What a chute actually reaches
Eighteen feet is the number to plan against, and it is a distance from wherever the truck can stop rather than from wherever the concrete has to go. A concrete contractor in Maine, publishing figures from his own trade practice, gives a rear-discharge truck carrying three chutes a reach of 18 feet, from the back of the truck to the end of the chute. Backing the rear tyres right up to the forms, where the access road allows it, gains another 2 feet for a total of 20. A front-discharge truck reaches 20 feet with the chutes straight out in front of it, and 21.5 feet if its tyres can go all the way to the forms. A ready-mix supplier publishes the same 18 feet but measures it from the truck's tyres to the discharge point rather than from the back of the truck. Same figure, different datum, and the difference is most of a rear overhang.
What the distance costs when it runs out is set out in the industry's own British site guidance. It tells a contractor to ensure access for the ready-mixed truck, the largest of which may be up to 10.5 metres long, 2.6 metres wide and 3.8 metres high and weigh 32 tonnes when fully loaded. Where that truck cannot discharge directly into the works, the guidance requires transport to be provided to move the concrete from the delivery truck to the works: a front shovel or a dumper truck for small volumes, and for larger volumes it states that hiring a concrete pump is usually more efficient. At the formwork it repeats the same list — skips, barrows or pumps. It puts a figure on the manual option too: a barrow load weighs over 100 kg, and a 10 litre bucket would hold 25 kg. The ground past the chute is not free, and the cost is not only plant hire.
Source: rear- and front-discharge chute reach as published by a concrete contractor in Maine writing from his own trade practice — https://www.everything-about-concrete.com/how-far-can-a-concrete-truck-reach.html ; the same 18 feet, measured from the tyres to the discharge point, as published by a ready-mix supplier — https://mirreadymixconcrete.com/how-far-can-a-concrete-truck-pump-reach/ . Neither is a standard and neither cites a test, which is why both are named. The truck envelope, the transport-to-works requirement, the skips-barrows-or-pumps list and the barrow and bucket weights are quoted as printed from the British Ready-Mixed Concrete Association and the Mineral Products Association, "Ready-Mixed Concrete – Practical guide for site personnel", first published 2017, updated June 2020, sections 3.1 and 4.5 and the safety note in Appendix A, page 22 — https://brmca.org.uk/documents/BRMCA_Ready_Mixed_Concrete_Practical_guide_July_2020.pdf . The metric conversion of 18 feet is ours.
Why page one argues about the chute
Search the question and the first page of results argues about the chute figure itself rather than about the alternative. The published answers disagree with one another by a wide margin, on a question that sounds as though it has a single answer, which is why this page names its two sources and their datums instead of offering a consensus figure that does not exist. Where a result does move past the chute, it moves to a pump, to a truck-mounted conveyor or to wheelbarrows. Not one result on that page proposed bringing a machine that mixes concrete to the place the concrete is going. That is one search, on one engine, on one day in September 2026, recorded here as an observation and not as a measurement. Anyone can repeat it, and anyone repeating it on a different day will get a different page.
Source: an observed search engine results page for this question, recorded on 24 September 2026. It is one day's results, it is not reproducible, and no figure from any of those pages is adopted anywhere on this page. The two sources this page does rely on are named in the section above.
The other way: drive the mixer in
The third answer is to stop solving for reach and start solving for where the machine can stand. Ten of the sixteen self-loading mixers in our records carry a set of overall dimensions, and their widths run from 1.60 to 2.30 metres against the 2.6 metres the site guidance gives for the largest ready-mix truck. Length by width by height in metres, narrowest first, as the plants supplied them: 4.35 × 1.60 × 2.45; 4.95 × 1.65 × 2.75; 4.95 × 1.80 × 2.80; 5.00 × 1.85 × 2.80; 5.10 × 1.95 × 2.80; 5.30 × 2.10 × 2.80; two machines at 5.30 × 2.15 × 2.85; 7.06 × 2.21 × 2.58; and 5.45 × 2.30 × 2.90. Lengths there run from 4.35 to 7.06 metres against the truck's 10.5 metres.
On nine of those ten the plant supplied one set of dimensions and did not state what position the machine was standing in when it was measured. Width barely moves between positions. Height moves a great deal, because the drum and the loading bucket both travel, so the heights in that list are on record and they are not clearance figures, and this page does not offer them as clearance figures. Read the width band honestly and it is not a claim that these machines go anywhere either. The 1.60 metre machine is one machine. At 2.30 metres the widest of the ten stands 300 millimetres inside the largest truck the association describes, and a lane that turned that truck away will most likely turn it away too. The first four of the ten are 1.85 metres or narrower, and those are the ones a gateway measurement actually decides between.
Only one of the ten is named with specifications on this site: the SLM-18, at 2.21 metres wide and 7.06 metres long. The other nine carry required specifications that are not confirmed in writing — drum volume, engine make, rated power, operating weight, in various combinations — so their dimensions appear here with no model number attached to them. They appear at all because a measurement is a measurement. It exists, it can be checked against a tape at the gate, and leaving it out would make this range look narrower and tidier than it really is. What cannot be done with them is quote one as a model, and a supplier who fills a specification column from a similar machine has moved the risk out of his quotation and into your booking. The widths are worked through model by model in our guide to how wide a concrete truck is.
Source: our specification records for the sixteen self-loading mixers. Ten carry a set of overall dimensions, reproduced here as supplied and sorted by width; on nine of those ten the plant did not state the measuring position. The 300 mm is worked out here against the association's truck width quoted above. Which machines are named with specifications is set out model by model on the published model range. The five crawler dozers in the same records are a different category of machine and are not counted anywhere on this page.
What a self-loading machine discharges into
What the machine does at the end of that drive in is recorded in the configuration lists, and they are specific about the drum and silent about the chute. All sixteen self-loading mixers carry a configuration list, fifteen of them complete. Seven record a drum that raises and slews through 270 degrees, which means the discharge point can be presented through three-quarters of a circle without moving the chassis; one of those seven adds a hydraulically controlled hopper that loads at the front and discharges at the rear. Of the ten machines with dimensions on file, exactly one is among those seven — the SLM-18, which is also the longest of the ten. The other nine records say nothing at all about discharge geometry, and that silence is the state of our records rather than an editorial choice.
So what the machine discharges into is settled on site, and we cannot narrow it with a number. No chute length, no discharge height and no discharge reach is recorded on any of the sixteen self-loading mixers, and none of the three is estimated here, not even as a range. What the lists do record is the part of the cycle that runs before discharge. All fifteen complete lists record a machine that draws its own water: seven through a self-loading water controller with an external suction pump, eight through a large water tank with a loading system. Seven carry a reversing and drum-monitoring camera. Six record articulated steering. No turning radius is recorded for any of the sixteen, so articulated is left as the word the list uses rather than converted into a circle nobody has given us.
Source: the configuration lists supplied by the plants for the sixteen self-loading mixers, fifteen of which are complete; the counts of seven, eight, six and one are made here by reading those lists. The absence of a chute, discharge-height, discharge-reach or turning-radius entry was checked record by record across all sixteen. The five crawler dozers in the same records carry no configuration list and no drum, and are not counted here.
Where a pump is still right
A pump is still the right answer when the concrete has to go up. We hold no discharge-height figure for any of the sixteen self-loading mixers, so this page will not say how high one can place concrete. What is not in dispute is that a machine can only stand where it can drive: a second floor, a lift shaft or a core is not an access problem that driving a machine in solves, whatever the drum can do once it is standing there. The industry guidance arrives at the same place from the other direction. Where the truck cannot discharge directly into the works and the volume is large, it states that hiring a concrete pump is usually more efficient than moving concrete with a front shovel or a dumper. Height and volume are the two conditions under which a reach problem is genuinely a pumping problem, and neither is a question about whether the site is tight.
Volume is the second condition, and it is a supply question rather than an access one. Rated discharge is on record for fourteen of the sixteen self-loading mixers and runs from 1.0 to 4.5 cubic metres, which is one batch at a time; a continuous pour measured in hundreds of cubic metres is a plant-and-pump job and always has been. It is worth saying plainly what a pump does not fix. The pump has to be fed, and it is fed by a ready-mix truck — one that may be up to 10.5 metres long and 2.6 metres wide and weigh 32 tonnes fully loaded — which still has to reach the hopper and discharge into it under a banksman's supervision. Hiring a pump moves the access problem to wherever the pump can stand. On a site where the truck cannot get in at all, that is a shorter move than it first sounds.
Source: the reasoning here is ours and is set out so that it can be argued with. The external figures are the association's guidance quoted above: section 3.1 on when a pump is more efficient and on the truck that has to reach the site, and section 3.2, which requires a banksman to supervise the safe movement and positioning of the truck. Rated discharge is as declared by the plants, on record for fourteen of the sixteen self-loading mixers and quoted as recorded. No pump boom reach figure appears here, because we have not sourced one.
What this page does not compare
One limit belongs in the body rather than in a footnote. Everything above compares where a machine can stand, which is measured, against how far a truck can send concrete from where it stands, which is published. It does not compare the two machines' discharge reach, because ours is not recorded anywhere: no discharge height and no chute figure exists on any of the sixteen self-loading mixers, and a dealer who quotes you one has taken it from somewhere other than a specification sheet. It does not offer you a clearance height either, because on nine of the ten measured machines nobody has told us what position the machine was standing in when the tape went on it. And no figure for output per day, loads per shift or crew size appears anywhere here, because we hold no such figure and a number invented to fill that gap would be the least checkable one on the page.
Source: this section states absences and contains no figure of its own. Each absence was checked record by record across the sixteen self-loading mixers.