Commercial concrete · Based in Eau Claire
Loading Dock Concrete and Apron Re-Pours
The slab in front of a dock door takes more load than anything else on the property. We pour dock aprons at 4,500 PSI with the rebar tied in, and they take traffic three days later.
What a Dock Apron Is
A dock apron is the slab directly in front of a loading dock door, between the dock face and the drive lane. It is the strip a trailer reverses onto and parks on while it is being loaded, and on most properties it is the only part of the pavement that carries a stationary loaded trailer.
It is poured in concrete rather than laid in asphalt on any dock that sees real traffic, and it is usually reinforced. How deep it runs out from the building depends on the trailers: it has to reach past where the landing gear comes down, or the load lands on the asphalt instead and the asphalt is what gives.
Also called
- Loading dock apron
- Dock pad, or dock slab
- Approach slab
If the concrete in front of your dock doors is rutted, cracked across, or has dropped away from the building, it is the apron that needs the work rather than the lot.
What a Trailer Does to It
A dock apron gets a kind of loading nothing else on the lot sees. A loaded trailer reverses onto it, stops, and puts the whole nose of itself on two landing gear pads the size of dinner plates. Then it sits there. Then the next one does it in almost exactly the same spot.
That is point loading, and it is concentrated in a strip a few feet deep right where the trailer parks. Asphalt cannot hold it. It shoves, it ruts under the landing gear, and the ruts fill with water. Asphalt in front of a dock door does not last.
The other half of it is the joint. A dock apron is concrete meeting asphalt along a line that the heaviest vehicles on the property cross several times a day. When that joint is not tied and sealed, water gets under both sides of it and takes the base out from under the asphalt first. That is why so many lots fail at the dock while the rest of the pavement looks fine.
We pour the concrete and lay the asphalt against it, so the joint belongs to the job rather than to whoever gets there second.
What we look at
- Where the landing gear actually lands
- Whether the ruts are in the surface or the base
- How the concrete meets the asphalt at the edge
- Whether the dock drain is holding water
- What the approach does before the trailer gets there
Mix: commercial pours go down at 4,500 PSI exterior, with the rebar tied. Traffic at three days.
What Usually Comes With It
A dock that needs a slab rarely needs only a slab.
This page is the dock. For driveways, sidewalks, curb and gutter and the rest of the flatwork, see concrete.
Questions We Get
How soon can trucks use it?
Why concrete and not asphalt? The rest of our lot is blacktop.
Our apron is concrete already and it's cracked. Repair or replace?
Can the dock stay in use while you do it?
What is the rebar for?
Send a Photo of the Dock
One shot from where the trailer stops, and one of the joint where the concrete meets the blacktop. That is usually enough to say whether it is a slab or a base problem.
(715) 450-9897