Concrete Mixer Driver Knowledge

You can ask your questions on here. There are quite a few current and ex mixer drivers on TTR.

 

Careful of that acid (muratic?) they use to clean off dried concrete. My dump and mixer instructor said the wind blew the wrong way and it knocked him out cold.

 

That stuff is pretty bad, the spraying of acid. It can hurt you. Maybe it got me in the eyes too much. I grew to hate that stuff.

Watch your #### fingers with them chutes.

One man on the chute, his hand on it is the boss. All you do is do what he wants. Up, down, more, less, stop, spin etc.

Get yourself like a tanker off the plant, a 10K pounds of water. Spin and rinse good and dump into side pond at end of day.

Be the first under the boot. Those are the better jobs.

Prepare yourself to abuse your rig off road. She'll do it for you as long you don't spill it. Ive done things that really should not be done with a truck. Maybe a little airtime here, a rock slide there or whatever.

Finally...

Do not drive on green grass if you can find brown grass first. Green = getting stuck in water or bog ground. Never ever drive on green grass off road.

 

Don't let it dry in the barrel, unless you have a good jackhammer or a box of dynamite. Concrete also contains lime which can really do a number on your skin, it's pretty cut and dry and less your pumping then it gets real tricky. The tips from customers can be pretty substantial depending how good you are, I can remember making more in tips then I was getting paid in a day.

 

I had one chase me down and hang around until I finished a pour with about half a yard left. We dumped that into a hole of his walkway around the pool. Eh... it was house slab mix so it should hold up. He put 40 bucks into my pocket despite my telling him it's not needed.

Its a nice side line, but don't get caught doing it.

 

Learn to eye-ball your slump. You'll have a gauge in the truck but they're not always 100% accurate.
Mixers turn over easily on corners. Slow down.
Don't automatically add water on the job. Let the barrel turn for awhile and add water slowly.
When traveling with a load make sure your drum doesn't stop and make darn sure it doesn't reverse on you.
Unloading into a pump is easy but don't overfill the pump hopper. It makes the pump operator grouchy.
Make sure your water tank is full when you leave the yard.
If you're doing short drops...sidewalks and driveways...or my personal favorite, post holes, watch whoever is directing you. Watch them like a hawk. If you miss a stop or a go signal it usually means a mess on the ground. and extra work for the finishers.
Be polite to the job foreman but don't let him give you any crap either. They're under a lot of pressure but that doesn't mean that they can take it out on the driver.
Be good to your batch-man. You have one load to worry about. He's probably juggling twenty or thirty. Batchmen tend to be a little high strung.
There's about a thousand other things but most of it will become apparent to you while you're being trained.

I didn't drive a mixer for very long but a lot of guys make a career out of it. Kind of a love it or hate it deal.

 

Do they still have a release the customer has to sign before you leave the public road?

 

I was a batch man for a very short time, as a absolute emergency fill in. Fortunately the computer was idiot proof, relatively speaking. I just needed to know how many yards to so and so, and what strength (Slump) etc.

It was easy enough for a while. Then more loads started coming in and I got cranky fast. They pulled me off there when the regular batch man got there. But that short time sealed it as far as I was concerned, if it happened again I would plop down in the computer and build batches and fill trucks. Easy peasy.

Just don't tell Corporate. They really have a marble when "Just a driver" starts mixing up expensive product going out to the customer who is waiting for it.

The company I was with "Razorback" was ... loose. They were professional enough. But loose enough to put people into different and new positions to do a task all over the place. My best strength was that Cat 936 front end loader. I baby that thing, grease it, note hours, fuel it note gallons fed and stone and sand all day long. I live for it. I can walk out to any cat loader, no matter how big and within 10 minutes be at it.

Someone else can be batchman. I get too cranky. Too many children demanding answers I do not have. Not diplomatically anyhow. I'll growl f- off give me a #### minute and someone else in the driver room will soothe the ruffled feathers. =) I can drive one thing. But I cannot deal with two, three or four or more problems outside of battle at once. It's not me.

 

Never heard of such a thing lol