Building materials costing: freight is a main line, not a footnote
Costing concrete, block, brick or precast. The raw material is cheap and heavy, so freight by weight and distance often exceeds the processing cost — which makes delivery radius part of the cost sheet.
This trade inverts the usual order. In the industries above, material is the big line and freight is small. Here the raw material is **cheap and very heavy**, so freight often exceeds everything spent processing it.
Which means two identical products can have genuinely different costs depending on **how far they are delivered** — and the sheet has to state the distance it assumes.
Freight by weight and distance
Unlike furniture, where the truck fills on space, here it fills on **payload**. So units per load are set by weight, while the cost of a load depends on the distance run.
Enter two numbers: cost per load and units per load. But record **what distance that cost corresponds to** — without it, the figure cannot be compared with another plant's.
Curing occupies space, not labor
Concrete and precast need time before dispatch. That time consumes no labor and no machine hours — but it occupies **yard space** and ties up capital.
If yard space is scarce at your plant, that is a genuine constraint and reducing occupancy time earns real money. If you have spare yard, it earns nothing — precisely the case the bottleneck guide describes.
Three lines worth attention
| Category | What is distinctive |
|---|---|
| Material | Mix proportions by weight: cement, sand, aggregate, admixture, water. Use the mix actually running, not the original design mix if they differ |
| Freight | A major line, by weight and distance. State the assumed distance |
| Overhead | Curing yard area is usually the largest overhead component in this trade |
The other seven follow the general method described in the other guides. Rework rarely applies — once cured, a defective unit is scrap.
Related guides
- Freight for bulky goods: the truck fills before it loads up
Furniture freight is sold by volume, not weight, which changes what a cost reduction is worth. How to cost it per product, and why flat packing is a costing decision before it is a design one.
- Food processing cost: yield, batches and the things that happen between them
Costing a processed food product across all ten categories. Raw material loses weight at every step, and the costs between batches — cleaning, changeover, testing — belong to the batch, not to the piece.
- Is the saving real? Bottlenecks, and the three ways a number becomes money
Why speeding up a machine usually saves nothing, when a number on a costing sheet turns into cash, and how to tell real cash savings apart from cost avoidance before anyone in finance asks.