A skid steer cement mixer attachment turns your machine into a mobile batch-and-pour operation. Load dry materials, add water, mix in the drum, drive to the pour point, and discharge. No transit mixer truck, no minimum order, no waiting. This guide covers the attachment mechanics, hydraulic requirements, drum sizing decisions, and the Canadian-specific issue of cold-weather concrete that derails more than a few projects.
A skid steer cement mixer attachment consists of a drum mounted on a frame that attaches to the skid steer's quick-attach plate. The drum rotates using the machine's auxiliary hydraulics — hydraulic motor drives a gear reduction, which turns the drum. Rotation direction is controlled from the cab: reverse the rotation to discharge through the drum's chute or front opening.
Loading is by chute or manually loading bagged mix into the drum opening. Water is added through a separate fill point or by direct addition into the drum. The drum mixes as it rotates — the internal fins tumble the material and combine it into concrete. When mixed to specification, the operator positions the machine over or beside the pour area, reverses drum rotation, and the concrete discharges.
The skid steer's mobility is the core advantage here. You're not stuck pouring from a fixed location or trying to position a transit mixer in a tight space. Need to pour 20 post holes scattered across a yard? Load, mix, drive to each hole, pour, move on. Need to pour a small foundation section that a ready-mix truck can't reach? The skid steer gets there. That mobility is why contractors doing remote work, acreage projects, or jobsites without ready-mix access reach for this attachment.
Drum capacity for skid steer cement mixers is typically stated in cubic feet — and this is the total volume of the drum, not the usable mixing capacity. Because concrete mix needs room to tumble, the practical mixing capacity is roughly 60–65% of stated drum volume. A "9 cubic foot" drum mixes about 5.5–6 cubic feet of concrete per batch.
| Drum Size | Usable Batch Size | Approx. Weight (mixed) | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6–7 cu ft | ~0.1 cubic metre | ~220–250 kg | Post holes, small footings, step work |
| 9 cu ft | ~0.16 cubic metre | ~360–400 kg | Most common mid-range; good for mixed jobsite work |
| 12 cu ft | ~0.21 cubic metre | ~470–530 kg | Larger residential pours, slab sections |
The practical decision: a 9 cu ft drum is the most versatile for most operations. It produces enough concrete to pour 4–6 standard 10" diameter post holes per batch, or do meaningful slab work section by section. The larger 12 cu ft drum is worth it if you're doing regular slab or foundation work; the smaller 6–7 cu ft drum makes sense if your work is primarily post holes and small pours where portability and machine weight matter more than batch size.
Also note that a loaded 9 cu ft drum with water weighs around 400 kg. That goes on the front of your machine. Make sure the drum weight plus the attachment frame weight doesn't exceed your machine's rated operating capacity. This is particularly relevant on smaller mid-size skid steers — always check ROC (rated operating capacity) before loading a full drum.
Unlike cold planers, cement mixer attachments are relatively low-demand hydraulically. Drum rotation requires modest flow — most skid steer mixers run on standard auxiliary hydraulics, typically 12–20 GPM at 2,000–2,500 PSI. This is within the standard auxiliary hydraulic output of most mid-size skid steers.
The hydraulic motor drives drum rotation, not a high-energy cutting or impact system, so flow demands are continuous but modest. Where problems arise is when people try to run a cement mixer on a machine with marginal auxiliary hydraulic pressure — the drum rotation may be weak, mixing may be incomplete, and discharge rotation may stall under load. Check your machine's auxiliary flow and pressure specs against the mixer's requirements before purchasing.
The one caveat: in cold weather, hydraulic fluid viscosity increases significantly. A machine running 15W-46 hydraulic fluid in -20°C conditions may see reduced flow and pressure until the system warms up. This can affect drum rotation speed. Let the machine warm up properly before loading a drum with concrete materials in cold-weather conditions.
The most common loading method for skid steer mixer jobs in Canada is bagged concrete mix. Sixty-pound (27 kg) or 30 kg bags of Quikrete, Sakrete, or generic pre-mixed concrete are loaded into the drum opening, water is added, and the drum mixes to the right consistency. This is slow compared to bulk delivery, but it gives you precise batch control and no minimum order. For jobs under 1 cubic metre, bagged mix is often the practical choice.
Loading bags into a skid steer drum is physical work. The drum opening is typically at a height of 5–6 feet, and you're lifting 27 kg bags into it. Some operators rig a small step or scaffold to ease the loading height. Others use a helper for bag loading while the operator stays in the cab to manage drum rotation. This is a coordination task worth thinking through before the first job — fumbling with bags at height while someone else is trying to drive the skid steer wastes time.
For higher-volume work, some operators load bulk sand/gravel and Portland cement into the drum using a measurement system (buckets, shovels) calibrated to the right cement:aggregate:water ratio. This is faster per unit volume than bagged mix and cheaper at scale. It requires more operator knowledge — you need to understand mix ratios and water:cement ratio rather than just following bag instructions.
A standard residential/light construction mix runs roughly 1 part Portland cement : 2 parts clean sand : 3 parts coarse aggregate by volume, with a water:cement ratio around 0.45–0.55 by weight (less water = stronger concrete, more workability requires more water). Add admixtures as needed for your temperature conditions.
Most skid steer cement mixer attachments discharge by reversing drum rotation — the internal fins push material forward and out. Some models have an adjustable chute that directs discharge left, right, or straight down. Others are rear-discharge through the drum opening.
The discharge mechanism affects where you can position the machine during a pour. For post holes, a rear-discharge or downward-discharge drum is straightforward — park over the hole, reverse drum, pour. For slab sections or footing pours, a side-adjustable chute gives more flexibility to direct the concrete without repositioning the entire machine.
Drum cleaning after a pour is mandatory. Concrete left in the drum hardens and is extremely difficult to remove once set. The standard procedure: add clean water immediately after discharge, run the drum for 30–60 seconds to wash the interior, discharge the wash water, repeat once. Do this while the concrete is still fresh — don't wait until the end of the day. A drum with cured concrete build-up inside loses effective volume and becomes harder to clean with each successive pour.
Canada has a short outdoor concrete season in many regions — roughly May through October in most of the prairies, and a slightly longer window in BC and southern Ontario. But plenty of concrete work gets done outside those months, and cold-weather concrete has specific risks that the skid steer mixer operator needs to understand.
Fresh concrete that freezes before it achieves sufficient strength is permanently damaged — it will be weak, porous, and structurally compromised. The minimum temperature recommendation for placing concrete is +5°C ambient and rising, and the concrete itself should be at +10°C minimum when placed. These aren't arbitrary numbers — they're based on the hydration chemistry of cement, which essentially stops below +5°C.
In practice, this means:
Using warm water (30–60°C) is the most practical way to elevate fresh concrete temperature in cold weather without using chemical accelerators. Mixing hot water into the drum before adding cement and aggregate raises the mix temperature significantly. Water at 60°C added to materials at 5°C will produce a mix temperature well above the 10°C minimum.
Don't use boiling water directly on cement — it can cause flash setting. Water in the 40–60°C range is the working sweet spot for cold-weather mixing.
Calcium chloride-based accelerators speed the early hydration of cement, allowing the concrete to gain strength faster and reducing the window during which it's vulnerable to freezing. A standard 2% calcium chloride addition (by weight of cement) noticeably reduces set time and early-strength development. Calcium chloride is widely available at concrete supply dealers across Canada.
One caveat: calcium chloride promotes corrosion of steel reinforcement. Don't use it in concrete containing rebar, mesh, or embedded steel components. Use non-chloride accelerators instead for reinforced concrete work. This is a real issue — using calcium chloride in a reinforced slab can initiate rebar corrosion that causes cracking and spalling years later.
The strongest use cases for this attachment in Canada:
Setting steel posts for signs, corral gates, electric fence energizer mounts, and other permanent installations in concrete is a legitimate farm task that comes up repeatedly. A skid steer mixer makes quick work of a day's worth of post holes — load up, drive around the property, pour each hole, done. No ready-mix truck required.
Cabins, outbuildings, and infrastructure work in areas with poor road access — many parts of northern SK, MB, and BC interior — can't easily receive ready-mix. A skid steer with a mixer, bagged materials trucked in or flown in, and a water source on site handles it. Slower than ready-mix, but it gets the job done where ready-mix can't go.
Rural Municipalities in SK and MB, and Municipal Districts in AB, handle ongoing infrastructure repair with their own equipment. Sign base replacements, culvert headwall repairs, bollard installations, and similar small concrete tasks come up throughout the season. A mixer attachment on the municipality's own skid steer is more economical than calling a ready-mix truck for a quarter-yard pour.
Ready-mix trucks have minimum orders — typically around 1 cubic metre, and the economics of a half-yard pour from a transit mixer often don't work for small contractors doing step repairs, small footings, or post bases. A mixer attachment solves the minimum-order problem at the cost of slower batching and manual loading.
Cement mixer attachments for skid steers sell in the range of approximately $3,000–$7,000 CAD depending on drum size and brand. Rental is available through equipment rental companies — United Rentals, Sunbelt (South Africa-based but Canadian operations), and regional rental yards carry them. Rental rates are roughly $150–$300 per day.
The buy-vs-rent math is straightforward: if you're doing a handful of concrete jobs per year, rent. If you're doing concrete work more than 15–20 days per year, ownership pays back within a year or two. The break-even point depends on your local rental rates and how much of the year you'd actually use it.
One thing rental doesn't give you: the ability to do same-day pours when a small concrete task comes up unexpectedly. Owning the attachment means you can decide at 8am to pour post holes and have them done by noon. Renting requires advance booking, pickup, and return logistics. That convenience value is real for operations that do consistent small concrete work throughout the season.
Browse Concrete and Site Work Attachments
Cement mixers, compactors, augers, and more — verified specs for Canadian operators.
Browse the Attachment Catalog →