In Texas, nothing stands between you and your first concrete bid except a folder

You have been finishing slabs for somebody else for years. You know the mix, you know the crew, you know when a surface is ready and when the man pushing you to trowel it is wrong. What you have not done is put your own name on the subcontract.

In Texas the distance between those two things is short. There is no state concrete license. No board, no exam, no logged hours, no application fee, no waiting list. Concrete and masonry sit outside the Texas licensing scheme along with framing, roofing, drywall and painting. The state licenses electrical, plumbing, air conditioning and landscape irrigation, and it has no opinion whatsoever about your flatwork. Which trades the state does gate, and what it gates them with, is the license question answered trade by trade.

So what stands in the way is a folder: an entity, a registration at the city where the permit gets pulled, a certificate of insurance carrying limits a general contractor's insurer will accept, commercial auto because you are running trucks, and a straight answer to the workers compensation question. That is a week of paperwork and a few hundred dollars, and then you are bidding.

The rest of this is the trade craft that decides whether you keep the money. How concrete gets measured and priced. Why the pour date runs your cash instead of the invoice date. Which notice turns into leverage and which one protects the tenth they are holding. What belongs in the weather clause, and how the subgrade argument gets settled before the truck rolls.

The folder, and what each piece is for

The filings are a week if you take your time, and the two free ones, the EIN and the sales tax permit, come back fastest. Insurance is the piece that moves at somebody else's pace, so start it first and do the filings while you wait.

The sales tax permit is worth a minute of attention, because concrete is a materials heavy trade and the contractor rule at 34 TAC 3.291 turns on how the contract is written. On a lump sum job you are the consumer of the materials and you pay the tax when you buy the mix. On a separated contract, with labor and materials priced separately to the customer, the permit lets you issue a resale certificate, buy the mix tax free, and charge the tax on the material line instead. Texas sales tax is 6.25% at state level and local rates are capped at 2%, so the combined figure tops out at 8.25%. That is up to eight and a quarter cents on every dollar of ready-mix, and which side of your margin it lands on is decided by a paragraph.

One mechanic settles which of the two you are in, and it is settled in the wording rather than at invoicing. Separately stated prices anywhere in the contract, or in a document the contract incorporates, convert a lump sum contract into a separated one. Separated invoices on their own do not, unless the contract requires them. So read the contract for prices before you sign it, then make every invoice agree with what you found. The job by job detail is sales tax for Texas contractors.

The city where the permit gets pulled is your licensing board

With no state credential in play, the registration desk is the whole approval. It is settled by where the job is, not where you live.

Read that Fort Worth line twice if you pour driveway approaches and sidewalks, because that work runs into the public right of way and the parkway registration is the one it sits under. Price both into the first job of the year and they stop being a Monday morning surprise.

San Antonio is the other one to read closely, because the two residential categories carry their own insurance minimums and the City wants to be the certificate holder. Home Improvement Contractor is $300,000 per occurrence, $600,000 aggregate and $300,000 products and completed operations. Residential Building Contractor is $500,000, $1 million and $500,000. If you pour residential drives and patios in San Antonio, that is your certificate spec before a single general contractor has asked for one.

The five city detail, portal by portal with what each wants uploaded, is Texas city contractor registration.

Concrete asks for a bigger certificate than a finish trade

A painter and a concrete sub hand over the same document and get read differently. Two things drive that. Your work is structural, so a defect claim comes back years later as a repour rather than a repaint. And your work is delivered by heavy trucks onto somebody else's property, so the claim that lands first is often a cracked existing driveway or a clipped gate post.

That is why the completed operations line on your certificate gets read as closely as the per occurrence figure. Texas already sets a number the market recognizes. 16 TAC 73.40(a) makes a Texas Electrical Contractor carry $300,000 per occurrence for combined bodily injury and property damage, $600,000 aggregate, and $300,000 aggregate for products and completed operations. That is the state's own idea of a working limit for a licensed trade, and San Antonio picked the same three figures for its residential registration. Treat it as the floor rather than the target. Commercial subcontracts commonly ask above it and add an umbrella layer on larger work, and the request names its own figures, so read the insurance exhibit before you price the job rather than after you win it.

Alongside the certificate a general contractor wants you named the right way round: the GC as additional insured, a waiver of subrogation, a signed W-9, and your Certificate of Formation. That is the pack that gets you onto a bid list, and it is worth assembling before the first invitation rather than during it. The full list is the Texas bid ready checklist, and what a certificate has to say to survive an estimator reading it is in contractor insurance certificates in Texas.

Comp is a real choice in Texas, and concrete is where it gets made

Texas is the state where private employers choose. Labor Code s.406.002 makes coverage elective, and the Division of Workers' Compensation runs an annual filing window and a two language workplace posting for the employers who say no. A state builds that much machinery around a status it expects to be used.

Concrete is where the choice bites, because of what the injuries look like. Backs and shoulders from screeding and pulling hose. Hands and forearms from wet cement, which burns slowly enough that a man finishes the pour before he notices. Silica from cutting and grinding. Rebar, forms, and a pump line under pressure. Both roads price off that list, so put the list in front of the broker rather than a trade code and a payroll number.

Carry a policy and you buy Labor Code s.408.001(a), the exclusive remedy: the comp claim is what an injured employee gets, and the negligence suit is barred. Decline it and the premium stays in the business, while s.406.033 removes three defenses you would otherwise argue, contributory negligence, assumption of the risk and the fellow servant rule, and makes a pre-injury waiver of that claim void. Non-subscribers commonly buy an occupational injury benefit plan plus employers liability cover, which rebuilds most of what comp does for the injured worker at a lower spend.

Going non-subscriber, DWC Form-005 goes in each year between 1 February and 30 April, within 30 days of hiring your first employee, within 10 days of dropping a policy, and within 10 days of a DWC request, with the no coverage notice posted for the crew in English and Spanish. The arithmetic in your own numbers is the Texas workers comp decision.

What it costs to stand up a crew, and what you rent instead

The paperwork side of that question has an exact answer and it is in the table above. $300 or $308.10 to the Secretary of State, $25 for an assumed name if you use one, nothing for the EIN or the sales tax permit, $0 to $170 for the city, and $562.50 more in Fort Worth if you work the right of way. Add the first insurance premiums and the entire legal existence of the business is a few hundred dollars and a week.

The kit side is priced by the auction on the day, so the useful question is not what a used trowel machine fetches this month. It is which items earn their place on day one and which ones ride on somebody else's balance sheet until the schedule says otherwise.

Price the rentals into the bid by name rather than burying them in the rate. A named rental line survives a scope change. A buried one gets absorbed.

Measure it the way it gets bought

Concrete is quoted in three units and the unit follows the shape of the work. Volume work, meaning footings, piers, walls and thickened sections, prices per cubic yard. Flatwork prices per square foot. Curb, gutter, sidewalk runs and saw cuts price per linear foot.

The number that converts between them is 27, because a cubic yard is 27 cubic feet. That gives you the yield table you bid flatwork from.

Add your waste allowance on top, because subgrade is not flat and forms are not exact, and short loading the last truck costs more than the extra yardage does. Then price the labor against the finish rather than the volume. A broom finished driveway and a hard trowelled warehouse floor at the same thickness are the same yards and a different job, and the flatness tolerance in the spec is what tells you which one you are bidding.

The pour date is your cash flow, not the invoice date

Here is the pattern that catches a new concrete outfit. The mix, the pump and the crew get paid within days of the pour. The money comes back a long way behind them.

Chapter 28 of the Property Code gives an owner 35 days from receipt of your payment request on a private job, and anyone receiving a payment that covers lower tier work passes that share down within 7 days. Overdue amounts accrue interest at 1.5% a month under s.28.004, and those terms are not waivable in the subcontract. Put a $40,000 request against that clock and every month it sits past day 35 is $600 owed on top of the principal. That is a figure to put in an email, not a feeling to have about a slow payer.

Two moves close the gap. Bill on the pour rather than on the month, so the request is in the owner's hands the same week the money left your account. And keep the lien position alive, which is the next two sections.

The monthly notice is not paperwork, it is a hand on the money

Working as a sub rather than the party in privity with the owner, Tex. Prop. Code s.53.056 wants notice to the owner and the original contractor by the 15th day of the third month after each month you furnished, or the second month on residential. It has to carry the statutory warning wording, and that wording is the point of the exercise.

The warning is what turns a notice into a lever. Under s.53.081 the owner may withhold enough to cover your claim the moment it lands, on top of funds already reserved. Under s.53.083, once you demand payment of the trapped funds the original contractor has 30 days to dispute the claim, and if he says nothing he is deemed to have agreed and the owner is directed to pay you out of what was withheld. Under s.53.084 an owner who fails to withhold after being told is liable for money he paid the contractor anyway. A general contractor sitting on your invoice knows all three, which is why a notice that goes out on time is often answered well before the deadline it protects.

Then the affidavit. Under s.53.052 a sub files the lien affidavit with the county clerk by the 15th day of the fourth month after the last month you furnished, or the third month on residential, and under s.53.055 a copy goes to the owner, and to the original contractor if that is not you, within 5 days of filing, by any delivery method you like. Suit to foreclose runs 1 year from the last day you could have filed the affidavit, on every project type, and it extends to 2 years only by written agreement with the owner recorded before it expires.

Those are month bucket deadlines counted on a bad day, so hand them to the Texas lien deadline calculator and let it count every 15th from the months you actually worked. The notice itself, wording and all, is in the Texas monthly notice, and the full deadline map is Texas mechanics lien deadlines.

The tenth they are holding is your profit

Section 53.101 has the owner reserving 10% through the work and for 30 days after completion. On a concrete package that tenth is close to the whole margin, so it earns its own date rather than a hope that it turns up at closeout.

Where your subcontract provides for retainage, s.53.057 gives you a separate notice of claim for unpaid retainage, due within 30 days of the earlier of two things: your own contract being completed, terminated or abandoned, or the original contract being terminated or abandoned. Send that, then file the affidavit by the ordinary s.53.052 deadline. The retainage lien is the one that turns on it, and it is the wrong one to be missing. The mechanics are in Texas retainage at 10 percent, and the payment machinery behind the whole sequence is getting paid in 35 days in Texas.

Drives sold straight to a homeowner run on two extra clocks

Contracting directly with an owner on a homestead, s.53.254 wants the written contract executed before any work begins, signed by both spouses if they are married, and filed with the county clerk of the county the homestead sits in. Fifteen minutes before the first truck is what makes that job collectable, because the homestead lien cannot be created once work has started.

The second clock starts the day a homeowner writes to you about a crack. Under the Residential Construction Liability Act you have 35 days from that notice to inspect, and up to three inspections. A written settlement offer is due by the 60th day after the notice, and where the homeowner accepts it in writing, the repairs are due within 60 days of the acceptance. Answering on those dates keeps the Act's own limits on damages available to you, and it is also the cheapest version of the conversation. A man with a saw and a bag of mix on day 30 costs less than a courtroom on day 300.

The ready-mix account is your second credit line

Open the supplier account before you need it, not on the morning of a pour. Terms decide how much working capital each job takes out of you, and a new account starts on delivery or prepayment until you have history behind you.

Read the ticket, because it prices things your quote did not. Short load fees under the minimum yardage, wait time once the free unload window runs out, after hours and Saturday delivery, and any admixture the temperature calls for. Those are pass through costs on your bid, and the ticket is the evidence for them.

Keeping the account current also protects your standing with the general contractor. A supplier who furnished material to your job is a derivative claimant under Chapter 53 in exactly the way you are, and their notice lands on the owner's desk with your job name on it. Being the sub whose supplier is chasing money is a bid list problem long before it is a legal one.

Weather belongs in the contract, where it stops being an argument

Concrete is the trade the schedule bends around, and a pour window that exists only in conversation is a fight waiting for a date.

Write four things into the scope. Who pays for a load cancelled inside the supplier's notice window when the site is not ready. What the placement temperature limits are, and who pays for hot water, accelerator, blankets or retarder outside them. Who protects the finished surface, for how long, against rain, frost and site traffic. And what a weather delay does to your dates, so a lost Tuesday moves your finish instead of eating your float.

Priced that way, weather stops being an excuse somebody has to accept or refuse. It becomes a line item with a name beside it.

The change order conversation concrete subs have most often

It is usually the same one: the subgrade was not what the plan said. Soft spots, extra base, over excavation, a grade that swallows two more yards off the truck.

The move is to price it before the truck rolls, because your leverage ends the moment the concrete is on the ground. Photograph the grade, get the yardage confirmed against your takeoff, and put the number in writing before the pour, even as a text message with a figure in it. Then invoice it with the delivery tickets attached, because a ticket is a third party record of exactly how much material went in.

The other regulars are worth pre-pricing on your rate sheet so the answer takes a minute instead of a meeting: pump instead of chute where access is tight, added mesh or rebar, a thickened edge, a finish upgrade, extra saw cuts, and the while you are here pour that gets asked for on any job with a truck on site. A named unit price beside each of those turns an argument into an approval, and what the extras look like once they reach an invoice is in invoice and get paid in Texas.

One date in May keeps the rest of this working

Every taxable entity in Texas, an LLC included, files a franchise tax report by 15 May, and the next business day where that falls on a weekend or a holiday. For report years 2026 and 2027 the no tax due threshold is $2,650,000, and a first year concrete company is a long way under it. The report is still due, because the Public Information Report is owed whether or not any tax is.

Miss it and the Comptroller forfeits your right to transact business in Texas. Put that next to the rest of this page. Your monthly notice went out on the 15th, the affidavit is filed inside the deadline, the retainage under s.53.101 has your name on it, the general contractor still says no, and the next move needs a company in good standing to make it. One form in May protects a year of paperwork you did correctly. How to file it when the answer is zero is the Texas franchise tax for contractors.

What running it on AEC Stack costs

There is no monthly subscription. AEC Stack takes 2.5% of each invoice processed through the platform, collected on the payment due date, so the software gets paid after you do.

File the Certificate of Formation this week, get the certificate of insurance moving the same day, and register with the city you pour in most. That folder is the entire qualification Texas asks of a concrete contractor. Then go and find the slab: find work is the feed of Texas projects with a name, a date and somebody to call on them.