Commercial flatwork at scale commonly prices in the mid to upper single digits per square foot, driven by thickness (5 to 6 inches for cars, 6 to 8 for trucks), reinforcement, and finish tolerance. Building slabs price above parking. Quotes here are fixed, from the drawings, in writing.
More detail
Commercial slab pricing is a thickness-and-spec story. Parking and drive areas for passenger vehicles run 5 to 6 inches of reinforced concrete; truck routes, loading zones, and dumpster pads run 6 to 8 because a loaded garbage truck on a 5-inch pad writes its own demolition schedule. Building slabs carry more spec than thickness alone: reinforcement schedules from the engineer, thickened footings under column lines, anchor-bolt layouts for pre-engineered steel, moisture barriers under future finished space, and flatness tolerances where racking or equipment demand them. The pad under everything follows the same physics as every other slab in this corridor, moisture-conditioned and compacted clay or select fill, tested on engineered work, because a commercial slab on a bad pad fails at commercial scale. What makes commercial pricing feel different from residential is the paper around it: plan review through the city (Sherman routes it through the Development Services portal), civil submittals for site work, inspections at defined hold points, and sometimes fire-lane and accessibility striping requirements that arrive with the certificate of occupancy. The efficient path is pricing from a complete drawing set, and where drawings do not exist yet, the walkthrough and a scoping conversation produce them in the right order. Either way the quote lands as a fixed, itemized scope: earthwork, base, steel, concrete by area and thickness, joints, finish, and the inspection sequence.