How much does a concrete driveway cost in Arlington, TX?

The $8 to $14 band covers the whole job for a standard driveway: layout, grading the subgrade, compacted base, forms, welded wire or fiber reinforcement as specified, 4 inches of ready-mix concrete, a broom finish, control joints cut at the right spacing, and cleanup. It assumes the truck can reach the forms without a pump and that the ground under the old drive is sound once we expose it.

Where you fall inside that band depends mostly on access and size. A straight 600-square-foot rectangle off a quiet street with the truck backing right up to the forms sits near the low end. A long narrow drive, a tight side yard, a lot of hand-hauling, or a pour that needs a pump pushes toward the top. Small pours also cost more per foot, because a ready-mix plant charges a short-load fee on anything under about 4 yards, and that fee spreads over fewer square feet.

If the bid you are comparing is well under $8 per foot, ask what was left out. Usually it is base, reinforcement, thickness, or joints, and those are the four things that decide whether the slab is still flat in ten years.

A common Arlington driveway is 20 feet wide by 30 feet long, 600 square feet. At $8 to $14 per square foot, a new 4-inch broom-finish pour is $4,800 to $8,400. That size at 4 inches takes about 8 cubic yards of concrete with waste, which is one truck and no short-load fee.

Replacing an existing driveway of that size adds the tear-out: 600 square feet at $2.50 to $4.50 is another $1,500 to $2,700, so a full replacement runs roughly $6,300 to $11,100. Add a #4 rebar grid on 18-inch centers and you are adding $360 to $660 on top. Stamped instead of broom on the same 600 square feet is $8,400 to $14,400 installed.

A single-car drive, 10 by 20 feet or 200 square feet, prices out at $1,600 to $2,800 on the per-foot math, which is why the job minimum of about $1,800 kicks in at the low end. Below that number nobody can cover a crew, forms and a truck.

Thickness is the first lever. Four inches is the standard for cars and pickups. Going to 5 inches adds about 8 percent to the band and 6 inches about 18 percent, because every extra inch is more mix, more steel and more excavation. If you park a heavy truck, a boat trailer or an RV on it, the thicker slab costs less than replacing a cracked one.

Reinforcement is the second. Welded wire mesh holds cracks tight once they form. A rebar grid does the same job with more steel and keeps the slab acting as one piece when the clay under it moves, which in North Texas it will. We put rebar in most driveways and price it as a line item so you can see what it costs.

Demolition and haul-off, site access, and the finish round it out. A driveway with a thick old slab, a second layer of asphalt under it, or tree roots to cut costs more to remove. Decorative finishes cost more because they take more labor and more material: stamped needs color hardener, release agent, stamping and sealing; exposed aggregate needs a surface retarder and a wash; even a smooth trowel finish takes a second pass the broom does not. The stamped vs broom finish page lays those choices out side by side.

Concrete is only as good as what is under it. Arlington sits on expansive clay that swells when it rains and shrinks when it dries. A driveway poured on loose fill, or on that clay with no compacted base, heaves and settles with the seasons, and the slab cracks along whatever line the movement draws. The base and the compaction are where a low bid usually saves its money, and it is the part you cannot see once the concrete is down.

Joints are the other quiet cost. Concrete shrinks as it cures and it will crack; control joints decide where. A 4-inch slab needs joints every 8 to 10 feet, cut to a quarter of the slab depth, soon after the pour. Skipping them or spacing them wide saves an hour of labor and guarantees random cracks by the second summer.

Drainage gets missed the same way. A driveway that pitches toward the garage, or that traps water against the foundation, costs more in repairs than it saved. We grade so water runs to the street or a drain, and we set the approach where the driveway meets the city sidewalk and curb to match the existing elevations. That approach is in the public right of way, so confirm with the City of Arlington (One Start Development Center, 101 W. Abram St, 817-459-6502) whether a permit or inspection applies before the work starts.

Run the free calculator first. Enter the length and width, pick the thickness and finish, and check the boxes for tear-out and rebar. It returns the installed price band, the cubic yards of concrete, the truck count and the joint spacing, so you walk into the conversation knowing what the job involves.

Then have us out to measure. The calculator cannot see the slope of your lot, the condition of the old slab, or whether the truck can reach the forms. A site visit turns the band into a firm written price with the thickness, reinforcement, finish and joint layout spelled out, so you are comparing bids on the same work. Read more about how we build a concrete driveway before you call.

CJM Concrete pours driveways across Arlington and the DFW metroplex. We are the sister shop of CJM Metals, same family and same standard: we pour the pad, they build the steel on it. For a firm quote on your driveway, call (214) 603-9142.