49. Don't Be UPS

Andrea and Griffin finish off a review of 2025 and Griffin recounts a story about a poor customer experience with UPS.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Welcome to Loaded, the Hahn Ready Mix Podcast with Andrea Meyer, Griffin Hahn, and producer Lex.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

How's it going?

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Great. It feels kind of lonely in here today.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

It it is. It is lonely. Well, it's cold.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

It is very cold.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

It has remained cold the second half of January. It's been pretty brutal.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

But we've had we've had a series of visitors here over the last few episodes. Yeah, that's true. We gotta carry it on our own now.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a good opportunity for us to uh kind of finish with our look back at 2025. Which kind of got interrupted because we had timely guests uh that were worth pausing on that.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

And it's still it's still January, like all 300 whatever days of January.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Well, when they're listening to this, it will not be January.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Oh, January's over then. January's celebrate. The coldest, darkest, hopefully brokest month of the year.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Um is is behind us. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

That's wonderful. That's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

We all survived January.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

So that is good. We just gotta make it through the weekend.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Yeah. Uh, you know, on that topic, I wanted to give a real shout out to everyone that was involved with particularly what happened yesterday. So last Wednesday, when you listen to this, uh, the uh 300-yard pour we did for Centennial out at Smart Hyundai, but really all the pours that have happened over the last few weeks, that the the effort it takes to pull off a 300-yard pour at 100 yards an hour in 10 degree or below weather is Herculean, to say the least. And so I'm super proud of all of our team from the mechanics getting the trucks ready and dealing with trucks that the day before fired up and then the day of uh are gelled up um to the plant operations team and getting material to flow through the plant. Like the simplest thing is so hard. We have four people out there working on getting material up into the plant because it just doesn't want to flow in when it's you know frozen together and in chunks and the belts are cold. And um, so working through that process, maintaining concrete temperature. Lexa's out there temping loads and and giving feedback, and we're changing uh what bins we're using to try to manage the concrete temperature and let the aggregates warm up in the plant. I mean, there's just so much that goes into it, and that's not even talking about what's happening on the side. Yeah, and on site dealing with, you know, uh uh not ideal conditions and trucks freezing up on site and not being able to add water, um, and sort of having to use a different truck to add water and just everything is so much more difficult. And we, I think, did a really good job and and pulled it off. And frankly, nobody else could do that in our market, I don't think. In fact, we know that because we picked up a job this week because our competition said they couldn't do it, it wasn't possible, and we did it for you know, it's a much smaller job, but we did it. And I think we picked up a job for that. So that's great. That's where we differentiate, that's where we show our value is not just in the price of the concrete, but in how we perform and how we can do what others can't. So really proud of our team, and and I think we set a great standard for us to keep following.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

I mean, just for the record, we would rather do it when it's a little warmer.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Yes. But I mean, if it was easy, everybody would be able to do it.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

We could do it if we have to, but we would rather do it on a nicer.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

We're showing that, hey, it we can we can overcome any challenge. So that's right. Yeah. I also had a story I wanted to talk a little bit about, take a few minutes. I had an experience with UPS. And I was thinking about it, and I said, you know, I want to make sure that the way I felt about UPS in that moment is never the way that anybody feels about us. So I wanted to share the experience and think that if we ever perceive that we're in this situation, that we need to kind of, you know, backpedal and reassess what's going on in in the scenario. So my story was uh my wife had some some Christmas stuff that she was trying to return. So I had a couple packages.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Were these gifts that you bought her that she didn't want?

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Probably. I don't even remember. No, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Um It it makes the story better. So we'll just go with that.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

I think there was stuff for the kids that were duplicates, right? That somebody like a grandparent got them or something. And um, so a couple small packages that she had um started a return online from wherever she got them, and they were through UPS. They had to do the return. Well, the UPS for years had a UPS store real near my house. And so I'd always go to that one. Well, earlier last year, they shut that down. So the only UPS store in the Quad Cities was over by North Park Mall. Um, and so I went to the UPS store to return these packages, and they had a sign up there, and they said this store is permanently closed, and you need to go to one of the UPS drop-off locations. And um without any explanation of where that could be. So I get on my phone and I look, and it says, All CVS pharmacies can take a UPS dropbox. Okay, on my way back to the office, there's uh a CVS. I'll go there. So I go to the CVS and I walk in. And as soon as I walk through the door with a couple packages in my hand, the lady behind the counter CVS is like, no, no, no. We are full. We don't know when UPS is coming to pick these up. We cannot take any more packages. You have to go somewhere else. And I said, okay. And she goes, all the other CVS is take them too. And I said, okay. So at the end of the day, I was like, okay, I'll go to a different CVS on my way home. And I walk in the door there. And another lady who was much nicer, but gave me the same message, said, We cannot take any more, and we can't get notification from CVS on when they're gonna or from UPS when they're gonna come pick these up. So I uh was frustrated. I said, Well, where else can this go? She goes, I know they take it at Kohl's. So you can go to Kohl's that definitely will take that. So I go to Kohl's and and part of this is shame on me for not looking it up myself. I go to Kohl's, and it's first of all, not even a UPS drop location at all. So I'm on attempt number four to try to return a package using UPS, which is like their primary thing that they do is deliver packages. That's what they're there to do. And you literally can't do business with them. And so we, I was like, I don't, I don't know how I'm supposed to return this. My only option might be to go and pay for another label from USBS or FedEx or something to get it sent back because UPS has made it impossible. So I went online and I'm like, I wonder if I can reach out to someone or find another spot. And all they had listed were a bunch of CVS. Um and and it just there, they're they weren't gonna take them, right? So um I went online and I was trying to like send a message, and there was no way to communicate with UPS at all. No uh chat with us, no um ask a question, no way to interact, no phone number, nothing. There's no way to do it. And so then I just gave up and drove the rest of the way home. And so happens there was the UPS driver in my neighborhood. And so I pulled in front of him so he couldn't drive away and said, uh, he was parked when I he was uh but uh I said, you have to take this package. He goes, I can't take packages like this. And I said, No, you're gonna, because I can't drop this off anywhere else. And the guy reluctantly ended up taking it. But I went home and immediately told my wife, I said, Do if they ever give you an option when you're returning something, never pick UPS again. Never, because they clearly don't care about uh their customer experience. So I just want to keep that in mind for everybody that we never want to be UPS. We never want to have customers frustrated that they struggle to do business with us or they feel like they can't reach out to us or communicate. Um, it's just unacceptable. And I, you know, I don't I can't speak for UPS or why they've taken the track that they have. Um, but we need to be ultra cognizant in this time of changing technologies and having different ways we do work. I mean, that is okay, but we can never lose sight on the customer experience being what is most important. So that's kind of my story that I wanted to share. So should we get into the meat of what we wanted to talk about today?

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Absolutely. Let's it's a it's a look back, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Yeah. So I thought we'd finish kind of a final wrap-up of 2025. And we talked a little bit about this before. We talked about rejected loads, things like that. Um, but uh this was actually your idea. Um, and we put this together. I think it's pretty cool. So what we did was we took all of our management reviews from Paylocity, and all the management reviews were reviewed on each of the values. I took everyone's self-review.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Yeah, we should explain that. Most people probably don't know that the managers get to uh I'm thinking have to, but I'm saying get to. The managers get to do a self-review. Yes, before we put our part into their review. So that's that's a big part of this. Yes. Their self-reflections.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

So for every, I guess, value, let's call it um theme, right? So customers and coworkers are our team, do the right thing, level up and be positive. For each one of those four, I put everyone's self-review and yours and I's feedback that we put in for all the managers. And the hope is by doing the managers, um, I know it we could do it fuller with everybody, but it would have been just too much, taking too long to do it all. But the hope is we've we get a feeling for how every department is doing and and all that. And so we put all of that into Chat GPT and said, hey, summarize, what are the trends here? Where are we doing well? What are we weak at? Where can we improve? Um and and I also gave it a lot of context in our year as far as you know, that we were slow and and all that. Um so yeah, so that's why I wanted to kind of go through that summary because I do think there's some really interesting things that were born out of that exercise.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Yeah, for sure. Just doing doing the review process is it's a lot of time and a lot of effort that we all have to put into it, but there are so many good ideas and good conversations that happened um with it. So I'm really glad to keep you know some of those ideas going and using this to share it with more people and expand all that effort.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Yeah. And and I really like that it's focused on our values because that's what matter even when things, you know, aren't hectic and and no one's watching. And that's that's where we prove who we are, right? And and so that that's very important to me.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

For sure. Okay, so let's start with the first first section customers and coworkers are our team.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Yes. So the values under that, of course, are take ownership, support each other, and promote safety. So 2025 gave us something we don't always get, which was time, right? We we had more time to focus on things. We had less work to do last year than than really any year since we acquired block in 2012. What stood out really is that ownership didn't disappear when things slowed down. It became more visible, which is good. Uh, we've treated people, we treated customers well, plants, trucks, systems, and problems. We treated those all as like ours, right? That that came up over and over.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

I feel like you should have emphasized and like drawn out the trucks section of that.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Yeah, right, sure.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

True, painful, yes, painful, expensive, but very thorough, very well-owned uh improvements in the truck section.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Yeah. So yes, for sure. But we we owned those, right? That's that's what I guess the theme is that um we didn't point blame at at each other or at vendors or or ask who screwed this up. We say, how do we fix it? How do we keep it from happening again? We learned those lessons. Um, and that really was borne out throughout the year. I think it's it's pretty clear that customer satisfaction was really strong. We had very few complaints. We picked up a number of customers throughout the year, um, despite really aggressive competition. And I think internally our turnover was less. You know, we had less people that were looking for other jobs, and which is remarkable considering there were less hours to be had this year. Um, so I think that that speaks a lot to our culture and the satisfaction everyone can take on a job well done. I think it's it's easier to be satisfied here when we are successful, right, in in keeping our customers happy and getting things done. Uh so I thought that was great. So one of the some of the bullet points it came out with was that where we're strong is ownership is part of our identity. Teams support each other across roles and locations, and customers feel the difference in how we communicate and follow through. And I I definitely agree with all that, that um that is how we can differentiate with our customers is communication. And and we had a lot of great collaboration between teams.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Yeah, I think we it's it's sometimes hard for us to measure customer satisfaction. Um, and I I don't remember if we talked about it on the podcast or not, but one thing that we loved was when you did the cookie deliveries this year, you got a lot of really positive feedback. Yeah. Um, but another thing, just in case you know, people don't know, our our managers who visit job sites and visit customers report back to Griffin every week on their on their visits and yeah, you know, whether they were positive or whether there was constructive feedback there. So we are uh, you know, trying to measure that as best we can. And and we have been doing that for years in different ways. And it is it is definitely uh heading in a positive direction right now, and we definitely want to keep that up for sure.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

So all those things are really positive. Some places where you know we identified ourselves that we are uh can do better. The most I'd say the most consistent refrain we heard through all the reviews was safety. So it's clear that we care about it and we talk about it. As leaders, we don't always model it consistently. And I think some of that is we don't necessarily always know how. Um, and some of it is just consistency of you know, wearing PPE, um, following up with people that aren't wearing PPE, you know, uh redirection. We we had some, you know, a major incident this year. I thought it it was terrible that it happened, but it was good that we had a sit-down and talked about what happened, how to make sure nothing like it ever happens again. So I think we don't need to wait for those kind of critical incidents to happen to have those, I don't know what the right word is, those round tables basically to talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Yeah. And I I want to clarify on this one a little bit. I don't, I didn't see in anyone's reviews or in any conversations that we had with people that anyone thinks that we're doing things unsafely.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

No one said, you know, I have to rush all the time and I can't do things the right way. No one, no one's no one pointed at anything that we're doing that is unsafe. And I think I think that's a good sign. I think you're right about it's a little bit unclear about what does prioritizing safety really look like for us.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

So there's a lot of things that are trending in the right direction here, also. Like the frequency and um and intensity of the claims that we have are way down than where they had been. Less frequency of incidents with you know, truck accidents and things like that. Like there's a lot of things safety-wise that are going right. I think that's just an area of our values and our behaviors that we're not sure what our job is to promote safety.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

I think the biggest takeaway is people feel like they ought to be doing more on safety on the front there and don't know exactly what that looks like. So I guess that's up to to you and me to find that direction and and help push it. So I agree.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

A couple of things that we're doing already in this podcast, obviously, we have have a channel to share more safety-specific information, which I think we are doing, and we're using the payload city journaling feature and the same series cameras to give people more feedback and keeping safety at at top of mind. So I would see say we definitely have things that we can continue with that.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Yeah, for sure. Another thing that came up that where we could be more consistent is in that support sometimes turns into doing rather than developing systems and habits that stick, right? So if something goes wrong, we're really good at being kind of the firefighters to jump in and fix it.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Were you talking to me directly, Griffin?

SPEAKER_00 17:43

Do you do you resemble this comment? Uh so uh yeah, so that's something that I I what came out again and again that that we we could do better is that setting up systems where we have problems to be more proactive for those issues happening than than reactive.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

I'm guilty of both here, I guess. I feel like I'm really good at setting up systems, but I'm also really good at taking over and doing it myself. Yeah. Too much.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

So yeah. So the the 2026 expectations that kind of came out of, I think, yours and my comments were that safety has to be non-negotiable. Ownership means finishing, documenting, and following up, which is something that we can definitely improve on.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

How many times have you heard me say that in the last four weeks of 2026?

SPEAKER_00 18:33

And support means building capability, not dependence. So uh helping everyone that reports to our leaders be capable of solving the problems themselves rather than relying on someone to come help them.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

It cuts close for me.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Moving on to our second category, do the right thing.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Yeah. So this is take action, act with integrity and fairness, and make decisions that benefit uh the company, customers, and employees. Uh if there's one value that really showed up clearly of this year, it's this one. So 2025, like we said, it wasn't easy. The market was slow, competition was aggressive, margins were under pressure. Um in that kind of situation, it's easy to cut corners, it's easy to not do things the right way.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

And procrastinate, procrastinate, be lazy.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Um, and and we really didn't succumb to temptation on that. And and we saw action instead. We didn't dodge customer issues, we addressed problems, decisions were made even when our options weren't great because of resource management, right? And we say, listen, we have two paths here, and neither of them are what we really want to do because uh we have to be, you know, responsible with with what we can spend. And um, and I think we we we worked through all those problems really efficiently and really made the best of every situation. And going back to ownership, when mistakes happen, they were owned and talked through and learned from. Some of our strengths that came out were we don't freeze when things get uncomfortable. There's a deep trust in our integrity and transparency. And I I really hope everyone feels that way because that's what this podcast is. That's why we do this, is we want to be transparent with the whole team on what we're doing. All of our decisions have come down to considering the company employees and customers and not just one group. And and yes, we do shade towards the customers because that is kind of our whole business model, is that um outstanding customer experience. But we always are are keeping all groups in mind whenever we do something. Where we need to do a little bit better is came out a few times that speed sometimes outplaced outpaced discipline. And what that means is there's been times where we've reacted maybe before we've thought through or or set up systems to help us be successful, which I don't think was a major issue. It's just uh something that came out of the uh reviews. And then learning from mistakes, we we did this in and like I talked, we talked about the safety incident. We've done this with critical things, but um, learning from mistakes wasn't always formalized into process changes. So we had a a couple, you know, the one safety thing and and uh a couple other kind of operational mistakes that did. But I think the smaller stuff we need to do a better job of putting on the radar, like, hey, we should set up a system to fix this.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Yeah, I think like kind of our first step in improving that area was recognizing that we need to kind of inspect issues as they come up and and make changes going forward. But the next step after that now is formalizing it and documenting it and sharing with everyone.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Yes. And that's what uh doing the right thing for 2026. Uh looks like is documenting lessons so mistakes don't repeat and protecting trust even when it costs us something in the short term, which is something that I think we're always doing.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

So all right. We're moving on to category number three here, level up, my favorite.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Yeah. So level up is continuously learn and grow, embrace innovation and push boundaries and strive for organizational excellence. One of the biggest takeaways from this is that just because we have a slow year, growth doesn't stop just because the volume slows down. And we definitely saw that. We leveled up in 2025 with training and certifications, learning new systems, cleaner shops, labs, processes, fewer rejected loads, better preparation and documentation. All of those things are tangible growth that we have. And they may not be growth in volume or revenue, but they are growth in us as a company and uh individuals on our capabilities. And um, so I was really proud of that. I love that our group has an appetite to learn. That's something that's really dear to me and came out a lot that people were constantly wanting to know more, to be able to do more. And I think that's really powerful. We're open to innovation, maybe more often than we give ourselves credit for. We we talk a lot about being on kind of the cutting edge of technology, and we saw that a lot this year with people embracing AI, embracing potential software changes that would be innovative, but also challenging. And nobody's scared of that, which is pretty great. It's hard to quantify this, but organizational excellence is clearly becoming a priority and not an afterthought, right? Everybody is proud of what we achieve together and the standards that we have set for this organization and holding them up together. And I think that that is such an awesome cultural place to be where you have the the guide rails on how we behave and how we act and the way we do things being set by the whole organization. And it's easy to identify when somebody's off track when everybody's on the same page. So I think that that's really good.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Yeah, I think this is something we kind of take for granted because it is just there. Um, but unfortunately, you notice it a lot like in your UPS story or when you're dealing with other companies where excellence is not really their goal. It seems like their goal is to do the minimum acceptable standard.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

And it's just some something we sort of take for granted here that we are always trying to be the best.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Some things that we could do better or or or more consistently is that we have a lot of individual learners that spend a lot of time learning things and translating that knowledge or that gained ability or or learning to the whole organization is a work in progress, right? So one example of this is we have a few people that are getting really good at Power BI, which um is a way to kind of manipulate and report data. And we have a few champions of that are really getting good. And so the next step for us is how do we translate that so the whole organization can benefit. Um, so that's that's one thing we see it kind of in the same vein. Adoption of tools is uneven. We have some people that have really jumped into AI and and leverage that to make them more capable and move quicker, and others that haven't, right? So trying to get everybody kind of on the same page with using the tools that are available to us. So yeah, so for 2026, you know, one of the the expectations, the goals are individual learning must turn into organizational gain. So when when someone does gain a skill or whatever, let's figure out how to translate that or grow that amongst our peers. And excellence should be visible, repeatable, and not dependent on who's watching. And I think that that again, that's something we do, but we need to celebrate that when it happens.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

Okay. Last one. You were really uh pushing the limits of the length of our podcast here. But I hope everyone can can hang with us for this last value and we will try to be more efficient next week.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

All right. Value number four, be positive.

SPEAKER_00 26:09

All right. So that's don't be a dick, create an fun and enjoyable workplace and celebrate from successes and learn from failures. So I think that is one of the reasons why we came through this year kind of such a coherent group instead of being fractured by a challenge, right? That of being slow, of of not having a good year was because we have this positive mentality. Just because we were slow, the pressure didn't disappear, the challenges didn't disappear. Um, you know, maybe there was less of the pressure cooker constantly, but the the work didn't get substantially easier. And in in some cases, the pressure is higher when you know that the margins are slim, right? Really impressed with how our group stayed as a group, stayed a team that was in the trenches together through a different kind of challenge, you know. And so uh this year we saw definitely more respectful conversations, less kind of defensiveness about talking about issues, more patience under stress, and a genuine effort to keep things human and kind to each other, which is really good. It's very clear that respect and positive intent are kind of the default that we expect here, and that we're good at learning from failure without blame. And I think that that's something we all have to remember. And it's it's it's a hard thing to do individually, but um, as an organization, we're really good at it. And where we can do better is positivity and energy are uneven. So it's not that everybody uh always has to be, you know, super happy all the time, but that we maintain that positive front for uh the whole front line. And some of us, including myself, aren't great at the celebration. So celebrating and recognition has to be, you know, kind of more of a priority, I think, going forward to make sure um that we're continuing to motivate the good behaviors and the good uh work that people are doing. We want to reward that and we want to make sure that people know that that's being seen. So that's important. In that same vein, too many wins are unacknowledged because it's just the job. It's not just a job. We're we're not just expecting people to deliver concrete or fix a truck. We're expecting so much more the organizational excellence, right? So we need to celebrate and recognize when somebody is doing the right thing the right way. So anyway, that's that's kind of a wrap-up, and and I know that I'm summarizing ChatGPT points into the style of it may be a little different. And I I I get that, but I do think that there were some really interesting trends in this. Um, I'm proud that in a tough year, we didn't sacrifice for convenience, we didn't abandon our values, and we stuck together as a team. And I think that's the the major takeaway through this process.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

When we did the reviews, Griffin deemed himself the good cop and looking back at all of 2025 and giving himself credit and and acknowledging everyone and celebrating everyone.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

That is not true.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

And then he handed it over to me to be the bad cop about what we need to do better going forward. And it's definitely not the bad cop thing to set expectations and push people forward. So it is not. I didn't take offense to that very much, but I have brought it up a few times. So in that same vein, what we're looking for in 2026 is more systems, right? Like less firefighters out there responding to an emergency and more systems that prevent emergencies from getting to that level. Um, we're looking for clarity on what your role is in our safety culture. Um, we're looking for scaling our learning opportunities and more positive accountability with our leadership.

SPEAKER_00 30:00

Yeah. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

33 minutes if you made it this far. Thank you so much. We promise to have a shorter podcast next week.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Maybe. They keep getting longer every week. Thank you.