66. River Plant Logistics with Daren Fick

Andrea and Griff are joined by Daren Fick to talk through traffic flow, loading process and construction at the River Plant in Davenport.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

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

SPEAKER_01 0:15

And Darren Fick.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

Yay!

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Yippie. How's everybody doing today? I'm doing good. Another, another good busy week this week.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

We are great. We're ending May in a really nice place. Nice day. Nice weather. Yeah. Nice workload.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Well, in fact, our May is the best single month volume we've had in almost three years. So that's pretty awesome because May is not normally your biggest month. So hopefully more to come. I love the warm weather. Yeah. I'll take that.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

I can't wait to send this episode directly to your dad.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

I like to send happy, exciting statistics like this with him.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

I'm sure he'll appreciate it. It's for you, Brian.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Oh, I'm sure he listens. You know, we'll send it directly to him. I'm sure this is the first thing he does every week is listen to.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Hey, him and my mom. Avid listeners. Big fans.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

Big fans of the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Avid.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

We get feedback. We know they're listening. They actually told us, I think they actually told us they wanted Lex to talk more.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Really?

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Now's your chance.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

That makes sense. What a shame. Yeah. I want a million bucks. But you know, we can't all have the things who life is full of disappointments, Brian and Joy.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

No, it's been it's been good. Not without, you know, it's 'tis the season, right, for some incidents and tough, tough situations. We've had a couple this week. Uh so just always a reminder, especially when we're busy like this, to take the extra time, look a second, look over your shoulder twice, not just once. Take your time and be safe.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Yeah. I've also been out on job sites a lot recently, and we've talked about it a couple of times before, but our PPE usage is not where it needs to be. So a lot of people not wearing hard hats or safety vests or eye protection. So please make a point of doing that, or we're gonna have to start having consequences.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

So yeah, I think a part of it is like getting yourself organized, right? Like getting your the glasses that you like and your hard hat and your vest that you know is gonna work for you every day and keeping it all together. And I know it's crazy when your truck goes down and you're in a different truck, or you take a different car to work that day and your stuff was in your other car. It's really planning ahead and making sure you have everything that you need that's gonna be comfortable for you in the right place at the right time. So you have it when you need it.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Absolutely. I get that because I still have an old builder's hard hat from 2008, I think. But I like that hard hat.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

That's your favorite one. That's my favorite one.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

If you don't have it, so that means I should pick it up off the floor from behind my desk and put it in the truck.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Yeah, yeah, then you'll have it. That's how that works.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Uh if you do find yourself out there without what you need, you can if you see John on a job site, he almost always has extra PPE in his truck. Same thing, I'm sure Sam, Brian, Lex, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

So I gave Lex my nighttime PPE, like the full pants when we did the uh I didn't see a photo of that. The night work. And he returned them to me, and they were yellow when I gave them to him, like bright reflective yellow, and they were black when he gave them back.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

So you were wearing them and no one got a photo?

SPEAKER_01 3:32

That's right. He was wearing them covering them in calcium chloride and hydraulic fluid. Who was out there?

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Gary and Calvin. I'm I'm looking at you guys. You should have had photos of Lex sent in so we could publish them on Facebook page.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Yeah, good man. Next time.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

All right. Any other announcements before we get into the the meat of today's topic?

SPEAKER_01 3:58

I don't think so.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

All right. Well, Darren, we are so glad you're here. You got to spend a little time at the river plant this week, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:04

I did. I did.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

You're very familiar with operations there.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

I am.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

Some would consider you an expert. Some at both driving and operating a plant.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Some people drink a lot, too.

unknown 4:16

Not me.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

Just saying. Not me. I'm 100% sober on this. Uh I deem you an expert on these particular topics. Um, so there's been, I actually was talking to Chris Erickson today too, because he's kind of an expert on the block plant. He was around at the beginning of time with that.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

And it turns out the way that they built it and used it initially is quite different than how it's being used today.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Really?

SPEAKER_02 4:42

Yeah. Like they used to get water and then drive through the loading bay and get loaded. And that is no longer the way we do it, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:54

That's correct.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

So let's start at the very beginning. When you when a driver is pulling into the river plant, what do you want them to be thinking about looking for? Just the very first step when you're at this point.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

I'm going to assume that the truck is empty.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

Yes. First load of the deck.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

If they pull into the river plant, the first thing you would want to do is pull up on the what would be the east side of the plant. No, west side of the plant. West side. West side of the plant.

SPEAKER_02 5:23

The Taco John side or not?

unknown 5:24

No.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

The the side uh let's see.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

Davenport side.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Not the Scale Shack side. Yeah, there we go. The side closest to, I don't know, the new park. The park. The park. Depends on which bridge.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

We should be prepared for this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Towards downtown. We need a downtown. So it'd be the west side. So where trucks mainly pull in at the west end, they come in that driveway. My first thought would be to pull up next to the ramp out in front of the plant and fill my water tank. And then what if I'm hungry and I want a snack from the vending machine? Great question, Lex. Okay. Well, then if you're really hungry and you want to wait to fill your water tank, then you could pull off to the side, either over by the trees along River Drive or over by the railroad tracks. Not clue, not too close to the railroad tracks, or you'll get hit by a train. But over to the side, go in, take care of your business inside, vending machine, heat up food, get coffee, whatever it takes.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

So when you're talking about parking, you're talking on the far west side, not alongside the building or on the east side of the building.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Correct. Yeah. You don't want to park alongside the building because the lanes on either side of the building are just wide enough for one truck, not two, or two in the what if I need to go to the bathroom? Well, the bathroom would be in there where the food is. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

So I would say Do I do that before or after I get water?

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Well, that depends on how badly you have to go to the bathroom or how much you need food. If you're really hungry or you really need to go to the bathroom, then I suggest you pull off to the side and do that first. But pull off to the side.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

Not along the building.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Not along the building and not up on the ramp behind vehicles.

SPEAKER_02 7:08

And not in the water filling station.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

No.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

Not in the loading.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Because if you park there, what happens is you block off anybody who would come in after you while you're getting food or in the bathroom or whatever, really important. Then they pull up behind you and then you get trucks stacked up. And then it comes to the point where people, when they pull in the yard, don't have room to turn one way or the other and they get in the way.

SPEAKER_02 7:30

Yeah. So talk to us. Yes, yes. So when when you talk about trucks stacking up, what is that really? How does that affect the flow? What's the problem with truck stacking up?

SPEAKER_00 7:43

Depends on how busy we are or whether we're waiting on orders. Sometimes we end up waiting on an order to go and we'll stack six, seven, eight, nine trucks down there waiting on something to get started. And then it gets very congested. And the more congested it is, the less opportunity we have to load whatever truck may be next.

SPEAKER_02 8:03

Oh, yeah, that's the thing.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Because then get blocked in behind the other ones.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

That's another good point that Chris brought up about how back in the beginning, when they designed the plant, trucks were loaded in the order that they returned to the plant every time. So if you were there, you were the next truck to get your water and to get loaded. So there was no optimization and working around and deciding which truck is going to go for which job. It just was rolled through sort of naturally.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Well, you may not know this, having never driven a truck before, but I'm going to help you out.

SPEAKER_02 8:35

And that's why I invited you.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Sometimes, sometimes I was guilty of this many back in the day when we had the builder's plant down next door. Is you would come in the yard knowing that you were next up, but it seems way cooler if you back way up in the corner.

SPEAKER_02 8:51

They won't see you, you're not next.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Maybe they don't notice you're next, and you might be able to hang out for a little bit and get some food or go to the bathroom. So it's better if you just line up that way on the one side and do your thing. But there's only room for so many trucks. So it's better if we pull off to the sides to allow people to roll in and leave room for them to pull out and go by.

SPEAKER_02 9:16

Got it. Okay. So is there anything else that you wish drivers understood about how getting the water and getting yourself situated on the west side matters to operations?

SPEAKER_00 9:26

When it's when it's busy, like now, getting your water as soon as possible and not having to do it while you're under the plant getting loaded is paramount. It's key to getting trucks in and out of the load bay as quickly as possible. I would love for them to be able to pull through like we did years ago. That causes three problems. One, it makes the truck dirty because we don't have anything that really works well to help block the drip pan there. There's no drip pan there. Two, the trucks we have nowadays are taller than they were 15, 20 years ago. And now coming over the hump into the load bay, you actually could end up hitting parts up there with your hopper and so on. And a lot of times it's harder for them to line up driving under. People are so used to backing in now that they have forgotten how to drive through and load. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

That would definitely be a new, a new attempt.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

And we try very hard there. Andrew does a lot to try and make sure that the line that they use to back up along to back under and get lined up is there. Less water filling on that side keeps that line there longer because it doesn't wash away the paint that we can't seem to keep on there.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Yeah, I think people underestimate how that time adds up across the day. You know, for you, it might only be a couple minutes and it feels like nothing. But when your couple minutes backs someone else up a couple minutes and they add a couple minutes, by the time we get through a hundred loads in a day, it's a lot of time.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Yeah, when them are hours behind. Yes. Not often are we looking for 180 yards an hour out of that plant, but that plant can provide it pretty readily if everybody is kind of in the same being efficient and in a groove with and that's really all we're trying to do is be efficient and be as quick and timely and accurate as we can be with loads.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

Yep. So that's kind of the next area that I wanted to talk about was the actual loading process at the river plant. So walk me through tips and tricks for getting lined up in the right spot, what you should do as a driver while you're getting loaded. That will sign up.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

If you have been there before, most drivers who have been there before understand exactly where to line up on the line when it's visible, and we try and keep that visible as much as we can. And then typically the guys, a lot of guys I've seen, which is really ingenious, have a little zip tie on their step. And they use that with a joint on the concrete on the side, or they use it with a fence post or whatever that's there, and they line up with that, and then they know they're back and forth in the right spot. Some trucks have some hoppers that have met with some dangers and problems and issues in the past and maybe slightly crumpled, and the boot doesn't fit in as well, but you back in, typically it's about the same every time. If you back in, you hit that spot.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

As long as you're in your truck with your zip tie.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Correct. As long as you know that truck. And if you don't, you know, it's gonna take a little longer. We're still we still have the ability to help you get lined up in there with the intercom outside. If we have to, we can send a message over the tablet, although that takes more time. But if you're listening to that, my advice would be leave your window rolled down just a little bit, even if you have your air on. I know that lets in a lot of warm air. But if you can hear, Andrew will have you pull forward or back up, depending upon what he sees, or he can have you move over one way or the other. And that goes the same at builders or any other plant. We can do different things. The intercom is one thing there that actually helps because it's right away. And he'll get you lined up and then he'll turn a light on that's in your driver's side mirror on the wall. It's a red light. When that light is on, you stay put.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

You're in the right spot.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

You're in the right spot. He's got the boot in your hopper. Stay put, don't move.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

Why is it so important to not move?

SPEAKER_00 13:20

One, when that red light's on, one, you're in the right spot. And that's the only plant where we have this. So I understand where a lot of guys will get, why don't we do the same thing at every plant? Every plant has a little different way and it's a little different setup, which does make it kind of tough on people. But that one, when the drum is tipped in the air, that red light is on. Whether Andrew's turned it on or not, it's on. As long as that drum is tipped up in the air, you don't want to move. Because if he's still dumping concrete, even if it's just a little bit at the end and you roll out because you think you're done. One, you can pull the boot off if there's any concrete left in there. And two, some of your concrete ends up on the floor or on your chute or all over the back of your truck as you're trying to get loaded.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Nobody wants that.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Nobody wants that. It makes a mess. So that light will go off once you're loaded and the boot is up out of your hopper, and then you can leave. Once that light goes off, you're free to go.

SPEAKER_02 14:16

Is that a brake set situation?

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Yes. You should have your park brake set. There is there have been instances where park brakes don't hold when you get a full load in them. We don't know it yet, but an empty truck is easy to hold with a park brake, even if it's not completely adjusted. But a full-loaded truck, there's a lot of weight. Sometimes they roll. We understand that. We get it if it rolls. Stop as quickly as you can and back up and get back in that spot as best you can.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

We all do. So I like the red light tool. Actually, I think that's probably really helpful. The other tool that I don't know if people really know how good the cameras are at the river plant, especially there's certainly plenty of them. Lots of cameras.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

But it's it's the one plant where we have that is completely different than any other in the respect that while the batch operator is right upstairs with the plant and the drum and has a lot of ability to do that right there, is upstairs and nowhere near anywhere else in the yard. So he doesn't have the ability to just walk outside and point somebody back. Or peek through a window.

SPEAKER_02 15:35

I love that how much that happens in Muscatine where I'll see Jake guiding somebody at the exact moment. Exactly. It doesn't happen that way at the river plant.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

And you get that like an East Moline. I same thing. I use a buzzer to back them under and then pull forward. Or I can walk out the door and just look at them and point them forward or back. Well, you can't do that at the river. You don't have that access.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

You don't have that, but you do have the camera perspective, which is crazy how detailed and accurate he can see exactly where the boot is lined up in the truck.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Yes, there's a there's a camera located on both sides from the back looking forward and from the forward looking back. He has those cameras. He also has a camera up above inside the plant that looks down through the hole that can tell whether or not there's an issue there. And he can also see from the drum as he's tipping it, so we can see how fast it goes in as well. So there's a lot of different options there. He can see the front, the back, and both sides from the two cameras in the load bay. It doesn't look like much, and there are a lot of times we just go ahead and drop the boot in and give them the red light because we know it'll hop in when they start loading. Sometimes it won't happen. We've got a pretty good idea when it will. And when it doesn't, it makes a mess and nobody wants a mess.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

Yeah. So I think there's sometimes where as a driver, I'm sure you feel like you're in the right spot.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

It feels like this is where I always am. Everything is fine. Something might be off just a little bit where Andrew can see it and he's trying to get your attention to adjust one way or the other because of what he can see or whoever's up there. Yeah, it could be me, it could be Alex.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

There's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 17:14

Through the cameras that you you can't see from the ground from where you are.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

So sometimes you can make it work and we try, but then you're gonna have to dump slower. And if we're in that kind of a hurry, I hope we're never we're never in that much of a hurry that we're trying to rush something. But at the same time, if you end up with that, you got to just be careful about how fast you dump because you'll make a mess out of it. And then what you're doing is just creating 10 more extra minutes of work outside at the wash rack before they can leave the yard.

SPEAKER_02 17:43

What about uh distractions as a driver while you're getting loaded?

SPEAKER_00 17:49

That's a tough one. I'm I get as distracted as anybody. No, yeah, it happens. It's it's hard to believe, but it's true. Once you're getting loaded, it's very easy to forget that you're being loaded and just grab your phone, look at it, text message, watch a video. There's a lot of things you can do, and sometimes it takes a little bit of time. We have a policy about cell phone use, and I get people while you're sitting there with your park brake set, it really isn't a huge deal. It isn't until it is. And if you're not move, if you don't move when the time comes, or if you're not paying attention and your truck rolls forward just a little bit and you don't even realize it has because you weren't paying attention, and now there's concrete all over the back of your truck or on the ground, or the lights off and you haven't paid any attention, and now the load's in there, and you could be going to the job or going to get loaded.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

I think this one's pretty simple. Like we don't allow cell phone use while we're operating the truck. That's driving the truck, unloading the truck. And I would say that that definition includes loading the truck. Yeah, when you're sitting in the yard waiting and it's not your turn to load, then yeah, there's no issue with looking at your phone then. And if if you don't have something to clean on your truck, right? But yeah, it that when we're loading, that is just no. That's you're only gonna be under that hole for hopefully three and a half minutes or less. So if everything's going right, that's about as long as you want to be there. Yeah. So you, you know, we can we can leave the phones down for that amount of time, and we have a job to do. It's just a it's a safety issue, it's a quality issue, and yeah, we get we just gotta stay focused.

SPEAKER_02 19:36

I agree. Okay, so let's say everything went the way we've talked about so far. You get your water, you get your snack, you get called, you get in the loading bay, you get loaded. What's next? What's on your mind next as an optimal Han Ready mixed driver at the river plant?

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Well, there's a couple things. One, and I was always afraid of this before, and now I'm not as afraid because I've learned more from the drivers what they see. But you get a ticket before you even pull in the load bay. The ticket shows up on the tablet, which I didn't realize how much information there is. I think even the directions are available at that point. So you have a pretty good idea of what you're getting loaded with and for whom you're getting loaded. So you back onto the plant, you get loaded, now you pull out to the wash rack. Now you have a couple options here. Some people choose to go over to the scale shack and get their paper ticket first. If you know what slump you have to have, because it says it on your ticket, and you know where you're going and what you're looking for, and nobody from QC needs to test your concrete. And if they are, they'll tell you when you pull up. Normally they'll say, Hey, I need to test your load. Then you can get out, look at your load, make sure it's the right slump. If you can't see it right away, roll it back so you can see it. Make sure that your load is where it needs to be, or if you need to add a little water, go ahead and rinse down your hopper and so on. At that point, you're pretty much ready to go. Wash off the truck. You don't need to have it in full mixing motion because you've just been loaded from a central mix plant, which is different from, say, Aldridge or Muscatine, where you've got to mix the load. You get the load, you're it's just turning at a normal, ready speed. You get your water that you're gonna do and wash down, and then you can drive around by the scale shack, save yourself the walk, go get your ticket out of the scale shack, and then you can proceed to the job.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

About how long you think it takes there on the wash rack.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

In a perfect world, if it's loaded correctly and as close as we can, and we're trying to leave, say they want a five inch lump on the job and it's loaded at a five, and you rinse down with a little bit of water, and maybe it's a five and a half, it shouldn't take you more than two, three minutes. At max, you should be at this at the wash rack no more than five to seven, maybe eight minutes tops.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

Yeah, I think that's another spot where it's easy for the Minutes to stack up, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:01

If if especially if there's concrete on the back of your truck for whatever reason or on somewhere else because it wasn't in there just right, or we didn't get you. Anything can happen. And we certainly don't want that to happen.

SPEAKER_02 22:13

But yeah. And there's just uh the way the traffic flows. So if someone is taking longer at the wash rack than is absolutely necessary, then that stacks up who can come into the correct to the wash rack next.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

And there's two sides to the wash rack. So you can pull to one side or the other. So there's technically room for two. My old adage is always we can only load one truck at a time, but it is fairly simple to end up with two at the wash rack.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

And that's okay. Um, a lot of people don't like, I'm one of them. I don't like to pull to the left side because that puts the stairs and everything on my passenger side, the blind side as we call it, which is tougher, but there's two there.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

Yep. But there's another time where I think sometimes when it's congested, people will try to pull to the side of the building of the plant while they're waiting for the wash rack, which goes back to the same problem we were talking about before getting loaded, that there's only one lane basically around there. And if there's trucks parked there, it causes problems for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

And you know what? Last year we had a really huge issue where there was a big huge hole in the middle of our yard on the west side, and we had to park on the other side.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

That's a really good point. That we've had so much extra. Uh, I don't know, the word's not junk, but it basically feels like the yard is junked up with other people's stuff in our way or other people's holes in the ground. Yeah, it's hardly it's very rare that we have a free and clear yard with nothing extra in our way.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Yeah, and that's gonna change again probably in a week.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

So um speaking of that, water, discharging water in the in the yard, talk about that a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

That's a very big deal down there, and it hadn't been until the last couple of years, but we are going through environmental issues with the city, and they're very excited about the opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 24:05

Yes, observation.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Yeah, and if what we cannot do there is discharge water of any type, whether you think it's clean, dirty, leftovers, washout, whatever. If you're beaten on the drum of your truck and it's in there, don't spill it out behind you anywhere in the yard other than in the pit, which is out back as you come in at the very east end of the yard. Across the tracks and the across the tracks and down through the room, we've got a ramp built there. In fact, we built the ramp on the opposite side of the pit now because that helps us keep from dragging material out into other property. But that's where you need to dump any anything that comes out of the back of your drum needs to go in that pit.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

Leftovers?

SPEAKER_00 24:52

I'd rather you didn't. No leftovers now.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

Just clarifying, I just want to make sure.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Leftovers should be gone before you get there, or if you have if you got a couple wheelbarrows, you tell dispatch you only got a couple wheelbarrows, they may tell you to throw 30 or 40 gallons in it and dump it. That's one thing. But only if you're asked by dispatch or somebody else to go ahead and do that. Don't just take it upon yourself thinking that a couple wheelbarrows would be okay. It's always better to not.

SPEAKER_02 25:19

Is there anything else you want to talk about before I ask my last question?

SPEAKER_00 25:24

Should I be concerned in your last question?

SPEAKER_02 25:27

Nope, I just don't want to miss anything before I get to the end here. Where as a as a plant operator now, so you've been weighing in as an expert driver here, kind of, but now thinking about it from a plant operator perspective, what are the things that separate the drivers who make your life easier operating the plant versus those that are not necessarily self-serving, but only worried about making their path easiest?

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Honestly, I think they go hand in hand. I think they're self-serving actually helps efficiency. If you're trying to get the the best scenario, is everybody, we're all trying to get to the same goal. Come in here in the morning, leave in the afternoon, get paid for what we do, get paid well, and do a good job. Stay safe. Don't get hurt, take care of customers and do the right things to make us more efficient day in and day out. The quicker we're able to get trucks in and out of the yard, the better we are for the customer. Griffin's much happier, and he doesn't have to go deal with complaints and issues and problems, and we don't have to worry about why we were late or what happened here because everything went well. Everybody's trying to accomplish that same goal. Sometimes in different ways. That's the biggest thing. Everybody's trying to do the right thing all the time. We just need to. Sometimes there are people who spend all day there, whether it be me or Andrew or Alex or Brian Wolfe or any of the people that are there all the time that know some things that do and don't work, those people understand what might work better. And sometimes that's not conducive to what we want, but it works out best.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

I think the point uh that we're trying to get at is plant manager, whether it be Andrew or Alex or whoever is there, may say, Hey, I need you to do something, and it may not make sense to you, but it does make sense in the bigger picture because they see how traffic flows, they see how the process works, not just on a single load basis, but moving dozens of loads through there, right? So so just be, you know, do your best to be cooperative and have good communication and and that'll just make it all smoother.

SPEAKER_02 27:55

Absolutely. And if you have ideas, like if there's something about the way you you have to operate at that plant or any plant that you think is an annoyance every time you have to do it and you have an idea for how we could change it, send it in. Like we are always looking for absolutely, you know. Sometimes the simplest thing of like changing out a hose or something like that makes all the difference for people. So, but we don't know that unless you tell us.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

So and some of those little things are pretty easy to to take care of and accomplish quickly. Um, there's a couple things we'd like to do down there as we get. I'd love to improve the ramp that we back up to get in there. That's something we're looking at doing in the future, hopefully before the season's over with.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

Great. Oh, see, you spontaneously showed up on the podcast and did a great job.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

Ah.

SPEAKER_02 28:43

Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Well, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. I think this is the least I've talked in an episode where I've been here.

SPEAKER_02 28:48

Where are you? You weren't even here today.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Well, yeah. It was on my phone while we were getting loaded.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

That's a great place to end the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Right down the toilet.

SPEAKER_02 29:02

Thanks for listening to Loaded the Hon ReadyMix podcast. Please share this episode with your friends and take care until next week.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Thanks so much.