Ready-Mix Concrete Manufacturing in the United States

NAICS 2022 code 32732. NAICS is the North American Industry Classification System, the federal standard for grouping businesses. This is a NAICS industry (five-digit level).

1. Overview

Ready-mix concrete is the wet, freshly mixed concrete that arrives on a job site in a rotating-drum truck, ready to pour into forms before it hardens — the country's most-used building material by volume, and the stuff of foundations, slabs, driveways, bridge decks, highways, and warehouse shells. This five-digit code covers the batch plants that combine cement, sand, gravel, water, and chemical admixtures and deliver the result in an unhardened ("plastic") state.[1]

For an investor, the industry is a clean, high-volume proxy for the U.S. building cycle, and an instructive business model: because wet concrete must be discharged within roughly 90 minutes and 300 drum revolutions (the ASTM C94 limit) and is heavy relative to its value, it cannot be shipped far — roughly 95% of output by weight moves less than 100 miles. The industry is therefore a collection of thousands of small, local markets rather than one national one.[1]

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

At the five-digit level, NAICS 32732 contains a single six-digit child industry, 327320 (Ready-Mix Concrete Manufacturing). There is no second child to average in and no sibling to net against, so this level is effectively identical to that one child — same scope, same firms, same federal statistics.

Because of that one-to-one match, this page is a short pass-through. It gives this level's own ground-truth figures below and flags where the picture has moved; for the full treatment — how the money works line by line, demand drivers, regulation (environmental permitting, embodied-carbon "Buy Clean" rules, antitrust), consolidation, risks, and the detailed investable universe — see the 327320 primer. Nothing is lost by reading the child; the two describe the same industry.

3. How big it is

Federal statistics for NAICS 32732 (these are our ground-truth figures):

(County Business Patterns, or CBP, is the Census Bureau's annual count of employer establishments; the Economic Census is its full five-year business census; the Small Business Administration, or SBA, sets the employee count below which a firm counts as "small" for federal programs.)

Volume reads the cycle better than dollars. The trade group estimates the industry shipped about 373 million cubic yards in 2025, with average selling price up roughly 4% year over year;[5] production was about 400 million cubic yards in 2023, with Texas at 15% of volume, California 9%, and Florida 8% — nearly a third of national output in three states.[4] The cyclical swing is severe: volume peaked at 458.3 million cubic yards in 2005, bottomed at 257.4 million in 2010, and took roughly fifteen years to recover.[4]

Where estimates disagree. Private analysts size the market above the federal number — IBISWorld puts 2025 at about $47.8 billion, and some vendors quote $100 billion-plus. Those higher figures use broader scope and methodology than Census receipts; the credible range is $43–$48 billion, and this page treats the $42.95 billion Economic Census figure as ground truth.[1]

Undercount caveat. Ready-mix is well captured by federal data — it is capital-intensive and employer-based (few one-person operators) and not government-run, so CBP's 6,356 establishments line up closely with the trade group's estimate of about 6,500 plants and roughly 75,000 mixer trucks.[1] The real distortion is the opposite of an undercount: the biggest producers are ready-mix divisions of far larger integrated aggregates-and-cement companies, and their concrete revenue is folded into bigger reporting segments. You therefore cannot read the industry off any single company's financials, and no public stock "is" the industry.

4. The investable universe

Because this level equals its one child, where value concentrates is exactly the 327320 picture: there is no U.S.-listed pure-play ready-mix stock. Public exposure comes bundled inside large, vertically integrated building-materials companies where ready-mix is usually the lowest-margin, most cyclical segment — CRH (NYSE: CRH), Cemex (NYSE: CX), Amrize (NYSE: AMRZ), Vulcan Materials (NYSE: VMC), Knife River (NYSE: KNF), Titan America (NYSE: TTAM), and Eagle Materials (NYSE: EXP), plus foreign-listed Heidelberg Materials and Buzzi.[1] Scale varies widely inside that list: CRH reported 16.7 million cubic yards of Americas ready-mix volume in 2025, Cemex operated 279 U.S. plants with ready-mix at 55% of its U.S. external revenue, Amrize runs 273 North American plants, Knife River 135 plants across 13 states, and Titan America sold 4.594 million cubic yards.[1]

Two changes since the last version of this page. Martin Marietta (NYSE: MLM) exited ready-mix entirely in February 2026, transferring its remaining Texas cement and ready-mix operations to Quikrete in an asset exchange that sent $450 million of cash to Martin Marietta; it is no longer a ready-mix vehicle. Vulcan sold its California ready-mix assets to CalPortland in June 2026, narrowing its concrete footprint.[1]

The bulk of the industry by company count is privately held — the trade group estimates roughly 85% of U.S. ready-mix companies are family-owned or locally operated — alongside private-equity and strategic roll-ups: Quikrete (which bought Summit Materials for about $11.5 billion in 2025), SRM Concrete, CalPortland, Irving Materials, and Ozinga.[1] Sources disagree on who is largest: IBISWorld reports CRH as the largest U.S. ready-mix producer, while SRM Concrete describes itself as the largest U.S. supplier (8,500 employees across 24 states) and trade press called it the top U.S. operator in early 2025 — a reminder that no one publishes an audited national volume ranking.[1] See the 327320 primer for the full company-by-company breakdown.

5. How the money works

Revenue is cubic yards times price per yard, and economics turn on volume, local pricing power, input-cost pass-through, and vertical integration. The trade group's 2023 benchmarking survey (174 participants, about a third of U.S. production) gives the clearest per-yard picture: revenue of $159.68 per yard, material cost of $89.01 (56% of revenue — cement $40.42 and aggregates $38.87 the two big lines), operating cost of $48.59, and pretax profit of $14.59 per yard, about a 9% margin.[4] Delivery alone runs $29.42 per delivered yard, on a typical 28-mile round trip taking 114 minutes with 8.5 yards aboard, so turns per truck are a real profit lever — annual production per mixer fell from 5,740 yards in 2022 to 5,380 in 2023.[4]

Reported gross margins cluster around 15–20% (Knife River's ready-mix line came in at 17.1% in 2025), and per-yard pricing spans a wide band across public reporters — Titan America averaged $162.36 and Vulcan $188.82 in 2025.[1] Long-run returns are much thinner than the strong 2023 snapshot suggests: across fifteen years of survey history, average pretax profit was only $3.31 per yard and average pretax return on assets 4.3%.[4] That gap between a good year and the cycle average is the single most important number on this page.

The moat is local: each plant realistically serves only a 20–30-mile haul radius, so pricing power depends on how few competing plants sit nearby, and integrated majors that own the cement kiln and the aggregate pit capture margin at three stages instead of one — though integration also brings quarry-permitting, reserve-quality, and kiln risk rather than making inputs free.[1] These are the child-level economics; 327320 has the detail.

6. What drives demand

Ready-mix has essentially no demand of its own — it is pulled by construction. In the trade group's 2023 participant survey the end-market mix was 44% commercial, 31% residential, 9% public works, 11% roads, and 5% parking lots.[4] Note the tension with the conventional framing, which treats public infrastructure as the dominant channel: by that survey, public work (roads plus public works, about 20%) is smaller than commercial building, even though it remains the most policy-driven and the least rate-sensitive slice.

The three channels behave differently. Interest-rate-sensitive residential building swings with mortgage rates; nonresidential building carries reshoring "megaprojects" (semiconductor fabs, battery plants, data centers) as a current bright spot; and public infrastructure is supported by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which committed $1.2 trillion over five years, about $550 billion of it new spending.[1] Regional population growth (Sun Belt migration) concentrates demand in specific metros, which matters because the business is local, and asphalt, steel, and engineered wood take share at the margin on relative price.[1]

Recent macro context: Census reported 2025 private construction spending of $1.6475 trillion, down 2.9% from 2024 — residential $905.2 billion (down 2.6%), nonresidential $742.4 billion (down 3.1%) — while public construction reached $516.8 billion, up 3.6%.[7] Full discussion is in the 327320 primer.

7. Regulation

Ready-mix is regulated as a heavy-industrial, trucking, and increasingly carbon-intensive activity: air permits for dust and water permits for stormwater and high-pH wash-water under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES); embodied-carbon rules, including the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Label Program for Low Embodied Carbon Construction Materials, launched August 2024 starting with concrete, asphalt, glass, and steel; federal "Buy Clean" procurement and Environmental Product Declarations (carbon "nutrition labels"), backed by a Federal Highway Administration low-carbon materials program authorized at up to $2 billion; Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) silica-dust limits; and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rules for mixer fleets.[1] Decarbonization is a differentiator as well as a cost — the trade group reports members cut concrete's measured carbon footprint 21% over seven years using blended cements, supplementary cementitious materials, and mix optimization.[1]

Antitrust is an unusually live issue — because local markets are concentrated, ready-mix has drawn repeated Department of Justice enforcement (Argos USA paid a $20 million criminal price-fixing penalty and two executives were convicted), and in 2026 the California Attorney General required plant divestitures as a condition of CalPortland's purchase of Vulcan's California assets.[1] Trade policy bites directly: 2025 tariffs of 25% on cement imports from Canada and Mexico, which together supply roughly a quarter of U.S. cement imports, raise the industry's largest input cost.[1] The 327320 primer covers each in full.

8. Consolidation

The national picture is extreme fragmentation slowly being rolled up. The federal Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) — a standard concentration gauge where regulators treat anything below 1,500 as "unconcentrated" — is just 99 for this industry, essentially atomistic nationally.[2] The top four firms hold about 15% of revenue, the top eight 22%, the top 20 35%, and even the top 50 only 50% — half the industry's revenue sits outside the 50 largest companies.[2]

That national fragmentation coexists with tight local markets and a steady deal stream that has reshaped the top of the table in the last five years: Vulcan / U.S. Concrete (~$1.294 billion, 2021), Summit / Argos USA (~$3.2 billion, 2024), Quikrete / Summit (~$11.5 billion, 2025), Quikrete / Martin Marietta's Texas operations (asset exchange, February 2026), and CalPortland / Vulcan's California assets (June 2026, with required divestitures). Two new stand-alone North American materials companies were also created by spin-off — Knife River from MDU Resources (2023) and Amrize from Holcim (2025) — while large independents such as SRM Concrete keep growing by acquisition.[1] See 327320 for the full deal record.

9. Risks

The same risks as the child: cyclicality (the 2005–2010 collapse of 44% in volume is the reference case, with high fixed costs amplifying downturns); input-cost volatility (cement, diesel, aggregates, plus 2025 cement-import tariffs) against thin margins, especially on fixed-price contracts; a persistent mixer-driver shortage — 70% of companies in the trade group's 2022 survey said they had lost business because of it; commoditization for standalone producers with no national pricing power; antitrust exposure from local concentration; the cost of the carbon transition, including tightening fly-ash supply as coal plants retire; weather and seasonality that halt pours in freezing or wet conditions; and quality liability — a batch that fails a structural test can trigger demolition, replacement, and litigation costs far exceeding the value of the concrete sold.[1] Full treatment in the 327320 primer.

10. How to invest and the outlook

Because this level is its one child, the routes are identical. Public-market investors buy the integrated majors (CRH, CX, AMRZ, VMC, KNF, TTAM, EXP) and accept that ready-mix is only a slice — usually the cyclical tail behind higher-margin aggregates, which is what most investors are actually buying. Martin Marietta is no longer a route into this industry after its February 2026 exit.[1] Private-market investors, where most of the industry lives, own or build local plant networks or back roll-ups of independents; ready-mix is a classic local consolidation play. Underwriting should be local rather than national: trade radius, competing plants within haul distance, yards per truck, round-trip minutes, driver retention, owned versus purchased cement and aggregate, and contract-price reset timing matter more than any market-growth forecast, and prices paid for integrated cement-and-aggregate portfolios do not transfer to a standalone batch plant.[1]

The near-term setup is a tug-of-war: IIJA infrastructure money and reshoring megaprojects support volumes, while housing swings with rates and cement tariffs plus decarbonization costs press on thin margins — with low-carbon concrete backed by federal Buy Clean procurement emerging as a genuine differentiator.[1] For the complete how-to-invest and outlook discussion, read the 327320 primer.

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Sources

1. See the child-industry primer: Ready-Mix Concrete Manufacturing in the United States (NAICS 327320), this report series — which carries the full sourcing for industry scope, economics, demand, regulation, consolidation, and the investable universe (NRMCA benchmarking and driver surveys, Census research papers, IBISWorld, SEC filings for CRH, Cemex, Vulcan, Knife River, Titan America and Martin Marietta, DOJ and California Attorney General enforcement, EPA and FHWA low-carbon programs, and the Syverson–Hortaçsu Journal of Economic Perspectives study of ready-mix local markets).
2. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census — Concentration Ratios and Receipts, NAICS 327320 (2022). Receipts $42.95B; 1,994 firms; CR4 15%, CR8 22%, CR20 35.2%, CR50 50.2%; HHI 99.2. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/economic-census.html
3. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023, NAICS 327320 (2023). 6,356 establishments; 94,195 employees; $7.17B annual payroll; $1.52B first-quarter payroll. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
4. National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, 2023 Performance Benchmarking Survey and State of the Industry (2023). ~400M cubic yards (2023); TX 15%, CA 9%, FL 8%; per-yard economics ($159.68 revenue, $89.01 materials, $48.59 operating, $14.59 pretax, $29.42 delivery); end-market mix; volume cycle (458.3M peak 2005, 257.4M trough 2010); 15-year average pretax profit $3.31/yard and 4.3% pretax ROA. https://www.nrmca.org/wp-content/uploads/Performance_Benchmarking_Survey_and_State_of_the_Industry.pdf
5. National Ready Mixed Concrete Association / Concrete Financial Insights, U.S. Concrete Industry Data (2025). ~373 million cubic yards shipped; ~4% price increase. https://concretefinancialinsights.com/us-concrete-industry-data
6. U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Small Business Size Standards (2023). 500-employee threshold for NAICS 327320. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
7. U.S. Census Bureau, Construction Spending Release — December 2025 (2025). Private spending $1.6475T (down 2.9%); residential $905.2B; nonresidential $742.4B; public $516.8B (up 3.6%). https://www.census.gov/construction/c30/pdf/pr202512.pdf