Concrete Chipping Division · A Division of Express Chipping, Inc.Concrete Truck Chipping
Every inch of hardened concrete inside a mixer drum is weight you haul and cannot sell. Our crews chip ready mix trucks back to clean steel on your lot, on your schedule, and keep them there so each truck runs at the capacity it was rated for.
Dead weight out, legal yards per load back in.
Most drums are a single shift, not a week in a shop.
Mechanical chipping to bare steel, no blasting, no soaks.
Recurring visits sized to your pour volume.
What concrete truck chipping actually is
Concrete truck chipping is the mechanical removal of hardened concrete from the inside of a ready mix mixer drum, along with the fins, the charging hopper, the discharge chute, and the frame where washout runs down. Crews enter the drum with pneumatic chipping hammers and take the accumulation off in sheets until the steel underneath is exposed again.
It is not pressure washing and it is not a chemical soak. Fresh residue comes off with water. Cured buildup, the kind that has been baking in a drum for months, does not. By the time a producer is searching for a chipping service, the material in the drum has the compressive strength of the product it was mixing, and the only thing that moves it reliably without cutting into the drum shell is a hammer and a trained operator.
The work is confined space entry. A mixer drum has one opening, limited air movement, and a man working inside it. Our crews run it as confined space: supplied air, harness, attendant at the opening, and a documented entry procedure every time. That is part of the service, not a line item.
What buildup costs you, in the four places it shows up
1. Payload you paid for and cannot sell
A mixer truck is weight limited, not volume limited. The axle and gross weight rules decide how many yards leave your yard, and every pound of hardened concrete bonded to the drum sits inside that limit. It is cargo you bought, cured, and now haul for free on every single load until somebody removes it.
Run the arithmetic on your own fleet rather than on an industry average. Take the empty weight of a truck you know was clean, weigh the same truck today, and the difference is buildup. Divide that by the weight of a yard of your most common mix. That is the yardage each load is short. Multiply by loads per day, by trucks, by days you run. Producers who do this exercise honestly are usually surprised by the annual number, and it is the number that decides whether a chipping cadence is an expense or a return.
2. Fuel burned moving concrete that is already sold
The dead weight does not just displace payload, it gets hauled. Same route, same hills, same stop and go through the jobsite gate, with hundreds or thousands of extra pounds aboard. The fuel cost of that is small per trip and relentless across a year and a fleet.
3. Drum, driveline, and suspension wear
Buildup rarely forms evenly. It collects where material sits, which puts the drum out of balance and sends vibration into the rollers, the drive, and the pedestal. An unbalanced drum spinning at road speed is a wear generator. The repair bill lands months later, where nobody connects it back to the cause.
4. Mix quality and discharge time
Fins are what move material through a drum. When buildup bridges the fins, the drum stops mixing the way it was designed to and starts dragging material around instead. Discharge slows, consistency drifts, and the driver waits longer at the chute on a job where the pour crew is watching the clock. Slow discharge is the complaint that reaches dispatch first; buildup is usually what is causing it.
Signs a mixer drum needs chipping now
Most fleets do not need a measurement to know. The truck tells you first:
- Delivered yards per ticket are drifting down on the same trucks and the same mixes.
- Discharge takes longer than it used to, and drivers are mentioning it.
- Visible accumulation at the drum opening, which is always the smallest part of what is inside.
- Drum wobble or vibration at highway speed, which points to uneven buildup.
- The charging sound changed. Drivers hear it before anyone sees it, because the material is no longer moving across bare fins.
- Fuel per yard is climbing without a route or a mix change to explain it.
Any two of those together is a drum that has been overdue for a while. The ones that get expensive are the trucks nobody looked inside for a year, because buildup compounds: the rougher the surface, the faster the next load sticks to it.
How often should a ready mix truck be chipped
There is no single interval that fits every fleet, and any vendor who quotes one without asking about your operation is guessing. Four things set the cadence:
Pour volume. A truck running three or four loads a day accumulates faster than one running one. Volume is the biggest single driver.
Mix design. Richer mixes, high cement content, fiber, and certain admixtures build up faster and bond harder than a lean structural mix.
Washout discipline. This is the one you control for free. A fleet that washes drums out properly at the end of every shift goes substantially longer between chippings than a fleet that does it when somebody remembers. Washout does not replace chipping, it extends the interval.
Climate and dwell time. Heat accelerates set, and a loaded drum sitting in the yard between pours on a hot afternoon is the worst case. Fleets in hot, dry regions and fleets with long waits at jobsites both see faster accumulation.
What we do with a new customer is chip the fleet once, document what came out of each truck, and set the recurring interval from that evidence rather than from a brochure. Then the schedule gets adjusted as the fleet changes. The point of a cadence is that buildup never again reaches the level where it costs you a load.
How the service runs on your lot
We come to the plant
Express Chipping is mobile. Crews arrive with their own compressors, hammers, air, lighting, and PPE. Nothing is towed anywhere, no truck goes to a third party facility, and you are not scheduling around somebody else's shop capacity.
We work around your dispatch board
Trucks get staged so your plant keeps batching. Nights and weekends are normal for us, because that is when the board is open. The constraint we work to is your pour schedule, not ours.
Drum interior, fins, hopper, chute, frame
Interior first, because that is where the payload is. Then the fins, so the drum mixes again. Then the charging hopper and discharge chute, which is where drivers lose time. Then the frame and the catwalk, where washout has been running down and hardening for months.
Clean steel, then cleanup
The debris is ours to handle. Crews pile and remove what came out of the drum and leave the pad the way they found it. A truck that goes back on the board after a chipping is ready to load, not ready to be swept out by your yard man.
Then the cadence starts
The first visit is the catch up. The recurring visits are the actual product. A fleet on a schedule never pays the catch up price twice.
Chipping compared with the alternatives
High pressure water
Effective on fresh residue, limited on cured accumulation. It also creates a containment and wastewater problem at the plant that somebody has to own. Water is a maintenance habit between chippings, not a replacement for one.
Chemical descalers
Useful in the right place and in the right concentration, and risky in the wrong one. Acid attacks the steel as well as the concrete, and a soak that runs too long or too strong takes drum life with it. We use chemistry where it helps the mechanical work, not instead of it.
Abrasive blasting
Fast on thin scale, hard on a drum shell, and expensive to contain inside a confined space. For the thickness of buildup a neglected mixer drum carries, it is the wrong tool.
Doing it in house
This is the real comparison for most producers, and the honest version includes everything: the confined space program, the supplied air equipment and its maintenance, the training and documentation, the workers compensation exposure, and the hours your own mechanics spend inside a drum instead of on the equipment only they can fix. Our page on outsourcing chipping and descaling lays out that comparison in full. Some fleets should keep it in house. Most that run the numbers do not.
Concrete truck chipping questions
A drum with moderate buildup is one crew, one shift or less. A drum that has not been touched in a year or more can take longer, and we will tell you that before we start rather than after. Either way the truck is off your board for the work itself, not for a trip to a shop.
No. Pneumatic chipping removes hardened concrete down to clean steel without cutting into the drum shell or the fins. It is the method drum manufacturers expect for buildup removal. The things that do hurt drums are aggressive blasting and long chemical soaks.
No. Crews arrive at your plant with their own equipment, air, and PPE, chip the trucks on your lot, and clean up behind themselves. There is no towing and no third party facility.
It varies by fleet, which is why we tell producers to weigh it rather than take a number from us. Weigh a truck you know was clean, weigh the same truck today, and divide the difference by the weight of a yard of your most common mix. That is what each load is short.
Yes, and we run it that way every time: supplied air, harness, an attendant at the opening, and a documented entry procedure. Our crews are trained and equipped for confined space work. See Safety for how the program is run.
Yes. Central mixers, portable mixers, hoppers, chutes, and batch equipment can be done on the same visit or on a separate cadence, usually off shift so batching never stops.
Pricing is quoted per fleet from truck count, buildup level, and location, and what we quote is what you pay. The comparison that matters is that cost against the payload, fuel, and repair money buildup takes from you every week. The Fleet Analyzer puts both sides on one page.
Washout discipline at the end of every shift, every truck, no exceptions. It is the single highest return habit a yard has, it costs nothing but consistency, and it stretches the interval between chippings more than anything else you control.
Truck chipping is one part of the concrete chipping division. Plants that run a drum cadence usually run silo cleaning and fleet washing on the same calendar, and FleetCare Plans is how those get bundled into one recurring schedule. Coverage by state and city is on Service Areas.
Find out what your drums are costing you
Crews serve ready mix producers in 49 states. Pricing is quoted per fleet before we start.