Ontario Concrete Pro builds drives to the load they carry and the ground they sit on, from the alley-fed runs north of Holt Boulevard to new frontages out in Ontario Ranch. Victor Salgado runs every pour.
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How we build a drive
Most of Ontario sits on alluvial fan sand and gravel, which drains about as fast as rain lands on it and makes as good a bed as a slab can ask for. What the fan does not excuse is what people laid on top of it: a century of farm yards, corral fill and utility trenching. A slab spanning ground like that breaks over the soft part, whatever the mix on the ticket said.
Ontario Concrete Pro was founded in 2020 by Victor Salgado, who had 14 years on Inland Empire flatwork crews before that and is on site for the pour. He works a city that is really three: George Chaffey's 1882 grid north of Holt Boulevard, tract streets from the 1960s through the 1980s in the middle, and Ontario Ranch in the south, still being laid out on ground that was dairy land a decade ago.
Drives go in under a CSLB C-8 concrete license with liability insurance on every job, to the California Residential Code, and anything crossing the parkway or the public walk is built to the widths and cross-slopes the Building Department, City of Ontario sets. Every drive leaves with a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
When to replace it
A drive that runs the length of the lot to a rear alley has to fall the whole way. Once a panel settles the fall reverses, and water sits mid-run after every rain instead of reaching the apron. The ground beneath that panel softens with it, so the dip is deeper every winter.
Where the drive meets the alley it takes every wheel twice a day, and that is the section that drops first. A step of an inch or more at the transition means the material under it has washed into the alley, and the tire load is landing on a slab edge with nothing below it.
Stand on a panel, feel it move, and there is a void carrying nothing. On old dairy and row-crop ground in the south of the city, organic topsoil left in place keeps compressing for years after a pour, until the slab rests on its edges alone. Nothing poured on top ever reaches it.
Concrete finished in July heat can stiffen before it is properly closed, and the top skin then never gains its strength. It sheds a fine gray powder, then pits where wheels turn on it. The body of the slab may be sound, but a coating laid over a failing skin lets go with the skin.
On every drive we pour
Eight things go into every drive with no separate line on the estimate, and each answers a condition this city sets: ground that was farmed or trenched long before it was built on, and a summer that sits in the mid-90s for weeks at a time.
The existing drive comes out to soil and leaves the same day. Nothing new is poured over concrete that has already failed.
Soft topsoil and farm fill are dug out until the ground passes a compaction test, not merely to the depth the old slab sat at.
Aggregate base goes down in shallow lifts with a plate over each one, so the bed under the slab cannot consolidate unevenly later.
Placed the morning it is batched, to a 3,500 psi design, so no load sits turning in a truck in Ontario heat waiting on a form.
Four inches under cars, five or six where a work truck, an RV or a trailer stands. The figure appears on the estimate you sign.
Saw cuts go in the day of the pour on a grid as near square as the shape allows, so shrinkage lands in a line you chose.
The grade is shot from the garage threshold out to the street or the alley apron, so the drive sheds water without a pump.
Curing compound down, the frontage swept clean, and the written guarantee handed over on the walk-through with you.
Choosing a surface
Four ways to finish a drive here, set against the things a homeowner actually weighs before signing. What goes in underneath is identical in all four cases, so this table is about the surface and nothing else.
| Option | Surface | Lifespan | Suits | What it asks of you |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broom-finish slab | 30 to 40 years | Long alley-fed runs north of Holt | Sealed again every 4 to 5 years | 2 days on site, 7 to cure |
| Stamped concrete | 25 to 30 years | Short, wide Ontario Ranch frontages | Sealed again every 2 to 3 years | 3 days on site, 7 to cure |
| Exposed aggregate | 35 years or more | Full-sun drives with no shade on them | Sealed every 4 years, rinsed in spring | 2 days on site, 7 to cure |
| Concrete pavers | 30 to 50 years | Ground that may still be settling | Joint sand topped up once a year | 3 days on site, none to cure |
A long alley run shows every seam, which is what broom finish suits; stamping reads best on the short, wide frontages going in across Ontario Ranch.
Ground and heat here
Ontario is one of the few cities in the basin where the ground itself is on your side. The fan sand and gravel under the older grid takes water away on its own.
What it will not forgive is what was laid over it. The southern half of the city was dairy and row-crop land within living memory, so a new drive in Ontario Ranch sits on engineered fill and an older one off Eucalyptus Avenue can sit on a filled corral. Both get dug and proved before base arrives. On the Chaffey grid there is a second problem: the drive runs the depth of the lot and has to be shot to an alley apron rather than to the curb.
We pour on the numbered streets north of Holt, along Euclid Avenue and its planted median, through the 1970s tracts either side of Grove, and out into Ontario Ranch and the logistics blocks by Jurupa Street, where the job is more often a concrete parking lot than a drive. From July into August the afternoon reading sits in the mid-90s, so slabs are placed at first light and kept damp for a week.
How the job runs
Five stages, one crew, and no figure that moves after you have signed it. Where the work touches the curb, the parkway or the public walk, the encroachment permit is ours to file and ours to meet on the day.
Victor Salgado measures the drive, shoots the existing fall and probes for fill. You have the written figure before he leaves.
You set the depth against what will park on it and choose a finish. We book the date and file the encroachment permit if one is needed.
The old slab comes out to soil, then farm fill or soft topsoil is dug until the subgrade proves under a compactor rather than by eye.
Base in lifts, forms set to the grade the apron needs, then a first-light pour and a broom finish drawn across the line of travel.
Joints sawn that same day, curing compound down, the street swept, and the guarantee handed to you on the walk-through.
How the figure is reached
Square footage is the start and the ground is the rest. An alley-fed run north of Holt can be twice the concrete of a tract drive off Grove serving the same two cars. Every estimate is measured and written on site, so the number comes off your lot.
Corral ground or farm fill is dug until it proves, which is the biggest swing. Clean fan gravel wants base and very little else.
An alley drive can be 80 feet down the side of a lot: the same two cars, three times the concrete and three times the forming.
A new apron, a curb cut, the parkway strip or the walk is city work, which means a permit, a set width and an inspection to meet.
Stamped and exposed aggregate put more hands at the pour, and a lot that falls back toward the garage needs a drain across it.
Nothing is owed for the visit itself, and the call back that fixes a time for it comes within 1 business day. (909) 404-9502 or send us a message.
Send the form or call the office and we fix a time to measure it. The depth, the base and the total are written down before we leave your curb, and no obligation attaches to any of it.
From homeowners here
Three reviews, one on Google, one on Facebook and one at the BBB, from people in the city, and all three about driveway work rather than a patio or a garage floor.
“Ours ran 84 feet down the side of the lot to the alley and the back half had sunk. They took the whole thing out, dug the old fill and reset the fall so it drains at the apron now. Victor was here at six in the morning for the pour.”
“We bought new in Ontario Ranch and the builder poured four inches everywhere, including the bay where my F-250 stands. They cut that section out and put it back at six inches on a proper base. Two summers on there is no mark where the tires sit.”
“The drive at our 1940s place had panels you could rock with one foot. They found buried yard fill under two of them, dug it right out and poured 620 square feet in a morning. Joints were cut the same afternoon and it has stayed flat since.”
Common questions
Depth, ground, permits, drainage, curing and the guarantee, answered for a drive on this grid and this soil rather than for concrete in general.
Four inches is the working minimum under cars, and five to six inches is what a work truck, an RV or a trailer needs beneath it. Depth is decided by the heaviest thing that will stand on the slab, not by how big the drive is, and it is the single decision that cannot be revisited once concrete is down. Whatever we agree is written on the estimate you sign.
Because the top two or three feet of it was never soil meant to carry a load. A century of grazing and dairying left organic-rich topsoil behind, and corral areas were often filled rather than cleared when the tracts came through. That material keeps compressing under a slab for years. On lots in the south of the city we dig it out and replace it with compacted base before a form is set.
Usually nothing for the part inside your property line, but Ontario publishes no exempt-work list, so we ask at the counter instead of assuming. The apron, the curb cut, the parkway strip and the public walk are city right of way and take an encroachment permit, issued with an inspection by the Building Department. We file it and meet the inspector on site.
By setting the fall along the whole run so water leaves at the alley apron instead of coming back at the house. On a lot north of Holt Boulevard that can be 70 or 80 feet of concrete falling on one consistent grade, which is why it is shot with a level before a form goes up. Where the alley itself sits high, a channel drain across the apron takes what the grade cannot.
A week for a car and four weeks for anything heavier, which is the point the mix reaches its designed strength. Walking on it is fine the following day. Driving early rarely cracks a slab on the spot; it presses the concrete into base that is still taking up load, and the crack surfaces months later, far enough away that nobody connects the two.
No. An overlay is bonded to concrete that is already moving, so every crack in the old drive works up through the new surface inside a season or two. It also lifts the finished level, which alters the height at the garage door and can turn water back toward the house. That old drive is broken out instead, and the ground beneath it rebuilt.
It takes water off the surface faster than the slab can bleed it up, and a skin that dries before it hydrates ends up weak and dusty. Through July and August we place at first light, keep the finishing crew ahead of the set, and hold the slab damp for seven days rather than sealing it and walking away. An afternoon pour in Ontario is a drive somebody resurfaces later.
How it was built: the depth we dug to, the base we compacted, the thickness we poured, the joints we cut and the finish we left on it. Those terms sit on the estimate before you sign anything. Staining, tire marks, ordinary wear and ground movement past what joints are there to control are not covered. Where the fault is ours, we come back and put it right.
Where we pour
The eight nearest towns on our list, with the straight-line distance from the office on East Holt Boulevard. The full list runs to 20 towns inside 25 miles.
Four jobs that tend to get booked alongside a new drive, or in place of one, same crew, same detail under the slab, and one written estimate covering the lot.
A slab out the back on the same compacted base, jointed and cured across the same week.
The floor the drive runs into, repoured level and sealed so that it sweeps clean.
The public walk at your frontage, with the encroachment permit pulled and met for you.
Saw work to take out one failed panel where the rest of the drive is sound.
Two minutes on the form is enough to get a date. We measure the drive, put the depth and the total in writing at your curb, and leave the paperwork with you whether or not you use us.