Concrete is unsentimental about equipment. It sets inside drums, cakes onto poker heads, grinds into trowel gearboxes, and turns any machine that misses its post-pour clean into next week’s repair ticket. The gear itself - mixers, power trowels, poker vibrators, screeds - moves from pour to pour on whichever truck is going, often for months without seeing the yard. This guide covers a register that survives both problems: custody that follows the kit across sites, and service records that separate fair wear from neglect.
What you will learn
- Equipment with a hard life
- Check-outs and transfers between pours
- The register: mixers to pokers
- Labels that survive concrete
- Service logs: wear or neglect
- Tools that make this easier
- FAQ
Equipment with a hard life
Two facts shape everything about tracking concrete gear. First, pours are deadline events: when the truck is batched and rolling, crews grab whatever poker is nearest, from whichever site has one, and sort the paperwork never. Second, the equipment’s enemy is its own material: a machine that leaves a pour uncleaned is degrading from that hour. So the fleet disperses under time pressure and deteriorates in silence - which means the register has to capture two things at every hand-off: who has it now, and what state it was in when they got it.
Check-outs and transfers between pours
Custody comes before cataloguing in this trade, because site-to-site movement is where concrete equipment actually gets lost. The working model is standard check-in / check-out, tuned for pour logistics:
- Check out to a foreman, not a site. Sites wind down; the named person is still answerable when the trowel is not on the final load-out.
- Site-to-site moves are transfers. The poker that goes straight from one pour to the next - never touching the yard - is the normal case, so the asset transfer has to be a ten-second phone action, or it will not happen.
- Condition at hand-off. “Received caked” recorded at transfer protects the receiving crew and flags the sending one.
- Sweep the still-out list when a job closes. Final load-out against the register is how mixers stop wintering behind site cabins. Anything in lockable storage on site - a site box, typically - should itself be on the register.
Tip: make “clean before return” a checkable condition note, not folklore. A photo at check-in settles whether the trowel came back ready for the next crew or ready for the chisel.
The register: mixers to pokers
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Asset ID | One identity per machine, quotable from a site in the rain |
| Type + working size | Drum capacity, trowel blade diameter, poker head size - “send the mixer” fails when three different capacities answer to it |
| Make, model, serial | Warranty, spares and theft reports against the right unit |
| Purchase date + price | Repair-or-replace decisions on kit that wears fast |
| Current site / holder | The question every pour morning starts with |
| Service log | Gearbox oil, blades, hoses, engine hours - the machine’s history |
| Status | On site, in the yard, in the workshop, retired |
| Documents + photos | Receipts, manuals and condition photos in one place |
Granularity is the judgement call. Drive units and motors get individual IDs; poker heads and flexible shafts sit on the boundary - wear items, but costly enough that logging their replacement against the drive unit pays off; trowel blades and float pans are counted stock, not assets.
Labels that survive concrete
This fleet eats labels, so placement is most of the battle:
- Mixers: on the frame near the towbar or stand - never the drum, which gets splattered, scraped and occasionally re-skinned.
- Power trowels: the handle column or guard ring, where hands and rags pass often enough to keep the label readable.
- Poker vibrators: the motor or drive-unit housing; the head and shaft are sacrificial parts that outlive no label.
- Stock: laminated polyester at minimum. And build re-labelling into the service routine - a faded label found in the workshop costs nothing; one discovered mid-pour costs the identification.
A QR code with the asset ID printed beneath gives crews both options: scan with a phone to open the record, or read the number out over the phone with wet gloves on.
Service logs: wear or neglect
Concrete equipment rarely fails suddenly; it fails by accumulation. The equipment log is what makes the accumulation visible:
- Power trowels: gearbox oil on schedule, blade and arm adjustment, clutch condition - a trowel run with slack arms finishes floors badly long before it stops running.
- Pokers: hose and head condition at every return; a poker that ran caked is a poker that overheated.
- Mixers: drum condition, gear ring, and engine servicing on petrol units.
- Everything: the post-pour clean, recorded as a condition note rather than assumed.
Two identical trowels with two different histories tell you something no fleet-level record can: one is ageing, the other is being abused. That is a rota conversation, and the log is the evidence.
Tools that make this easier
A spreadsheet can hold the fleet list, but concrete work breaks its update model completely - the people moving equipment are on pours, not at desks, and a register updated weekly is a register that is wrong by Tuesday.
AMPthilly is built for the hand-off moments: each machine gets a profile with serial, size fields, photos and documents; printable QR labels open that profile in any phone browser, where a foreman can check kit out, transfer it to the next pour or report damage with photos in seconds; faults become tickets tied to the machine; and every move and status change lands in a permanent audit history. The free plan covers 3 users and 25 assets, with no card required - enough to put the trowels, pokers and mixers on a real register this week. Full feature list at /features/.
FAQ
How do you keep track of concrete equipment between sites? Check-outs to named foremen, recorded transfers for pour-to-pour moves, and condition captured at every hand-off. The yard is optional; the record is not.
What should a concrete equipment register include? Asset ID, type and working size, make/model/serial, purchase details, current holder, service log and status - with documents and photos attached.
Where do you put a QR label on concrete equipment? On metal that gets wiped, not splattered: mixer frame near the towbar, trowel handle column, poker drive housing. Laminated stock, reprinted at service.
How do you track servicing on power trowels and poker vibrators? A dated per-machine log: gearbox oil and arm adjustment on trowels, hose and head condition on pokers, plus condition notes at every return.
Should small items like poker heads and hoses be tracked individually? Drive units yes; heads and shafts optionally, logged against the drive unit; blades and pans as counted stock.
The takeaway
Concrete equipment lives between sites and dies of neglect, so track the hand-offs and the condition - everything else follows. Give each machine an identity that survives splatter, check it out to a person rather than a postcode, record the pour-to-pour transfers as they happen, and keep a service log honest enough to tell wear from abuse. The pour-morning question stops being “who has a working poker?” and becomes a lookup.