Urban concrete truck drivers, specifically the ones in and around NYC and the boroughs, have one of the hardest driving jobs in the world. They have only an hour or two to get a truck full of concrete in nearby NJ or one of the boroughs to Manhattan or a denser part of one of the other boroughs. Regular rush hour and daytime traffic can often turn a 6 mile trip into a 2-3 hour journey so these trucks have to haul ass in a vehicle that is extremely wide and heavy and shoot gaps that are inches wider than the truck. I have an old friend who used to drive one of these trucks and he used to tell me stories about weaving through traffic and changing courses to make that delivery. At one point, he may have even dinged one of Vin Diesel’s side mirrors but was very cool about the whole experience.
The risk of wastage is not really about the cost, since a truck of concrete is only around $1,500 (peanuts compared to the total construction cost in the tens or hundreds of millions) but rather to the production process of the construction project. Concrete slab-pouring crews are well-oiled machines that run around the clock during working shifts and any sort of downtime, even the loss of a truck or two of concrete, can throw off their pace of work and due to the incredibly high overhead cost, cut into their profits significantly. These drivers definitely have a significant amount of pressure to deliver their goods very quickly!
Submitted by: oddseth