Software for the yard running concrete mixers.

A concrete mixer is the unit a rental yard turns over more than almost anything else on the lot. A weekend DIY customer takes one for a footing or a set of fence posts; a masonry crew runs several through a morning pour. The machine itself is simple — a drum, a set of blades, a small gas engine or motor, and on the bigger units a road-legal trailer. What makes mixers hard to run as a fleet is the churn and the cleanup, not the mechanics. The same small unit goes out and comes back constantly, often dropped at the gate, and too many come back with hardened concrete baked into the drum. EquipFlow handles concrete mixers the way the yard that built it handles fast-turning rental iron: dispatch, billing, maintenance, and return inspection on one record per unit.

Built inside Rental King, right now.

Rental King is a heavy-equipment rental yard in Odessa and Midland, TX. They run concrete mixers, manlifts, forklifts, light towers, generators, compressors, and water trucks on MSA contracts through the Permian Basin — 24/7, oilfield pace. EquipFlow was designed and first deployed inside that yard. Every feature was tested against their live operation before it shipped. The product runs there today.

Concrete mixers are low-dollar, high-volume units, and the money on them leaks in two places: at the gate and in the wash bay. A mixer returned caked with hardened concrete costs the yard labor to chip out and shortens the life of the drum, the blades, and the drive — and if the buildup is not documented at return, the cleaning charge never lands and the yard eats it. Because these units turn so fast and so many pass through in a weekend, no counter hand can hold the rate, the cleaning policy, and the cleanup queue in their head. When dispatch, billing, maintenance, and inspection all read from one unit record, the counter quotes the right rate, the inspection photo backs the cleaning charge, and the mechanic knows which scaled-up drums need a chip-out before they go out again. That single-record discipline is what keeps a high-churn mixer fleet profitable instead of break-even.

Concrete Mixer specs the rental record tracks.

Every number below is a sourced specification range. The render layer is the only path these values reach the page — they live on the unit record, not in a dispatcher's head.

Drum (wet/rated) capacity

9-12cu ft

Usable mixed-batch output

7.5-10cu ft

Gas engine power

7-13hp

Batch capacity (94-lb cement bags)

1-2bags

Operating weight

860-1115lb

Drum opening diameter

19in

How EquipFlow handles concrete mixers on the dispatch board.

Concrete mixers turn fast — most go out for a day or a weekend, not a month — so the dispatch board treats them as high-churn line items moving through the gate, not parked yard assets. The dispatcher can see which units are out, which are loaded for a morning delivery, and which are due back, on the same responsive screen at any hour. The trap with a mixer is the trailer setup: a towable unit dispatched without the ball-mount, working lights, or a road-legal spare puts the customer on the shoulder, so the dispatcher confirms the hitch class and tow gear on the rental record before the truck leaves. Because a single pour can pull several mixers at once and a weekend run can clean out the class, the board surfaces a class conflict at the point of assignment rather than at the gate, so the counter does not promise a unit that is already spoken for.

Billing concrete mixers — MSA, standby, and site-level tax.

Concrete mixers run high-churn and short-duration, so the daily and weekend rate matters more than long-term hour billing. The rate override lives on the customer record per equipment class, so a masonry contractor or pour crew on a master agreement gets its negotiated mixer rate applied automatically the moment a rental is created, with no rate sheet for the counter to hold in their head. Delivery and pickup charges ride the same invoice as the unit. The line item that earns its keep on a mixer is the cleaning charge: a drum returned with hardened buildup becomes a documented charge backed by the return-inspection photos, posted to the same invoice rather than argued at the counter. Tax jurisdiction is set on the delivery-site record, so a unit dropped across a county line still carries the right rate for where it worked. Invoices post to QuickBooks Online on close.

Maintenance on concrete mixers.

Mixer PM is hour-meter driven where the unit carries a meter and time-on-rent driven where it does not, and the maintenance module advances the service clock from whatever the return inspection records, so a mixer that ran hard through a big pour comes due on real use rather than on the calendar. The drum and the mixing blades are the heart of the machine and the first thing hardened concrete attacks: buildup unbalances the drum, eats the paddles, and loads the ring gear and pinion, so PM leans on drum and blade condition alongside the belt, the pull-start, and the small gas engine. A unit that comes back fully scaled gets pulled for a chip-out before it goes out again. Work orders, parts, and meter or time history live on the unit record, which is also where a cleaning or repair charge from a return inspection becomes a ticket the mechanic can act on.

Concrete Mixer return inspections.

The return inspection is the yard's control on a mixer, and it is where the money is. Before a unit comes off rent, the driver or counter hand runs a mobile-web checklist on a phone — no app install — records the meter or time reading, and attaches required photos that cannot be skipped. The mixer-specific checks are where most disputes live: the inside of the drum and the blades for hardened buildup, the belt and drive guard, the tilt or dump lock, and on a towable unit the tires, lights, and hitch. The photo of a caked drum is what turns a cleaning fee from an argument into a line item. Tying the inspection to the rental record before the unit is accepted back means a customer cannot drop a scaled-up mixer at the gate after hours and leave the cleanup to the yard with nothing on file.

Common concrete mixer classes in the field.

The product, the same way it runs for concrete mixers.

The sections below are the EquipFlow modules that matter most when running concrete mixers — each links to the full feature detail.

Operator guides for running concrete mixers.

Field-tested playbooks that go deeper on pricing, dispatch, billing, and maintenance for fleets like this.

• Concrete Equipment Rental Operations →
• Adding a New Equipment Category to Your Yard →
• Aerial Lift Inspection Requirements →
• Air Quality Equipment Rentals →

What you give up running concrete mixers in EquipFlow.

EquipFlow is a web app, so the return inspection needs a signal to load. For a mixer that mostly matters at the counter, where coverage is rarely an issue, but a unit dropped at the gate after hours still needs someone to run the inspection before it is accepted back — the system enforces the photo, it does not staff the gate. There is no built-in telematics on a small gas mixer, so usage is captured at return rather than streamed. And the billing logic is built around the rate-override-and-cleaning-charge model a yard actually runs on; a yard with an unusual deposit or flat-clean-fee structure should bring it to the demo so it can be scoped honestly rather than forced.