As everyone is aware, the price of concrete continues to escalate at a pace that is very difficult to justify. Depending upon who you ask, you will receive as many explanations for the cost increase as people you ask. Some of the reasons include the cost of quarrying quality aggregates that meet ASTM C-33, fuel costs, labor increases, increased cement costs and, of course, demand. While it is clear that all these items do in fact contribute, it is hard to justify the extreme and frequent increase in the cost of concrete solely due to these items. All you have to do is check pricing in various areas to find that there is a huge disparity in the cost of a yard of concrete throughout this country. What's even more puzzling is that the ready mix industry continues to consolidate into fewer and fewer major suppliers. The small, independent ready mix producers are disappearing.

No one, including me, understands the fuel increase explanation as most ready-mix suppliers have an additional fuel charge (adjusted weekly) added onto each yard. How can fuel which you are now paying an additional surcharge for, in addition to already being priced into the per yard cost, be a reason for an increase?

Labor is not behind the extreme cost increases because labor costs simply have not risen that much. Employees are making more but not in correlation to the extreme cost increases and certainly, employees are not being raised at the measured frequencies of the ready mix cost increases.

It is true that certain areas are having problems obtaining quality ASTM C-33 aggregates, but that is not the case in most areas and most aggregates are still being excavated from the same quarries as they were years ago. I really don't see aggregates as the main reason for the cost increase.

The next excuse (and most often used) is cement shortages. Most of us have all heard of and experienced cement shortages in the last few years. Some areas experienced the problem far more than others. This has always been the main explanation for the cost increases, especially along the Gulf Coast and the southeast states.

Mexico has always had the capability of producing more than enough quality cement to ease the shortage pressure in the areas. This cement is only trucked rather than shipped, as other imported cement has to be. The problem has been the tariff the United States put on this cement 16 years ago. The tariff was intended to stop concrete costs from going down due to a flood of inexpensive (though quality) cement into the market.

Obviously, this backfired. Within the last few weeks, this tariff was lowered from +/- $26 per metric ton to +/- $3 per metric ton. Also, 3 million metric tons are now allowed to be imported rather than 1 million metric tons. All tariffs and import limits will be eliminated in April 2009.

These changes have already taken effect, but ready mix suppliers are already telling me that this will not affect (lower) pricing at all. In fact, they are telling me that costs will continue to rise at the current six month interval rate. This I really do not understand at all. If the most expensive item in ready mix is becoming more available at a lower cost, how do costs continue to rise?

This leaves us only with demand and the constantly shrinking number of independent ready mix suppliers throughout the country. I think everyone can formulate their own opinion with regards to costs from this situation.