A cement truck, which is really a concrete mixer truck, carries about 8 to 10 cubic yards and arrives with a driver, so it is booked as a delivery rather than rented as a machine. What a rental counter hires you is the small end of the same job: towable mixers of 6 to 12 cubic feet, portable electric mixers, and the barrows, screeds and vibrators to place what they mix.
What a mixer truck holds
The standard drum is rated around 10 cubic yards and typically leaves the plant with 8 to 9 because weight limits bite first, exactly as they do on a dump truck. That is enough for a slab about twenty by thirty feet at four inches. Drivers allow a limited free discharge time on site, after which waiting is billed by the minute.
The short load charge is the real cost
Order two yards from a ready mix plant and you pay for the delivery of a truck that could have carried nine, which appears on the invoice as a short load fee and can rival the price of the concrete. That single line is what pushes small pours toward mixing on site, and it is worth asking the plant to quote before deciding.
When a towable mixer is cheaper
A towable mixer holding 6 to 12 cubic feet a batch commonly hires for $60 to $120 a day, and portable electric barrow mixers less again. Below about a cubic yard total, mixing on site with bagged material usually wins on cost. Above that, the labour of batching by hand overtakes the short load fee quickly.
Cement is not concrete
Cement is the grey powder that binds; concrete is cement, sand, aggregate and water mixed together, and it is concrete these trucks carry. The distinction matters when ordering, because a plant quotes concrete by the cubic yard at a specified strength and a builders merchant sells cement by the bag. Ask for what you actually want poured.
Questions people ask about cement trucks
How many yards are in a cement truck?
Around 8 to 10 cubic yards in a standard drum, with weight limits usually keeping the delivered load near the lower end. Smaller mini mix trucks carrying three or four yards operate in some markets and are worth asking about for tight sites.
Can I rent a cement truck?
Not as a self drive machine in most places. Ready mix arrives with a driver as a delivery service. What you can hire from a rental yard is a towable or portable mixer, and in some markets a volumetric truck that batches on site, which also comes with an operator.
What is a short load fee?
A charge added when you order less than a full truck, covering the trip the plant made for a partial load. It is commonly applied below about four or five yards and rises as the order shrinks, which is why very small pours are usually mixed on site instead.
How much concrete will a towable mixer make?
A 9 cubic foot drum yields roughly six usable cubic feet a batch, so about five batches to a cubic yard. That is achievable for footings or a small pad with two people working, and unrealistic for a driveway, where a delivered truck wins on both time and finish.