It’s been quite an interesting year. Of course I don’t know when we haven’t had any interesting year.

United Concrete went through some changes this year. We started building a new plant in Elk Run Heights late last year and finished it up this spring. Shortly after we got our new plant up and running we got hit by a lightning bolt that took out the control panel while at the same time opening every gate in the plant. Can you imagine what 3 foot of cement powder looks like all over a brand new concrete plant. It’s not a pretty sight. But to the credit of many of the guys at United, within about 2 days they had it looking “almost” new again.

Shortly after getting the new plant up and running, they started tearing down the old Elk Run plant. That plant as been taken to Brooklyn and will be rebuilt this winter. Upon completion, that plant will be moved back to Waterloo and relocated at the Shaulis Road location. Shaulis Road was the old corporate headquarters. Of course the plant that currently sits at Shaulis Road will have to be torn down before the rebuilt plant can be put up.

So in the end, their roles will be reversed. The Elk Run location has become the corporate headquarters and main plant. And Shaulis Road has become a satellite plant. If you’re in the Waterloo area, stop in the Elk Run office, just up the road from the Elk Run Truck Plaza, and have a look see. You’ll be impressed. Much of the credit for this new site goes to general manager, Larry Potts. And I’m sure he’ll be the first to tell you that a number of his employees played a major role in making it all happen.

Other than that, it's been a pretty slow year in the Waterloo/Cedar Falls market area. The rains in the spring put us behind from the get-go and we never did catch up. It’s been so slow all year that this fall when things picked up a bit I thought we were doing great. Then I compared the numbers to last year and we were still doing fewer yards per month than we were a year ago. Overall, concrete for United and Manatt’s in Waterloo was down almost 40% this year. Manatt’s spent much of their summer being a truck rental business for a number of our other plants. I guess from that standpoint it worked out alright.

Our Independence operation has been building a new plant this summer. Bruce Suckow and his crew have been spending their free time working around the new building that Larson Construction is doing. Once they get the new plant operational they will then tear down the old one. See Bruce’s article for more details and pictures.

Scott Shimp (Denver) and Dale Ott (Readlyn) are finishing up their year by putting some new siding on Scott’s plant at Denver. We plan to have the plant painted in the spring. I must say, my guys do a good job of keeping their locations looking pretty darn good.

Several years back Brad decided that we should have these model dump trucks made by First Gear for company and our employees. Then shortly, after we did a low boy and then a mixer. Now we have a series of 5 different trucks in our fleet when you include the United mixer and our latest, the B model mixer.

Well, little did I know, that buying that first dump truck was going to cost me several thousand dollars before I was through. When we came out with our first mixer I started watching for other mixers by other companies. I started buying them online, from the dealers and from the ready mix companies themselves. I have mixers from all over the US and even one from Porto Rico. They recently started producing a front discharge mixer but I’m not going to collect those since we don’t run them in Iowa. Below is a picture of my collection. I have a couple of more but I’m waiting for my next case to be done.