How wide is a ready-mix truck, really?
Two point six metres is the number to plan a gateway against, and it comes from the industry's own guidance in Britain rather than from us. The British Ready-Mixed Concrete Association's practical guide for site personnel opens its delivery chapter by telling the contractor to ensure suitable, stable and safe access for the 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". The drawing printed beside that sentence gives the axle weights separately: 7.1, 7.1, 9.51 and 9.51 tonnes. So the access question has four parts rather than one. A 2.6 m gap to pass through, 3.8 m of headroom above it, 10.5 m of vehicle to swing, reverse and stand, and ground that will carry a 9.51 tonne axle without rutting.
The same guidance states the part that is discovered late. Where the truck cannot discharge directly into the works, transport has to be provided to move the concrete from the delivery vehicle to the pour: a front shovel or a dumper for small volumes, and usually a hired pump for larger ones. The receiving clause adds that a banksman must supervise the movement and positioning of the truck. Both are stated by the association rather than inferred by us, and together they describe what a contractor is actually pricing. Not only whether the truck reaches the gate, but what has to happen between the gate and the pour once it is there. A self-loading mixer is a different shape of answer to the same site, because it mixes where it discharges rather than receiving concrete at a gate. What it does not change is the gap it has to pass through, which is the rest of this page.
Source: British Ready-Mixed Concrete Association and Mineral Products Association, "Ready-Mixed Concrete – Practical guide for site personnel", June 2020 edition, section 3.1 Site preparation with Figure 2, and section 3.2 Receiving. Envelope figures declared by the association for the largest truck in general use; the four axle weights as printed in Figure 2, which the association captions as a typical truck rather than the largest. Quoted as printed: https://brmca.org.uk/documents/BRMCA_Ready_Mixed_Concrete_Practical_guide_July_2020.pdf
The width that decides whether a machine gets in
Ten of the sixteen self-loading mixers in our records have an overall width on file, and they run from 1.60 m to 2.30 m. Both ends of that band matter. A machine 1.60 m wide takes a full metre less width than the 2.6 m truck above; at 2.30 m it takes 300 mm less, which is a margin worth measuring for but not one to assume. Anyone who tells you that self-loading mixers are 1.6 metres wide is quoting the narrowest machine on a list as though it were the list. The widths here are as the plants supplied them, unrounded and not estimated by us. Width is also the dimension least affected by what position a machine was standing in when it was measured, which is why this page leads on width and treats height as a separate and weaker question further down.
One of the ten is a fully specified published model: the SLM-18, at 2.21 m wide. The other nine all carry required specifications that are not confirmed in writing — drum volume, engine make, rated power, operating weight, in various combinations — so this page gives their dimensions without attaching a model number to any of them. Eight of the nine have no model number on this site at all, and one cannot be invented for them: the numbering runs off discharge volume, and two of the eight would land on numbers already in use by different machines. They appear here because a measurement is a measurement. It exists, it can be checked against a tape, and leaving it out would make the range look narrower and tidier than it is.
Source: our specification records for the sixteen self-loading mixers. Ten carry an overall width; on the other six no width has been supplied and none is estimated here. Every figure published on a model page is one confirmed in writing; a figure that has not been supplied is left out rather than estimated. The clearances against 2.6 m are worked out here from the association figure quoted above.
The ten measured machines, narrowest first
Length by width by height in metres as the plants supply them, with the volume each machine is rated to discharge. 4.35 × 1.60 × 2.45 at 1.0 m³ — the narrowest machine here, and the only one of the ten measured to pass through a 40 ft container door whole. Then 4.95 × 1.65 × 2.75 at 1.3 m³; 4.95 × 1.80 × 2.80 at 1.5 m³; 5.00 × 1.85 × 2.80 at 2.0 m³; 5.10 × 1.95 × 2.80 at 2.4 m³; and 5.30 × 2.10 × 2.80 at 2.5 m³. Across those first six the progression is orderly. Width climbs 50 to 150 mm at a time, length climbs with it, and height settles at 2.75 to 2.80 m and stays there. If your constraint is a gateway rather than a volume, that is the part of the list to read: the first four machines are all 1.85 m or narrower.
The last four break the pattern. Two machines rated at 3.0 m³ measure identically, at 5.30 × 2.15 × 2.85 m. The SLM-18 measures 7.06 × 2.21 × 2.58 m and discharges 1.6–1.8 m³, which makes it the longest machine here by more than a metre and a half, and it is also the only one of the ten whose height figure comes with a stated measuring position. Its specification sheet records articulated steering, which we will not convert into a turning circle, because no turning radius is recorded for any of the sixteen self-loading mixers. The widest of the ten is also the tallest and the largest by drum, at 5.45 × 2.30 × 2.90 m and 3.5 m³. The set spans 1.60 to 2.30 m in width, 2.45 to 2.90 m in height and 4.35 to 7.06 m in length, with the narrowest machine holding the shortest and lowest figures as well.
Source: the same specification records, all ten carrying real values and sorted here by width; discharge volumes as declared by the plants, on record for fourteen of the sixteen self-loading mixers. The 40 ft container verdict is the door-frame test already published in our container guide, not a new claim.
Width does not follow drum size the way you would expect
A buyer narrowing his choice by cubic metres will get the width wrong. The 2.21 m machine on this list discharges 1.6–1.8 m³, while a 1.95 m machine discharges 2.4 m³ and a 2.15 m machine discharges 3.0 m³. On that 2.21 m machine the extra width and the 7.06 m length sit in an articulated chassis rather than in the drum. Read the other way, the list is no kinder: a machine 560 mm narrower than the SLM-18 is rated at 1.3 m³ against its 1.6–1.8 m³. The practical consequence is short. Width has to be read off the specific machine being quoted, because the loose relationship between drum size and body width that holds across most of this list stops holding the moment a differently built machine joins it. A dealer who sizes your gateway from the cubic metres alone has not looked at the dimensions.
Source: the discharge volumes and the dimensions read together across the ten machines, both as recorded; the comparison is made here, and no figure in it is derived or adjusted.
Width is not the only gate: height and length
Height is the second gate, and our records answer it least well. Ten of the sixteen mixers have a height on file, from 2.45 to 2.90 m. On nine of those ten the plant supplied one set of dimensions and did not state what position the machine was 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 those nine heights are on record and they are not clearance figures, and we will not use them as one until a plant confirms the position in writing. The one machine where that is settled is the SLM-18: 2.58 m standing in travelling posture, and 3.45 m with its loading bucket at full lift, a difference of 870 mm. Under a low soffit, a balcony, a cable run or a tree line, the height that decides is the one at the moment the machine loads.
Length runs from 4.35 m to 7.06 m, and it governs what the machine can do once inside rather than whether it gets in. One more measured detail is worth having, and it belongs to width. On the SLM-18 the wheel track is recorded at 1,600 mm against an overall width of 2.21 m, so 305 mm of that machine sits outside each wheel-centre line, 610 mm across the two. A pair of ruts that a machine's wheels will follow is therefore not a width test, and neither is a gap measured at ground level if there is a post, a kerb or a wall return higher up. The same machine's wheelbase is recorded at 2,330 mm. That is a measurement and not a turning circle: no turning radius is recorded for any of the sixteen self-loading mixers, and a wheelbase and a track do not produce one.
Source: our specification records for the ten machines with dimensions on file, nine of which carry no stated measuring position. The bucket-raised height, the wheel track and the wheelbase are each on record for one of the sixteen mixers only. The 870 mm and the 305 mm are worked out here by subtraction from those recorded figures.
What the ground has to carry
Weight is where our records are thinnest, and saying otherwise would be the easiest untruth on this page. Of the ten machines with a width on file, exactly one has an operating weight confirmed in writing: 5,800 kg, on the SLM-18. That figure is the machine empty. What it weighs with a loaded drum is not recorded anywhere in our records, and we are not going to reconstruct it from a density we have not sourced. Set against the association's 32 tonnes laden and its 9.51 tonne axles, the direction of the comparison is obvious enough, but the size of it is not — and a ground-bearing decision, whether that is a temporary slab, a spreader plate or a route across a soft yard in the wet season, is made on a number rather than on a direction.
Source: operating weight as confirmed in writing by the plants, on three of the sixteen self-loading mixers and on one of the ten machines measured here; the figure is unladen. A laden weight is not on record for any of them and is not calculated here. The 32 tonne and 9.51 tonne figures are the association's, quoted above.
What we cannot tell you about clearance
The drum-lowered transport height does not exist in our records, on any machine. All sixteen mixer records carry it as not supplied, and it is not a synonym for the height in the dimension set. The specification sheets record a drum that raises and slews through 270° on seven of the sixteen mixers, the SLM-18 among them, but what such a machine measures once it has been prepared for transport is not something any plant has put on a stamped drawing for us, and we will not put a number on it ourselves. Anyone whose shipping mode or whose site clearance turns on that figure has to ask the plant for it in writing and check it against the machine on delivery. Until it is supplied, the lowered figure appears in no quotation we issue, and the shipping mode is set from the heights we actually hold. What that missing figure costs on the shipping side is worked out model by model in our container guide, where it is the difference between a standard box and out-of-gauge cargo.
Source: the drum-lowered transport height, which no plant has supplied for any of the sixteen self-loading mixers; the crawler dozers in the same records carry no such figure because they have no drum. This section states an absence, not a figure. The 270° raise and slew is a specification-sheet entry present on seven of the sixteen mixers.