40th driveway and I finally counted my pours wrong

I hit my 40th driveway pour last Thursday over in Maplewood. I always figured I had the yardage math down, but this one came up 2 bags short on the last strip. Turns out I was measuring the base depth wrong the whole time, 4 inches instead of the actual 6 after grading shifted. Checked my last 12 jobs and every one of them was under what I billed. Has anyone else caught a measurement habit like this after years of doing it the same way?

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fisher.charlie23d ago

My uncle Ray had the same problem with his deer blind sightlines for 15 years, he kept aiming at the same tree notch but the tree grew like 8 feet. He finally figured it out when his nephew brought a laser rangefinder to Thanksgiving. We spent the whole holiday arguing about whether you need to account for slope on a 40 yard shot, and my aunt just kept refilling the gravy boat. Point is, bad habits sneak up on you when you stop double checking the little stuff, and now I always walk the grade with a tape on every driveway, even the flat ones. That last job cost me a full day of rework and a free bag of mix to make it right.