Typically, our busiest months year in and year out are September and October.  If that holds true again this year, many plants will break yardage records.  The Waterloo plant is on pace to get its best year since the early 1990’s.  They had more yards in the month of June than they have had in any single month since 1992.  Waterloo has spent the majority of the summer working on a new interchange at the highway 20 and Ansborough on the south side of town.  There were many paving days on that job where there was help from several different plants and sister companies.  In order to cover regular customers as well as the paving, there were at times over 30 trucks at the downtown plant.  On the busy paving days the dispatchers downtown had to work closely with the United dispatchers to make sure that our customers were taken care of.  In addition to the Ansborough project, Waterloo has also been busy supplying several commercial jobs including a new McDonalds in Cedar Falls, a new Walgreens in Cedar Falls and a paving job on San Marnan Drive in Waterloo.  The Waterloo plant already has two nice sized jobs on the books for 2007.

Last year Oelwein had a monster year, due mainly to the ethanol plant that they hauled to all year.  At this point in the year though, Oelwein is well ahead of last year’s numbers.  Danny and crew have been busy finishing up the ethanol plant, supplying a downtown Oelwein renovation project, supplying a new rec trail at Fontana Park and hauling to numerous hog confinements.  Independence is another plant that had an excellent year last year and at this point is well ahead of last year’s numbers.  Independence has had a commercial boom along the Highway 20 corridor.  As of last week, August 18, Jesup has already passed their yardage total for all of 2005.  Hank and Darin have been busy hauling to hog confinements as well as paving jobs in Jesup.  Scott in Denver and Dale in Readlyn have been hauling to hog units and helping the other plants out as well. 

Vernon and Steve in Traer have been busy doing hog confinements and helping other plants as well.  In Grundy Center, Jerry has doubled his yardage from ’05 at this point.  The hog confinement business is booming there as well.  In addition to the hog business, Grundy has supplied a large bridge on highway 14, an addition to Richleau foods and there is a new implement dealership being built in town.  Last week Grundy just picked up school additions in Dike and New Hartford.  Darrell in La Porte City has quietly matched last year’s yards at this point so far, but his workload is about to pick up substantially.  La Porte has just locked up a 3300 cy hog unit and has a paving project let this week.  Darrell will finish out the year busy pulling levels it seems.

As you can see, it seems everyone is doing many hog confinements.  I can’t remember ever doing so many in one year, by year’s end we will have completed over 60 buildings.  These buildings have been spread all over the area, so managers have had to work closely with each other on them.  Many of the buildings have had 2 or 3 plants hauling to them at the same time.  Hats off to the managers for doing this so smoothly and working together to provide the best possible service to our customers.  I would also like to thank all the people that have helped with the Ansborough paving project, there were trucks from all over here for that project.  When you have that many trucks running out of one plant, much coordination is needed.  The paving days went very smooth, with all the drivers working together to achieve the goal while still putting safety in front of production.  Everyone worked together to make the 1936 vintage plant downtown work like a mainline paving plant putting out more yards/hour than it has in several years!  Again, to all that helped with that project, a job well done!  Please continue to think SAFETY FIRST for the rest of the season.