Ready Mixed Concrete Production for U.S. through April 2009

The Ready Mixed Concrete Industry supplies a valuable construction product to the transportation, building sector, residential and other construction markets. The industry is composed of varying sized family owned business to multi-national corporations. Since it is a perishible product ready mixed concrete production facilities are located in numerous metropolitan and rural locations and typically within 60 to 90 minutes traveling distance from any construction project.

It is estimated that there are about 6,000 ready mixed concrete plants that produce the product and about 70,000 ready mixed concrete mixer trucks that deliver it to the point of placement.

The ready mixed concrete industry consumes about 75% of the cement shipped in the US. Besides portland and blended cement it uses a large quantity of industrial byproduct material that would otherwise be considered waste products. These include fly ash from the coal burning power plants, slag from the manufacture of iron and silica fume from the silicon/ferro-silicon metal industry.

NRMCA estimates the volume of ready mixed concrete produced in the US using some validated assumptions and the data on cement shipments reported by the US Geological Survey of the US Department of Interior.

The value of ready mixed concrete produced by this industry is estimated at $30 billion industry.