Hacker News Reader

Not sure how well that works in practice. Concrete has an amazingly short window of time that it's usable for, anywhere between 30 minutes and a couple of hours between the time it's mixed and the time it's set. To get a truck of concrete to a second site that is ready to go just doesn't seem like it work to mr.

View on HN

I was going to say, it’s hard to sell wet concrete on a short window. Min back order window for concrete is 24 hours and the construction crew plans the pours ahead so they are not waiting around for black market concrete. It actually costs a lot more to idle the crew than the price difference of black market

It wouldn't surprise me if what really happened was the concrete forms would bill for a crew and a "truck", send a truck of concrete 20% full, bill the whole thing, fill with whatever instead, and pocket the savings.

There was one instance I remember hearing about. A concrete truck driver was stopping on the way to the site and then adding water to his load to keep it at the right consistency. The result was weaker concrete that lead to some kind of collapse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com