hours, vacation, holiday and weekend handling, opt-outs, the quiet hours and the thread.
How CallMitt Works Run Your Own NumbersA finisher is not going to email you a résumé
The man you want is on somebody else’s slab this morning with a bull float in his hands. He is not at a laptop, and he is not going to fill in a form with a cover letter box on it. He will answer questions on his phone at lunch if you make them short.
Put “Now hiring — text CREW to your texting number” on the truck doors and on the form boards. CrewFunnel™ asks seven short questions: is he 18 or older, is he up for kneeling in wet concrete in July heat on a pour that cannot stop, has he run a power trowel or a bull float on a slab, how many years has he done concrete work, how far out does he live, can he start inside two weeks, and what was the last job he worked on. Three of those are knockouts — under 18, not up for the finishing work, or living further out than you will drive — and the rest come back as a weighted fit score.
The demo job keeps distance as a pass-or-fail line with no weight: a number answer scores higher the bigger it is, so weighted miles would put the finisher who lives furthest away at the top. The last-job question is free text with no weight, because anything typed there scores full marks and weighting it would favor whoever typed most. Each question has a Spanish version as well.
Until your texting number is live he applies on your screening page, through the same seven questions, the same knockouts and the same scoring; texting the keyword off the truck starts the day your carrier registration clears.
See how CrewFunnel works
A new driveway is admired for a week, and the review comes in that week or never
The forms come off, the joints are cut, and the cracked slab she looked at for three winters is gone. The finish is what the neighbors see from the street, and for a week they see it: they slow down on the sidewalk, and she tells every one of them who poured it. That week she is already telling people, and a review is one more. Once she has parked on it, it is just the driveway again. The outfit with sixty reviews is not sixty times better than you; somebody there asks every customer, the week the forms come off.
HurraBell™ does the asking. Once review requests are switched on, you mark the job done — from the inbox, from your phone, or from your job software through Zapier — and the customer gets one request in your words, with your own Google review link, after a delay you pick: an hour, unless you change it. Three days later, one email reminder, unless the link has been opened or the customer has since texted you, messaged you from your website or had a call logged on her thread.
Review requests aren’t switched on for new accounts yet. When they are, the request goes by email once your Google review link is saved on the HurraBell page and your mailing address on the Account page. A text goes as well where the customer ticked the box on your quote form or visit booking agreeing to a review-request text, and only once your carrier registration clears, the same wait as every text on this site; until then it is email only.
See how HurraBell worksA single replacement driveway covers 40 months
And a single recovered crack-and-seal call covers 7 of them. In a trade where a single driveway runs into four and five figures, the arithmetic is not close.
The Tailgate Office Bundle
Instant quotes on your website, missed-call text-back and text-to-apply hiring (texts go out once texting is switched on), and, once switched on, a review request after every job, plus customers, jobs, estimates and invoices in one place. 30 days free, no credit card, no setup fee, cancel from the dashboard.
Start Free TrialOnly need one of the tools? After the trial you can keep just that one at its own price; the office stays with the Bundle.
Concrete questions we get asked
As a range, yes, and the widget shows nothing else. On the demo the disclaimer says the final price is confirmed after you measure the area, check the fall for drainage and see what is under the old slab, and that every pour includes the forms, a compacted base, control joints cut in, and the site swept and her grass put back. Put your own words there and the range is one you can stand behind at the curb.
Then you see it on the lead before you go. There is no length-by-width box in the engine, because no rule kind multiplies one answer by another, so the question asks for one total and its help text does the teaching, with a promise that your wheel settles it on the visit. The bounds you set mean a silly answer is refused rather than quietly clamped: type 4,000 sq ft into the demo and it comes straight back with “Please check: How many square feet are we pouring? (between 80 and 2500 sq ft).” The lead records exactly what she typed, so you call back knowing what she claimed.
It would be, which is why it is two questions instead of one. The flat amount gets the machines there, the breaker, the skid-steer and the dumpster, and that costs the same whether six hundred square feet come out or two hundred. The concrete itself is a separate per-square-foot rate on its own question, and that one really does multiply. The split exists because of the engine: a flat amount on a yes/no or a pick-one is added once per job, since no rule kind multiplies one answer by another, and only a per-unit rate on a number question scales. It is also why the pump is a flat amount: a line pump is hired once however many yards go through it.
No. There is a service mode that routes instead of pricing, but it routes all year, so a winter-mode pour service would refuse to quote a patio in July as well. A seasonal rate is the better answer, and the section above shows what the demo does with it: a booking discount for the dead months, with a disclaimer that says plainly it does not pour into frozen ground and that a winter booking is scheduled for the spring. Set yours to zero if you would rather quote the same number all year.
Yes, through the repair service's base fee. Put your trip and set-up charge there and it is added once per visit, before any answer, so nobody can answer their way down to nothing, and it is in the range she sees, so the charge is no surprise at the door. Put a job minimum underneath it as well, so a call-out never comes back under what a call-out costs you.
No. Put footings, retaining walls, structural slabs and commercial flatwork on a site-visit service: it asks what she is pouring, roughly how big, whether there is a drawing or an engineer's letter already, how a truck gets to it and for a photo of the site, shows no price, and tells her it is a job you see first. You get enough to decide whether the job is worth a bid, and nobody has published a number against a footing depth nobody has seen.
The demo's help text tells her: if she is not sure, say yes. That adds the $650 line pump once for the job, and you take it off if the truck reaches, so the pump is a line that can only come off at the visit, never one added there. The photo question asks for the way in from the street, which is how you check before you go.
Yes. The sealing, crack and joint repair service asks how many slabs have dropped at a joint, and its help text says to count the slabs, not the inches. On the demo each is $420: a hole drilled the size of a dime and foam injected underneath to lift it back level. The $145 trip is already in the range, and a lift with cracks filled and the slab sealed comes back as one quote.
Fifteen minutes or so to write your five text-back messages and set the yard hours. About an hour for the ten pour questions: the per-square-foot rate, the thickness and finish percentages, the base tiers and the tear-out amounts; less for the repair service. Last, once review requests are switched on for your account, it is a minute to paste your Google review link on the HurraBell page and your mailing address on the Account page. A priced service will not switch on without a real base fee or a real minimum. You pay $199 a month for all four tools; setup costs nothing, and there is no contract and no onboarding call.
Also lay pavers, build decks or pour footings for somebody else’s framing? Paving and decks have trade pages of their own; for footings and anything else, ask us.
Quote the 9pm driveway. Answer the 4:40 trip hazard.
Set it up tonight. Free for 30 days, no card, no setup fee, cancel from the dashboard.