What's new
By:
Filters

Panzers: I break rocks thread

speed bump said:
He is in sand and gravel, it's literally all about cost/ton. The product gradation is basically all the same, unless you live in the mountains where geology is vertical everyone has the same rocks, and there are usually multiple quarry's within the margin of trucking cost.

The batch plant is an interesting idea, more margin but a bunch more people and you really need a good operator. Pouring for the guys who don't test isn't bad but finding out your operator had an off day and the state back charged you $14k on a $50k job kills a lot of your profits for a while.
Click to expand...
Surprisingly in my county we have got 100’s of different kinds of rock. My hard rock is a wolf river granite. We have everything from greywack, jadite, sand stone, granites, ect. It’s crazy how active geological it is in my county.

With that said the state has begun to sample all the quarries in our county because the city is complaining that after 20 years the concrete is failing. It’s failing because of the asr reactions between the stone and paste.

Lo and behold my granite is one of the best stones to use in the concrete because it does not have this reaction ever. The guys I sell my concrete stone to bought a quarry on the other side of town 2.5x the distance away from my pits. Come to find out that stone is one of the worst for that test. Talking to the quality guys they don’t even want them to use it in the concrete.

I make extremely high spec materials. I would say the best in the county. I supply sand and buckshot to a precast concrete guy in town. They sample every load that I haul there. Their sand spec is absolutely stupid to meet. I have the only classifier in the county and it can work like magic. I don’t have room to make multiple piles so all the sand gets made to this high spec.

Everything I do I try to do it to the best of my ability. It’s my personal flaw. So with the concrete I’m sure it will be spot on. I will learn how to test it so I will be keeping an eye on it. I do have an offer by a concrete provider on the other side of the state to send a plant operator over for a summer to teach me.

I’m still need to talk with the current guys we provide stone for. I’m hoping I get there the end of this week early next week to see what their plan is.

Also Been talking to my wife to see what she thinks. See if she would quit her job to work as dispatch/bookkeeper for me. She is very risk adverse and she makes pretty good money so it would be a pay cut. However the stress would be cut down exponentially, and she would get to work from home. I also joke she could be like just like wife of the old guy we bought the pit from. Some days she was nice as can be, other days she would be yelling at you at the top of her lungs:lmao:.

Worst thing is we would need to find our own insurance as that’s the primary reason she works now. Still a lot to think about, it’s a nice exercise to get my head going. Oddly enough I have always kinda wanted to set up a concrete plant but never had the guts to do it.
 
bgaidan said:
Do you have enough room to lease a site to an concrete and/or asphalt plant? Most of the pits around here have another company's plant on site or directly adjacent to where they can haul materials directly to them. Seems like you'd get the benefit of being the exclusive supplier for their sand and stone without having to deal with the headache that comes with running a batch plant.
One of my former employers owned several portable plants and I had a few projects where we ran one on site. They were pretty much a separate project and company within themselves. Really didn't make us money but they were critical in maintaining schedule by not relying on the other companies to deliver to us.
Click to expand...
Yes I have plenty of property to lease a site for a concrete plant. A asphalt plant would be a no go, as my other customer who i do 25-30% of my sales per year has an asphalt plant. They are a mega corp who gives me enough work to keep me around. They would rather see me in the pits than another mega corp move in a competing plant. It’s a strange symbioses.

I have talked to one concrete producer already to put a bug in their ear to see if they want to set up a plant in my yard.
 
Levigarrett76 said:
Around here pre-cast underground stuff is in HIGH demand, takes forever to get from the select few guys that do it. But then youve got engineers and shop drawings etc to deal with.
Click to expand...
We have a couple precast wall companies here, seems to be a booming buisness these days.
 
ThePanzerFuhrer said:
Everything I do I try to do it to the best of my ability. It’s my personal flaw.
Click to expand...

This is not a flaw. Even in your business I guarantee there’s people that recognize that. Yes, you will lose some volume business, but 40% less work for only 20% less money is a nice way to go.

Just pulling numbers out of the sky, but you get the idea.
 
WaterH said:
This is not a flaw. Even in your business I guarantee there’s people that recognize that. Yes, you will lose some volume business, but 40% less work for only 20% less money is a nice way to go.

Just pulling numbers out of the sky, but you get the idea.
Click to expand...
As stated before in the aggregate business it solely comes down to price. It doesn’t matter how good it is as long as it meets the gradation the cheapest stuff in price + trucking always wins.
 
I believe what wh was saying was to prioritize the higher value products. Sounds like your sand and gravel, anything that would be more desirable because of color or other properties, even if it takes more time and capital, assuming the price supports it. You seem to be know wth your doing though so I assume you have already maximized the value of your products.

You know your area and products better than anyone, from an outsider looking in concrete seems like a lot of squeeze for not that much juice. If you do have the only rock the dot would like to use that changes things though.

If there’s money to be made in mobile crushing in your area that could be another option but again more time people and expense and even a more specialized employee and equipment than concrete.
 
ThePanzerFuhrer said:
As stated before in the aggregate business it solely comes down to price. It doesn’t matter how good it is as long as it meets the gradation the cheapest stuff in price + trucking always wins.
Click to expand...

Glad I'm not the only one dumb enough here trying to make a living in highly commoditized, low margin business (trucking). :homer:

I feel you on the what is the right size to be, the last two years I was in your spot of really needing more help but unable/unwilling to put additional people on and it sucked. 8 drivers and one other guy in the office. I added a bookkeeper/payables guy that can also dispatch and my life got exponentially better from a work/life perspective. Downside is that this year has absolutely sucked revenue wise, so money is way tighter with him onboard.

Also do the math on the insurance stuff, it turns into an absolute killer on a per hour cost perspective if you have a medical event for yourself or the kids. My wife works at the hospital in town pretty much exclusively to just carry insurance for us.
 
Insurance is pretty much everybody with a family’s golden handcuffs. Pretty much the reason I worked for the school district for less money than I could make elsewhere. When I retired, I paid cobra payments at $1400 plus to maintain my plan. It was damn good insurance. So I can see why that is a concern for her.
 
ThePanzerFuhrer said:
Surprisingly in my county we have got 100’s of different kinds of rock. My hard rock is a wolf river granite. We have everything from greywack, jadite, sand stone, granites, ect. It’s crazy how active geological it is in my county.

With that said the state has begun to sample all the quarries in our county because the city is complaining that after 20 years the concrete is failing. It’s failing because of the asr reactions between the stone and paste.

Lo and behold my granite is one of the best stones to use in the concrete because it does not have this reaction ever. The guys I sell my concrete stone to bought a quarry on the other side of town 2.5x the distance away from my pits. Come to find out that stone is one of the worst for that test. Talking to the quality guys they don’t even want them to use it in the concrete.

I make extremely high spec materials. I would say the best in the county. I supply sand and buckshot to a precast concrete guy in town. They sample every load that I haul there. Their sand spec is absolutely stupid to meet. I have the only classifier in the county and it can work like magic. I don’t have room to make multiple piles so all the sand gets made to this high spec.

Everything I do I try to do it to the best of my ability. It’s my personal flaw. So with the concrete I’m sure it will be spot on. I will learn how to test it so I will be keeping an eye on it. I do have an offer by a concrete provider on the other side of the state to send a plant operator over for a summer to teach me.

I’m still need to talk with the current guys we provide stone for. I’m hoping I get there the end of this week early next week to see what their plan is.

Also Been talking to my wife to see what she thinks. See if she would quit her job to work as dispatch/bookkeeper for me. She is very risk adverse and she makes pretty good money so it would be a pay cut. However the stress would be cut down exponentially, and she would get to work from home. I also joke she could be like just like wife of the old guy we bought the pit from. Some days she was nice as can be, other days she would be yelling at you at the top of her lungs:lmao:.

Worst thing is we would need to find our own insurance as that’s the primary reason she works now. Still a lot to think about, it’s a nice exercise to get my head going. Oddly enough I have always kinda wanted to set up a concrete plant but never had the guts to do it.
Click to expand...

That's interesting, between having a wet kiln where we burn the shit out of our clinker (low alkali cement is 0.60% NaEQ and we aren't making good product if we get that high) and fly ash being cheap ASR never comes up for us. Sulfates is typically what gets us when it comes granite around here (where I live is literally all granite but none of it gets used as aggrates, they haul in basalt and limestone).

Do the other quarry's have a bunch of chert or flint? I was talking with our chemist and he said in Nevada they would do some ASR testing but otherwise it isn't common (for us being based on the Rockies at least). If that gets you the market it's worth it as ASR aggregate testing is usually several months to a year long so it's not like they can quickly identify a source.
 
As far as insurance, i think cost sharing programs like this are on the rise

chministries.org

Home - Christian Healthcare Ministries

CHM is the longest-serving health cost sharing ministry in the nation. Learn more about an affordable, faith-based healthcare solution.
chministries.org chministries.org

Works well for us. My wife had a procedure that was about 20 grand, they covered it, no bs.

With the gold you pay for doctor visits etc out of pocket under $1,250, no limit to max coverage per illness

Their cost chart is pretty close to spot on what we pay.
 
Can your granite support making slabs for curbs, steps or cemetery head stones?
 
cj3a said:
Here is a few trucks at a auction.

2017 Peterbilt 567 6X4 Concrete Mixer Truck | Heavy Construction Equipment | Online Auctions | Proxibid

2017 Peterbilt 567 6X4 Concrete Mixer Truck, VIN: 1NPCLK0X4HD434416, Engine: Paccar, Miles: 124,045, Transmission: Allison Automatic, Haulmax Heavy Duty Suspension Walking Beam with Bolster Springs, Beck 10.5 Yard Mixer (Location: 4825 Romeda, Beaumont, TX 77705)
www.proxibid.com www.proxibid.com
Click to expand...
Would get laughed out of the county if I bought those. Only front discharge mixers up here:confused:
 
Almost all the trucks by me are that type. Go 20miles north and they are all front loaders.
 
Working the D.C. and surrounding areas. I'm going to go out on a limb with a scientific survey and say less than 10% of the trucks in the DMV area are front discharge. It's a regional thing like CAT track loaders. You trip over those things around here.
 
Chzbrgr said:
Working the D.C. and surrounding areas. I'm going to go out on a limb with a scientific survey and say less than 10% of the trucks in the DMV area are front discharge. It's a regional thing like CAT track loaders. You trip over those things around here.
Click to expand...
Western Canada never even seen a front discharge.
 
I am from the middle of the nation. I had never seen a front discharge truck not even in pictures. When I was 25 I went to the East Coast to pick up a stupid auction purchase and saw one driving around the smoky mountains somewhere. I had no idea what the fuck I was looking at, Passed going opposite directions on the highway. I was still trying to figure out what I’d just seen when I saw another one and had a better handle on what was happening, pretty cool units
 
It's been a while since I have seen a rear discharge truck. I'm not sure why you would a buy a rear discharge other than upfront cost.
 
I never saw a front discharge until I went to WI to buy a pop up camper years ago. I'm in the KC area and nobody uses them here.
 
speed bump said:
You can move the chute and the truck at the same time. Get a good driver and it's really easy for them to put the mud right where you want it for the entire truck.

Driver stays in the cab.

Better visibility.
Click to expand...
This! My dad was a concrete contractor. Did mostly foundations. When the first front discharge trucks came out I was a teenager. They were a game changer. The driver runs the chute controls up down, left right. Plus he can see exactly whats going on. First front discharge trucks were actually built in Utah just up the road from me. They were invented by the rightway company. The first ones had the engine under the barrel. They discovered the heat cooked the concrete. So they started mounting the engine on the back. First ones only had the rear axles powered, with a conventional beam front axle. Then they went to a driven front finding the trucks could plow through muddy job sites better. Now rear discharge is pretty much obsolete here. The rightway company was bought out by Oshkosh and they moved manufacturing out of Utah.

I know…..cool story braa :lmao:
 
speed bump said:
It's been a while since I have seen a rear discharge truck. I'm not sure why you would a buy a rear discharge other than upfront cost.
Click to expand...
I'd say cost. You're not buying a run of the mill heavy dump truck/concrete truck spec paccar or Mack chassis they make by the thousands, you're buing a purpose built 6x6 monster. Makes so much sense from an operating standpoint, they are the cat's ass. That said they don't exist in Kansas City market.
 
rockdog57 said:
This! My dad was a concrete contractor. Did mostly foundations. When the first front discharge trucks came out I was a teenager. They were a game changer. The driver runs the chute controls up down, left right. Plus he can see exactly whats going on. First front discharge trucks were actually built in Utah just up the road from me. They were invented by the rightway company. The first ones had the engine under the barrel. They discovered the heat cooked the concrete. So they started mounting the engine on the back. First ones only had the rear axles powered, with a conventional beam front axle. Then they went to a driven front finding the trucks could plow through muddy job sites better. Now rear discharge is pretty much obsolete here. The rightway company was bought out by Oshkosh and they moved manufacturing out of Utah.

I know…..cool story braa :lmao:
Click to expand...
They are now built a 1.5hrs away from me:smokin:
 
rockdog57 said:
This! My dad was a concrete contractor. Did mostly foundations. When the first front discharge trucks came out I was a teenager. They were a game changer. The driver runs the chute controls up down, left right. Plus he can see exactly whats going on. First front discharge trucks were actually built in Utah just up the road from me. They were invented by the rightway company. The first ones had the engine under the barrel. They discovered the heat cooked the concrete. So they started mounting the engine on the back. First ones only had the rear axles powered, with a conventional beam front axle. Then they went to a driven front finding the trucks could plow through muddy job sites better. Now rear discharge is pretty much obsolete here. The rightway company was bought out by Oshkosh and they moved manufacturing out of Utah.

I know…..cool story braa :lmao:
Click to expand...

When was it? I want to say I have seen a righway truck but it was when I was really young and our local outfit still has a mix of front and rear chutes.
 
Can we move off the subject of concrete trucks? I still get worked up over the dumb ass driver's who were not paying attention when unloading and freaked the fuck out when i grabbed the lever to turn the hopper off and scared the shit out of them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Back Refresh