36. Winter is Coming...

Unfortunately, Ned Stark was unavailable, but Andrea and Griff discuss the looming colder conditions and what that changes for a bunch of our team. 

We're always looking for topics and loaded questions, so please send them in!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Welcome to Loaded, the Hahn Ready Mix podcast with Andrea Meyer, Griffin Hahn, and producer Lex finally showed up.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

I think we have grumpy Andrea with us today.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Might be, might be.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

You didn't get much sleep last night, I hear.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Sick kids. But we're doing our best.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

All right. All right. Well, we're just appreciated that you you made it here.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

So happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Okay. What do we got for announcements?

SPEAKER_01 0:40

It's hard to follow up on last week's episode. I think it was a big hit.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

It was. I like that one a lot. And we've got some good feedback from a bunch of folks that listened to it and said there was useful information there that they weren't aware of or a good refresher. So definitely if there's more things that you want to know about, we want topics, right? And we'll bring people in like we did with Ryan. Um or or if if there are things we can answer ourselves, but we want topics. So if if you have questions, submit a load of question. If you have something you want us to have an in-depth conversation about, say, hey, I'd really like to talk about X, Y, Z, whatever. Um, because I think that's pretty great. And also we had heard from a few of the drivers that have really tried to um to put exactly Ryan's suggestions to the test, right? On in the wash bay. And a couple of them said that um 40 minutes felt like they just felt like 30 wasn't quite adequate. You know, that was kind of what we talked about last week. And I think we would be very content with 40 if that's what um if that's what it takes. Because that was the feedback was uh 10 more minutes made a big difference. So 40 is fine with us.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Very good. Another follow-up from last week, I had asked everyone to take an extra hard look around and clean cleanup or throw away things we could throw away. It's always a kind of a seasonal thing that we do, but I also had some visitors coming in from the insurance company. So it's a good excuse to take an extra look. And uh everybody, especially here at the shop in Davenport, they they did a lot of work. So I really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Yeah, nice work.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

And then uh we've talked about open enrollment a couple times, but I have official dates now that um changes will need to be made between November 14th and November 26th. So if you don't need to change anything, you don't need to do anything. But if you have any changes, we need to know before Thanksgiving, basically.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Yeah, yeah. Just a couple weeks around the road away that that window opens.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Yep, we'll be sending out a bunch of information as we get closer to it.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Great. Great. What should we talk about today?

SPEAKER_01 2:49

You have been uh chomping at the bit to talk about cold weather uh for the past several weeks, and I kept putting it off because I wanted it to stay warm, but I think it's it's finally to the point where we're reaching uh freezing temperatures overnight, and we I guess we have to we have to be there.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Yeah, it is, you know, by the time this comes out, it'll be November.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

That's that's really it could it can happen any moment now, though the bottom can drop out. So I'm with you. I I hope it stays warm through through Christmas. That'd be great. But we need to be prepared before that. The reality is what it is. So need to get ready. For sure. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Where do you want to start?

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Well, I kind of had some some just reminders in of a number of different categories. So just hop in here. Um I always do. Yeah, yeah. I you're not shy. Uh so trucks. So a lot of this stuff is review and obvious, but you know, we're getting to the time where we need to make sure we're draining our tanks at the end of the day, draining lines, you know, um our our water lines and our airlines, you know, making sure we got the antifreeze in the truck and all that stuff so that we don't have we don't have uh trucks freezing up or lines freezing up and can't add water and things like that. So um that's just uh the kind of the obvious thing. But of course, when we start flushing our water lines, every single year we see a huge markup in rejected loads from us dumping our entire flush tank into uh into the load when we pressurize the tank, right? So I know people use bungee cords. We have the the spring-loaded valves, and sometimes we take some of those off in the winter, but uh or or or we bungee them up, but that kind of defeats the purpose. So just you got to be extra careful that we're not dumping all the water in the load because obviously that load is now garbage and we've lost the time and materials and and labor and everything to get that done.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

And so um yeah, it's a big change to our daily habits. Yeah. At the end of the day and the beginning of the day, you're so used to doing things the same way all summer, and then now you have to change and remember that you changed it. Uh it's I know we have people that try and play the game where they try and look at the weather and predict how cold it's going to get. And it's just better to get in the habit of doing it every day and you for sure.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

And, you know, I know a lot of the guys, you know, when they're doing their pre-chip, they'll put their truck in discharge to make sure if there's any rainwater or anything that's in the in the drum or anything from the washout the day before that it comes out. And that's still good. Um, the only problem when you get to winter is you really need to do that end of the day. Right. Because it, you know, you could be clocking out and it's 34 degrees. And if there's water in there in the morning, you could put it in discharge and it's 22, and that ice is not going to come out, right? It's stuck in there. And we put a load in, and all of a sudden the slump spikes because the the load melts the the ice in in the drum, and and now we're too wet. So um making sure we keep the the drums clean end of day um is is important. Get all that water out of there. We we need to make sure that we are we got the Bunsen burner ready, right, for thawing out the water lines. Uh, I love a trick. If you if your water, if your hose does freeze up, you know, it's best to keep that disconnected, keep it in your cab, connect it to itself, right? So it makes kind of a loop. Um but if your hose does freeze up, one great trick on a job site is to take it off, unscrew it, and dip the whole thing in your hot water tank that's got warm water in there. And that'll defrost your hose out on the job site instead of using the Bunsen burner and trying to guess on that. So um obviously you can't do that with the bigger water line because it's not detachable. But um I like that trick for um your garden hose basically on the back. In regards to trucks, this is less a driver's responsibility, but kind of the shop and dispatch. When it gets real cold, we know that there's gonna be trucks that just don't start up in the morning, right? Happens every day, every year, right? So keeping track of what spares are available, where they are, um, making sure we have as many of them ready to go that we can we can kind of put um pull an audible first thing in the morning is important. I know that those conversations happen kind of daily on what what spares are out there, but we really need to be able to react quickly when a truck doesn't fire up in the morning because we have we have customers waiting on that load. So um yeah, that's important. What else do you have on trucks?

SPEAKER_01 7:34

No, I was just thinking through what you're saying there about spares. We have gotten better about tracking trucks through um the Fle Dio system and providing that to the guys in dispatch so they can see where where the trucks are. But we should we should think through that even more as it gets colder and making sure that that's up to date for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Yeah. Yeah. Um all right. So on the the plant and kind of quality control side have a few things as well. So one thing I don't you know, we talk about it when we do like a concrete one-on-one class or things like that, but we don't I don't I don't think we intentionally check this enough is when it gets cold, our air contents climb, right? Um air and training agent is is more effective at cooler temperatures. And so we should expect for all of our air and trained mixes that our dosages should go down, right? Because it's going to take less air and training agent to get the same air. So we need to be proactively checking um all of our air mixes and and you know it could be it could be a 50% decrease in our dosage, right? So a mix that maybe in the middle of summer takes three ounces of air per hundred or per yard might be just an ounce and a half in the middle of winter. So that's a gradual thing that we've probably made adjustments to a lot of our mixes as things go on, uh have gone on. But particularly if you see a mix that we haven't batched in a long time. Uh, if you're a batcher and you go, oh, you know, we haven't worked on this project in two months. Let's make sure we're putting an air test or or and it was 80 last time.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Right. Um, we we can we can maybe hedge down a little bit on the air content, knowing that it's going to be more effective uh and cooler temperatures. So that's one. As it comes to batching, concrete temperatures are the biggest thing that we have to keep an eye on. We should be doing multiple temperature tests a day. For sure, uh beginning of the day, obviously. Um, but you know, a lot of times that can be kind of artificially high for what we're going to do throughout the day because we have materials that are inside the plant. And so um, you know, when you get 100 yards in or something, we should be doing more tests when we have outside material coming in because it could be significantly colder. And our goal is to try to keep that um concrete temperature right around 65 degrees, basically at all times through the winter. Obviously, if it we have a warm spell and it gets warmer on its own, great, but um, we want to be around 65 degrees. So that means adjusting our our water heaters and you know, getting materials inside where we can to get to that level. I know sometimes, you know, if it's if it's negative 20, it's it's hard to get to 65, but we should make all that. That's no problem. Yeah, we should we should make every effort. Um so we we got to be checking concrete temps all the time. Um, but keeping in mind as well that we can't put 200 degree water in the flush tanks, right? For the drivers, we're gonna scald somebody, get somebody hurt. So we need to be blending the water that's going in to those tanks so that it's still warm and and it'd probably still feel hot to the touch, but we we don't need to scald anybody. So please. Yes, yeah. Um, which kind of leads us to kind of some safety things. When the, you know, when we talk about our workers' comp experience or whatever, the biggest problem we have every year are slips, trips, and falls in the winter, right? Correct. And most of that happens stepping off ladders, you know, when you're um a lot of times on job sites or or even just in the yard uh after washing down and you step on an icy patch and fall. Or frankly, it's just walking across the yard. You know, you park your truck at the end of the day, you're walking across, it's icy, you don't see it. Um, so let's just constantly be aware that those hazards are out there. And if there's an icy patch in front of you, just walk around it, you know?

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Yes, yes. Test everything out. If it looks like it might be icy, test it out. Yeah. Same thing I've seen a lot of times where you're on a job site and it looks like it's soft mud because there's a rut, but then you step on it and it's ice, you know, rock solid ice and twist an ankle on it. So just approach everything very cautiously in the winter.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

And if you see an issue at a plant in particular, or somewhere where we have more control, if there is an icy place in the parking lot, let somebody know we'll get some salt on there. As much as we don't like to salt parking lots, we'd rather not anybody get hurt. So um we, you know, we'll we'll address it. We'll get the loader to come scrape it up, whatever. But we just let's be really proactive about trying not to have any of those issues this year, I think would be a big deal. Um, the other thing on that topic is driving in winter conditions is obviously more challenging, right? Let's make sure we're keeping an eye on the tread on our tires. We want to make sure we have good traction in in snowy, icy, wet conditions and and just be hyper aware of what other drivers are doing out there. And it's it's tough. We're we're almost certainly going to have someone run into us this way because they'll slide it. Like it just is gonna happen. But anything we can do to kind of be defensive in our driving and and making sure that when when other people are being unsafe and driving too fast, that we're giving them lots of space or or avoiding them at all, you know, in any way we can um while we're driving around out there. And that's that's not just for mixers or or semis, you know, that's everybody driving, you know, company pickup trucks around as well. Like let's let's not have um let's not have any accidents this year. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

It's a good plan.

unknown 13:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Another thing I was thinking about was in dispatch, it's it's time to start probably recommending to customers is you know go with a no-ash mix, particularly when the lows get you know below freezing overnight. We want to get as much concrete or strength into the concrete um in a short amount of time. And going with a no-ash, no slag mix is is the best way to do that. So we want to start doing that. We want to start recommending accelerators so that you know they don't have too much labor waiting on the concrete to set up, as concrete will set slower, obviously, in cooler temperatures. So those two things. And then, you know, we're probably not too far away from um starting the winter service uh charges. So we need to be make sure we're we're transparent about that and let everybody know that's that's coming. And and as soon as the the lows are kind of consistently below freezing and and the boilers are fired up to meet those uh 65 degree concrete temps, then that'll that'll start. So just wanted to add that to you know uh another thing we have to kind of keep in mind going a little change going into winter. Any other winter topics that you've got? I can see you prepped for this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

I knew you would be prepared, so I could just go along with what you were saying. Uh the only other thing I would say is you know, protecting your skin from the from the dressing of frostbite gloves and hats are really important.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Yeah. Oh, I did think of another thing, going back to batching. We've been talking a lot about uh running inventories down. So we don't need to be keeping uh huge amounts of particularly aggregate inventories through the winter when you know our our volumes are gonna be significantly slower and and we're not gonna be moving through those. All that does is tie up cash and we end up paying interest on a line of credit, you know. So it's just doesn't make any sense. So let's uh you know, Darren's gonna be talking with all the plant managers about running the inventories down um so that we're we're being kind of better stewards of of our cash flow.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

It's going to feel weird. Yeah, it's gonna feel weird to look out there and not see a huge pile of rocks, but it is very intentional and we're gonna watch it every day and we're gonna make sure we're prepared for what's coming, but we're not going to be overstocked like we have been in the past.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Yeah, yeah. Yep. Just just you know, a a wiser move, I think, to do that. So we have great redundancy with a lot of our plants that in you know, if if a customer finds a 500-yard hole, we'll find out how we'll figure out how to do it. Um, but we don't need to have every plant ready to do that every day, right? So um great.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Very good.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Lex, anything else you want to talk about? No.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Still nothing. Will he make it an entire year without speaking on the podcast?

SPEAKER_00 16:26

Well, we did do a photo control episode. Yeah. I felt like he talked to Sheldon and Sam in the one we weren't in.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

That's rude.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

He says better company.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Wow. All right. Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll talk again soon.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Thank you so much.