Ok, what's your opinion? It's a day before holiday and of course you have customers coming out of the woodwork wanting a concrete pump. You have all the pumps and operators booked for the morning, and a customer calls in at 3:00 pm and wants a pump at 12:00 am for 500/yds (says he forgot to schedule it). In checking further into it he ordered his concrete for this job last week!! Do you push off a customer that was prepared and ordered the pump in advance to take care of it or do you tell the customer with 500/yds, sorry love to do it, but no pump for you?

well if its a good customer or a regular customer then yes i might take the  job and rent out someone else,in these times you really don't want to turn  anyone away!

how about this!!!  Book the 500yds, pour it out by 7; he will be good for 8 oclock mud elswhere.  Double Up!!! Pump It out

Book the 12:00 500yds. and tell him you will do your best with the short notice you were given. Pull a couple of your (more eager) operators aside and let them know the situation. Send which ever one finishes their am pour 1st. We tend not to mind late jobs as much when we are given a heads-up and especially when we're Asked to do them instead of being Told to. Sunshine, Hopefully  you are blessed with at least one or two operators that have the "Thank You Ma'am May I Have Another" mentality. And dont forget to reward these few with a day off to go fish'n when they need it. They are your goto guys...

...There's several options. I think what Lee82 is referring to is finding out if concrete can deliver the order at 6-7:oo am and starting it before the others,(moving it up) but this risks having a pump tied up on one job all day, so dont send a "milk-man" in this case. Another option is sending a smaller pump than ordered to get the job started, then send the required size pump when its available. I dont know how busy you've been but to me this job has OT written all over it! I'd love to have a dispatcher that asks these questions. I've worked for too many that have a "Dont turn down/Dont give away" policy. so thanks for caring!!! TT.

Lee82,

That was my thought too, so I called the concrete company and they said they were going to slam them, that they were gonna give 'em 70/yds an hour and had to be done with them by 7:00 am to take care of the rest of their customers.

There is only one problem with the concrete companies theory, even though it sounds good, the last 10 times these people have pumped out there it's taken at least 11 to 12 hours to pump, period. So.......

Guess what? The update as of 10:00 am is the pump is still pumping. LOL 

Thanks TT!

You're welcome Sunshine, "Thank you ma'am may I have another!" ha ha...

I never cancel or reschedule someone who has done their homework and scheduled ahead of time, do I try and get the job  of course,but not at someone elses expense,it doesnt matter how many yards,but I do my best to do all jobs that call in,most times where theres a will there is a way and if you cannot do it you just cant do it  Happy Thanksgiving every one

Sunshine: Be good to the moneymaker too though! I HATE finding out at 5;00 pm I,ve got a 500 yd job at midnite and a second behind that. I'm only human and it takes me days to get over a running deuce after 4 hrs sleep. Usually my second job hose man hates it too!

well we win some and loose some, but the 500 yard work is hard to come by.  Hell all work is hard to come by at this point!!!  All we can do is try our best and hope we have a later pour that may be able to work with this.  Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!!

This happens quite often at least with some of my own customers,I'll get the Sunday night 7:00pm call from a certain individual.Most the time he needs only a line pump,but on occasion he orders a boom.The worst part about it is I usually call him every Friday just to ask him if he needs anything. I turn NOTHING down, put everything on the books! I have recently made a very good friend in this industry that would cover me even if I called him at 10:00pm Sunday night for a 12:00 am pour.We would, and have, covered each others customer for the next day by swapping pumps, operators,and even customers to get it done.IT ALWAYS works out. Oh, and the very best part is "he nor I" don't try to steal each others customers,operators or price gouge for the rental.unlike most of the others around here.