Delivery costs are one of the biggest drivers of margin in ready-mix and aggregates, yet they’re often priced with rough assumptions or outdated fees.
In this blog, we’ll explain how zone-based pricing works, how to set up delivery zones using real dispatch data, and how to keep them accurate as costs change.
We’ll also explore how to apply them consistently from quote to delivery, so delivery pricing reflects reality and margins hold and how Slabstack helps producers with zone-based pricing.
| Key takeaways Zone-based pricing is a delivery pricing strategy where producers set a single delivery rate for defined geographic areas. Each zone has a different delivery cost, with prices typically increasing as distance and delivery time increase. Cost factors that should define your delivery zones as a concrete producer include: Distance & drive time, fuel consumption, driver wages, truck operating costs, and load & unload time variability. To set up delivery zones, first map your plant catchment area, group deliveries by time and distance, and identify natural breakpoints for pricing. Then, assign a base delivery price for each zone, and validate zones against data to make sure you’re on the right track. Slabstack, a CRM and sales intelligence solution for construction material producers, makes zone-based pricing practical by connecting delivery data, pricing logic, and dispatch into one system. |
Why delivery zones matter in ready-mix and aggregates pricing
Delivery zones matter in ready-mix and aggregates pricing because, for most producers, delivery is one of the largest cost components outside of raw materials. Yet, it’s often treated as a static add-on.
Two jobs with the same material price can look identical on a quote, but perform very differently once trucks leave the yard. Things like distance, traffic, unload time, and driver hours can all affect the delivery price.
When your delivery pricing doesn’t account for these changes, it can affect your profit margins.
Zone-based pricing helps you charge appropriately for the cost you’re actually taking on, without penalizing close-in customers or subsidizing far-out jobs.
Let’s understand this in more detail below.
What is zone-based pricing?
Zone-based pricing is a delivery pricing strategy where producers set a single delivery rate for defined geographic areas around each plant or yard. Each zone has a different delivery cost, with prices typically increasing as distance and delivery time increase.
So instead of calculating exact mileage for every job, producers group customers into zones based on distance, drive time, traffic patterns, and operating costs, allowing them to cover delivery expenses consistently while keeping pricing simple and competitive.
To understand why zones work so well in this industry, let’s compare some other delivery pricing strategies that are most commonly used.
- Flat delivery fees: In this model, you apply a flat delivery fee to every job, regardless of distance or delivery time. Producers often choose this model because it’s easy to explain, fast to quote, and simple to manage internally. But flat fees often ignore real delivery cost differences.
- Pure per-mile pricing: Per-mile pricing charges customers based on the number of miles from the plant to the jobsite. You may choose it because it feels fair, transparent, and more detailed than a flat fee. However, miles alone don’t reflect real delivery costs. Traffic, congestion, unload time, and driver hours can make a short urban trip more expensive than a longer highway delivery.
Zone-based pricing balances simplicity and accuracy. It helps group deliveries with similar cost behavior and applies pricing that reflects the average distance, time, and operating cost for that area.
| Did you know: Fuel is one of the most unpredictable components of aggregate hauling. A diesel increase of even a few cents per gallon can ripple through your delivery cost overnight. Read our detailed guide on how delivery costs impact supplier margins to know more. |
But the key is to set the right delivery zones. Read the next section to see how you can do that.
5 cost factors that should define your delivery zones as a concrete producer
Delivery zones shouldn’t be drawn with a ruler. They should be shaped by how your trucks actually move and what they cost to operate in different conditions. Here are some factors to consider when creating delivery zones.
Distance and drive time
Distance sets the outer boundary of a zone, but drive time determines the real cost. A 12‑mile delivery through city streets with lights, traffic, and tight site access can take twice as long as a 25‑mile highway run. Longer drive times reduce the number of loads a truck can deliver in a day, which directly increases the cost per load.
Fuel and diesel consumption
Fuel use also isn’t as straightforward as we’d like. Stop‑and‑go traffic, idling at jobsites, and slow urban routes burn significantly more diesel than steady highway driving. If zones are built on miles alone, fuel-heavy routes get underpriced.
Driver wages and hours
Longer delivery cycles may push total driver hours up and increase overtime risk, especially during peak pours. Zones need to reflect average hours per delivery; otherwise, labor costs quietly outrun what’s being charged.
Truck and mixer operating costs
When a truck spends more time on one delivery, it can’t run as many loads in a day. Yet the fixed costs like maintenance, insurance, and depreciation don’t change. If overlooked, this too can affect your margins in the long run.
Load and unload time variability
You already know that all job sites are different. Small pours, congested urban sites, and short-load drops often extend unload times well beyond assumptions. Those extra minutes compound across a day and materially increase delivery costs in certain zones.
To understand these factors better, consider the following example.
Let’s say a producer reviewed 6 months of dispatch data and found clear cost gaps by zone.
- Zone 1 jobs averaged 45 minutes round‑trip and allowed 6–7 loads per truck per day.
- Zone 2 jobs averaged 75 minutes and dropped that to 4–5 loads.
- Zone 3 jobs regularly exceeded 2 hours once unload time was included, limiting trucks to 2–3 loads per day and pushing drivers into overtime.
Even though the distance difference looked small on a map, the extra time and labor doubled the delivery cost for Zone 3.
With these cost factors in mind, let’s understand how you can clearly define delivery zones for your business to make sure you’re not losing margins.
How to set up delivery zones: A practical 5-step framework
Here’s a simple 5-step guide to help you set the right delivery zones. But before you start, you need the following data.
- Historical dispatch and ticket data (distance, time, volumes)
- Average delivery and unload times by job type
- Cost inputs such as fuel, driver wages, and truck operating cost per mile or hour
Keeping this data handy will help you create the right delivery zones for your business.
Step 1: Map your true plant catchment area
To map your true catchment area, start with where your trucks actually go. Historical deliveries can reveal your real service footprint.
- Map completed jobs by location and look for patterns.
- Natural boundaries may emerge around highways, urban cores, industrial corridors, and congestion points.
- These boundaries matter more than simple distance rings on a map.
Once you see the true catchment area, it's easier to define zones that reflect operating reality instead of theoretical coverage.
Step 2: Group deliveries by distance and time
The next step is to analyze deliveries by both mileage and total cycle time. You’ll often find that short urban trips cost more than longer rural ones due to traffic and unloading delays.
Grouping deliveries by distance and time creates zones that align with actual costs. This step is where we’ve seen many producers uncover hidden loss areas they didn’t realize were dragging margins down.
Step 3: Identify natural breakpoints for pricing zones
Look for clear points where the delivery cost jumps. For example, this might be where average delivery time pushes past 90 minutes, trucks lose a full load per day, or drivers start hitting overtime.
Those points are where a new zone should start.
If zones are too wide, low-cost jobs and high-cost jobs get lumped together, and the expensive deliveries quietly lose money.
Clear zone boundaries make delivery pricing easier for sales to quote, easier for dispatch to execute, and easier for managers to defend when margins are reviewed.
Step 4: Assign base delivery pricing to each zone
Once you have defined the zones, the next step is to assign a base delivery price for each.
For each zone, calculate a base delivery fee that covers:
- Average fuel and labor cost
- Truck operating cost
- A margin buffer for volatility
This step is all about pricing delivery accurately so you can recover the real delivery costs and maintain healthy margins over time. Many producers also set margin floors by zone to prevent edge cases from slipping through during quoting.
Step 5: Validate zones against historical margin performance
This is one of the most important steps. After setting zones, you need to analyze the data to make sure that you’re improving your margins. To do that:
- Test proposed zone pricing against past jobs.
- Compare what would have been charged versus actual delivery costs and margins now.
This step will help ensure that you’ve set the right zones. If your margins improve, you’re on the right track.
Once you’ve set up zones, another thing to pay attention to is to keep the delivery costs within those zones up to date with the market.
How to keep delivery zone pricing accurate as costs change?
Setting up delivery zones isn’t a one-time setup. That’s because fuel prices move, labor costs rise, traffic patterns shift, and plants may open, close, or rebalance loads.
Some of the most common triggers for costs include:
- Fuel price surcharges or changes
- Labor cost increases
- Shifts in congestion or routing
- Fleet or plant changes
To make sure you’re staying up to date with construction price volatility, conduct monthly light checks focused on fuel and labor.
You can also prepare deeper quarterly reviews using dispatch performance data.
The key is tying zone pricing to refreshed cost inputs and recent delivery data. When actual delivery time starts exceeding assumptions, that’s a signal to review zone pricing.
Ownership matters too. Making one team or person responsible for zone updates prevents ad-hoc changes that confuse sales and dispatch alike.
While it's relatively easier to set up zones and start with zone-based pricing, what’s tricky is keeping your delivery costs up to date. In all the steps we discussed above, you need someone in your team to focus hours every week on these tasks.
A better way is to automate this, so your quotes always reflect the true market costs and your team can focus on improving their sales skills, rather than spending time updating spreadsheets. Here’s where Slabstack helps.
How Slabstack supports zone-based pricing
Everything we’ve discussed so far comes down to one thing: connecting pricing decisions to real delivery data. That’s exactly where Slabstack fits.
Slabstack is the only CRM and sales intelligence solution designed for construction material producers. Here’s how it supports zone-based pricing:
- Zone creation tied to real dispatch data: Our software uses historical delivery distance, time, and volume data to help define zones based on how trucks actually move.
- Pricing logic built for ready-mix and aggregates: Zone pricing applies automatically inside quotes, with support for base fees, zone adjustments, and margin floors by plant or material.
- Automatic updates as costs change: When fuel, labor, or transport inputs shift, pricing updates flow through zones immediately.
- Enforcement across sales and dispatch: Delivery pricing stays consistent from quote to dispatch. Accepted quotes carry the same zone-based delivery pricing through to scheduling, so sales, dispatch, and operations are always working from the same numbers.
- Visibility and accountability: Managers can see delivery profitability by zone, plant, and customer, making it clear where pricing holds and where it needs adjustment.
Slabstack helps you connect pricing, quoting, and dispatch.
When delivery pricing is grounded in real data and enforced consistently, it stops being a hidden cost and starts working the way it should, protecting margin on every load.
If you want to pressure‑test your current delivery zones or see how your pricing would look using real dispatch data, book a demo with our experts.
Zone-based pricing: Common FAQs
1. What is zone-based pricing?
Zone-based pricing is a delivery pricing method where producers set fixed delivery rates for defined geographic areas around each plant, instead of calculating delivery costs for every individual job.
2. What is an example of zone pricing?
A concrete producer might set three delivery zones around a plant. Zone 1 covers jobs within 10 miles and is priced at $85 per load, Zone 2 covers 10–25 miles at $125 per load, and Zone 3 covers jobs beyond 25 miles at $175 per load. The prices reflect average delivery time, fuel use, and driver hours for each zone, not just distance.
3. Why do ready-mix and aggregates producers use zone-based pricing?
Producers use zone-based pricing to simplify quoting, reflect real delivery costs, and avoid losing margin on longer or slower deliveries.
4. How do you determine delivery zones for a concrete plant?
Delivery zones are typically based on historical dispatch data, including delivery distance, total delivery time, traffic patterns, and average unload times.
5. How often should delivery zones be reviewed or updated?
Most producers review zone pricing monthly for fuel and labor changes, with deeper quarterly reviews using delivery performance and dispatch data.
