Hit 500,000 square feet last month, never expected to track that

I've been finishing concrete for about 11 years, mostly driveways and patios in the Portland area. Last month I tallied up my job logs out of curiosity and landed on 500,000 square feet total since I started keeping records back in 2015. That number surprised me because it's roughly 9 acres of slab, and I never thought about it as a whole until I added it up. The reason it matters is it helped me see which methods actually hold up over time, like how my 3/8 inch rake technique cut my patch repairs by a third. It also made me realize I should charge more for colored work since I've done 40 percent of that footage in the last two years alone. Anyone else keep a running total of their pours, and did it change how you bid jobs?

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phoenixw111mo ago

How did you track the footage for each pour, like did you just go off the invoice numbers or keep a separate log? I'm asking because if you can tie that 500k number back to which jobs had callbacks, you could probably figure out your real cost per square foot on the colored stuff, and that would give you hard numbers to back up a higher bid instead of just going off what the market will bear. That's the part most guys miss, they know they do good work but they can't prove which work pays and which work eats them alive in repairs. Your 3/8 inch rake thing cutting patches by a third is exactly the kind of proof I mean, because if that held up across a few hundred thousand feet then it's not a fluke, it's a pattern, and patterns are what you take to the bank when you're setting prices.

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