Getting concrete work in Los Angeles without buying leads

Concrete is one of the better trades to be in around Los Angeles and one of the worst to buy leads for. The jobs are large enough that a lead marketplace prices them high, and shared widely enough that you are often the fourth crew to call the same homeowner about the same driveway.

Here is where the work actually comes from, in rough order of what it costs you to get.

The street sells the next job

Concrete is unusual among the trades: the finished work is permanently visible from the sidewalk, it lasts decades, and the neighbours watched you pour it. No other trade gets that. A good driveway on a street of forty houses is a billboard that does not expire.

Most crews waste it. What to do instead:

• Photograph every job properly. Before, during the pour, and after cure in good light. Not phone snaps in shade at four o'clock.
• Talk to the neighbour who comes out to watch. Someone always does. They are standing there because they have been thinking about their own driveway.
• Ask at handover, while the homeowner is happy and standing on new concrete. That is the highest-conversion moment you will ever get and it lasts about a week.
• Go back at six months. A slab that still looks right is a better argument than anything you can say, and it costs you one drive.

The people who already have the customer

Concrete sits underneath other people's projects, which means other trades find your work before the homeowner does.

• Landscapers. Almost every yard redesign has flatwork in it, and most landscape crews do not self-perform concrete. This is the single most productive relationship in the trade.
• General contractors doing additions and ADUs. Foundations, slabs, flatwork around the new footprint. Steadier than residential retail and less price-sensitive.
• Pool builders. Decking is concrete, and the schedule is predictable months out.
• Property managers and HOAs. Sidewalk trip hazards, walkway repairs, common-area flatwork. Unglamorous, repeating, and largely invisible to lead marketplaces.
• Real estate agents, before a listing. A cracked driveway is a photograph problem, and there is a deadline, which means there is urgency and a decision-maker.

These take months to build and then produce work for years. That is the opposite shape from a lead invoice, which produces work today and nothing tomorrow.

The rhythm of the year

LA lets you pour most of the year, which is the advantage, but the work is not evenly spread. Rain weeks stop you and then compress everyone's schedule afterwards. Summer heat changes your pour window and your finishing crew's day. Homeowners think about outdoor work in spring and stop thinking about it around the holidays.

The commercial and property-management relationships above are worth most in exactly the weeks the residential phone stops ringing, which is the real argument for building them before you need them.

Where DPOC fits

The homeowner gets a price from the engine before a crew is involved. You see the job with the price already on it and decide. There is no lead fee, no charge to look, and no bidding against three other crews for the same slab.

Here is what a two-car driveway replacement pays, from the same fee engine that pays the crew:

And a larger pour:

Those are instant estimates for representative jobs, not final contracts. There are per-city pages for concrete work across the service area, each showing what the trade pays there.

The licence question

DPOC holds CSLB licence #999194, and every job runs under this licence — ours, not a subcontractor's. A crew that does not hold its own active licence works under DPOC's, and carries a higher platform fee for that coverage, because our licence and bond are what stand behind the finished work.

If you do hold your own active licence, you do not pay that premium. If you do not, getting one is the fastest raise available to you and it applies to every job from the day it goes active. There is a separate guide on this site covering what that involves.