A pass over Allied Concrete's and Firth's own advice pages, the NZ Concrete Contractors Association guidelines, and a few independent cost guides — read against what our site currently says. What we have wrong, what we are missing, what is worth building — and a walk through Firth’s own online flow.
RESEARCH NOTES · 22 August 2026 · sources linked on each item
Four, and the first two are in customer-facing copy in three languages.
Our pages say a full truckload is 5 m³ and the whole balance-load explanation is built on it. The standard NZ mixer is commonly quoted at 6 m³ — MIMICO sell CESCO 6 m³ mixers specifically "for NZ job sites", and 6 m³ is the standard ready-mix truck size in NZ and UK usage.
It is now a single constant (TRUCK_M3) in the configurator, flagged unconfirmed, so it is one edit when a supplier tells us their fleet. But the same figure is written in prose on how-it-works in English, Chinese and Korean, and those need changing by hand.
→ Ask the first supplier what their trucks carry. It is a one-question answer.
We invented "measure load". Allied Concrete's own page uses balance load:
"We understand that occasionally there will be a miscalculation and we expect an 'occasional' balance load. Additional balance loads will be subject to truck availability."
And in NZ usage "your measure" means the quantity you call through to dispatch — the amount ordered, not the part-load. Using it our way would read as slightly wrong to anyone in the trade, which is the audience we least want to sound green in front of.
The configurator now says balance load. The how-it-works sections in all three languages still say measure load.
Independent NZ cost guides put ready-mix at roughly $180–$220 per m³. Our demo quotes about $305/m³ GST inclusive for 20 MPa — call it $265 ex GST. Auckland is dearer than the national average and those guides are rough, but the gap is big enough to matter to the model.
This is the blocked item "get one real, current supplier price" — except it now has a number to check against rather than being an abstract worry. If the true rate is nearer $200 our margin maths changes completely, in our favour.
Guides put common NZ minimums at 0.4–0.5 m³ with a small-load fee below that. Our engine uses 0.6 m³ standard and 1.0 m³ for exposed chip. Close, and ours may well be right for the specific plants — worth confirming rather than assuming.
Operational, and every one of them is a thing that goes wrong on a real day.
Allied require orders to be confirmed 24 hours before delivery, and an order for before 9am has to be confirmed by 3pm the previous day. We have no confirmation step at all — we take the order and go quiet until a plant accepts. A plant that expects a 24-hour confirm and does not get one may simply not schedule the truck.
→ Decide whether confirmation is ours to do on the customer's behalf. It probably is, and it belongs in the dispatch cascade.
Allied: cancel at least three hours before delivery or you may be charged. Our draft terms say we pass on whatever we are charged, which is honest but vague. If the plants have a hard window we should state it, because the customer will meet it whether or not we mentioned it.
Allied ask the customer to commit to a maximum quantity, and their commitment to deliver on time is given against that figure. It is the other half of the balance-load mechanism, and it is a cleaner way to describe what we already do than the language we invented. It also gives the plant something firm while leaving the customer room to come in under it.
→ Adopt the vocabulary. It costs nothing and makes us sound like we have done this before.
For anything over one load, Allied ask about truck spacing and require the customer to accept concrete at the ordered rate — and to ring dispatch if they cannot. We ask nothing about this. On a 3-truck pour it is the difference between a smooth day and three trucks queuing on the street with the meter running.
Standing time when a site is not ready is a real charge in this industry. Our whole pitch is that every fee is on the page before you commit — and this is a fee that can appear on the day and is on no page of ours. It should be in the fee list on how-it-works even if it is rarely charged.
Allied ask at order time for the placer or pumper and require a contact person on site during delivery. We ask for a phone number and an optional access note. Neither tells the driver who to look for.
The interesting part. Most of these are things nobody sells at the moment you are actually thinking about them.
Allied put curing at the centre of their advice: early moisture loss causes shrinkage cracking, and seven days is the minimum. The methods are cheap — ponding, plastic sheeting, spraying, curing compound — and the failure is expensive and permanent.
We sell finishing crews and pump hire. A curing kit or a curing reminder sold at checkout, or simply a text on day one and day three, would be the cheapest goodwill in the business and prevents the exact complaint we would otherwise have to argue about.
One caution worth passing on: curing compounds can interfere with paint, tiles and adhesives later.
NZCCA: control cuts should be made on the day of the pour or within 24 hours. That is a hard deadline arriving the day after we have taken the customer's money, and most DIY customers will not know it exists.
It is a scheduled follow-up, a reason for a post-pour message that is genuinely useful rather than marketing, and a natural third product beside pump hire and finishing crews — a cutting service booked at the same time as the pour.
NZCCA are explicit: a new driveway should not be used for seven days, 28 days is the industry standard for maximum strength, and sealant should not go on within seven days. These are the questions every homeowner asks after the truck leaves, and answering them before they ask is exactly the trust our positioning depends on.
NZCCA: "Plain or coloured concrete will have colour variations due to chemical reactions during the time of the drying processes." We sell oxide colour as a paid upgrade. A customer who expected uniform colour and got variation has a complaint, and the industry answer is that it is normal.
Saying it on the finish picker, before the money is spent, is both the honest thing and the thing that stops the argument. Same for exposed aggregate: some sand and small stone loss with wear is normal, and sealing reduces it.
The NZCCA position is that all concrete can crack and good practice only minimises it. Every one of our competitors buries this. Putting it on the page — with what reduces the risk: proper compaction, even depth, mesh, joints cut in time — is on-brand for a site whose whole argument is that we tell you things before you commit rather than after.
Allied advise accelerator in cold weather, retarder in heat. We already sell both as add-ons and currently offer them as a flat list with no guidance. The delivery date is in the order. Suggesting the right admixture from the forecast for that day would be genuinely novel — no NZ competitor does it, and it is a small amount of code against a weather API.
Independent guides name over-ordering as the most common way a DIY concrete job costs more than it should — people over-order out of fear of running short. Our volume calculator and the waste allowance are precisely this problem, and we do not say so anywhere. That is a marketing line we already earned.
Allied's pre-order checklist asks about things we sell or could: vapour barrier / polythene, reinforcing (we have a steel & mesh page), level and compacted subgrade, and whether a pump is needed. We ask about the pump. Asking the other three at the point of ordering is a better experience and three more chances to be useful.
We asked whether you actually get all the details and prices straight away on Firth’s site, and said he had heard you still have to ring them. So this was checked properly rather than assumed — the flow was walked as far as the price step. He is right, and the earlier note on this page was too pessimistic about our position.
Their own four-step summary on the home page ends:
"Submit your order. Enter the final delivery information prior to submit your order. We'll contact you to confirm time, site details and payment method."
And on the product step:
"For heavy duty options, Customer Service will go through these with you once your order request is received. Additional charges may apply."
So: you get an estimate on screen, then a phone call to settle the time, the site and how you pay — and charges can still be added after you have submitted. That is a better online experience than ringing three plants cold, and it is not the thing we are building.
Seven steps: Location → Product → Price estimate → Delivery date → Site Access → Contact info → Order summary.
Two things to take from it. The price step is called “Price estimate”, not price. And they give Site Access its own step — the biggest player in the country thinks access is worth a dedicated screen, which is the argument for the site panel we just built.
A banner across the top of every page: “Firth have a temporary fuel surcharge in place for all orders”, with the amount on a different page on a different website. It is a charge on every order that the estimate does not include.
This is our whole argument in one screenshot. Not because a surcharge is unreasonable — fuel moves — but because “every fee is on the page before you commit” is a promise they are not currently making and we are.
"You are responsible for understanding concrete principles and how to work with it. Please refer to concrete professionals for advice specific to your project."
Fair enough for a plant. But it is the opposite of our mix helper and spec card, which exist precisely so a customer who does not know concrete can still order the right thing. Worth knowing that the market leader has decided that is not their job.
Yesterday's version of this note said “you can order concrete online” is no longer a differentiator. Having actually walked their flow, that was too gloomy. The accurate version:
→ Our own framing is the right one: we contact multiple suppliers at once and help you find the best and quickest offer. Nobody else in NZ is doing that.