9. The Concrete State with IRMCA's Greg Mulder

Andrea and Griffin are joined by a surprise guest, Greg Mulder, Director of the Iowa Ready Mix Concrete Association and Iowa Concrete Paving Association.

Greg had no idea he was going to be on a podcast. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:08

Welcome to Loaded, the Hahn Ready Mix podcast with Andrea Meyer and Griffin Hahn. We still have producer Lex with us. And to today we have a special guest.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Very special guest. And he 30 seconds ago didn't know that he was doing a podcast. That's a true story. Yeah. We have with us Greg Mulder, the director of the Iowa Ready Mix Concrete Association and Iowa Concrete Paving Association. So welcome. Thank you. I think. Yeah. He walked in, he sent me a text. He says, I'm going to stop by your office around two. And so we said, excellent. And we got the podcast stuff ready and walked him in, and he had no idea what he was doing. So this is how we like our guests, unprepared and unaware. Completely. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Let's see how they do on the fly. All right. We're confident in your abilities. All right. We know you well enough that you could do it.

SPEAKER_04 0:57

So what do you want to talk about? Did you bring a topic?

SPEAKER_01 1:03

No.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Well, we are we're proud members of the Iowa Ready Mix Association. And so Greg and his staff do a heck of a lot for the industry in the state of Iowa and even beyond on a technical level and a promotional level. But give us your like stump speech. Like if somebody asks you, what do you do?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Throw it out there. Yeah, anything related to concrete, right? I love concrete. It was it's been in my blood for 35 years. So if if there's a way that I can talk about concrete, I can talk to people about the right way to finish it, the right way to mix it, um, you know, just try and help educate people on concrete. So what do I do? I go around and talk to a lot of people. I learn from a lot of smart people. There was more PhDs in the room that I was in this week than than I've seen in a long time. So nice. Uh learned a lot from Dr. You know, Tyler Lay, Peter Taylor, Larry Sutton. You know, there's just stacks of them this week as I was learning at the National Concrete Consortium. So some of it is learning the new stuff so that I can bring that to Iowa. I can help innovate our mixes, make sure our mixes better, make sure the performance is where we need it. So just try and make concrete better. Yeah. That's wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

And your background, you were with the DOT for how long? Just 20 years. Just 20. Yeah. So not very long.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

We can hardly tell. Right. I know. Fresh pole headed air, don't look stressed at all.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Uh yeah. So 20 years I spent there. Um, had a lot of jobs, only nine jobs in 20 years. So uh I I like to say I couldn't hold a job, but I, you know, gotta see a lot of things. I gotta work in our central construction, central materials out in the field. Um, I helped design projects. I worked in traffic and safety for a short stint and and learned about the so project design, uh, construction. I finished up as our state construction and materials engineer. So all the construction projects and advice that we offer, uh, best practices there, and all the materials that are approved, that staff does that, and they do a wonderful job looking at each one of those disciplines. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

Well, I think it's really cool. A lot of people maybe don't know this, but the industry here in Iowa has a very close relationship with the DOT that is probably the envy of every other association in the country. That, you know, we have quarterly meetings with the DOT to talk about their specifications and standards and and what's going on in the industry, new materials, and they're very open to feedback from us. And a lot, I mean, a lot of that's we have good relationships there, but your ties to it isn't it really helps a lot that you can get us in the room with the right people.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

It helps. And you know, when I spent that time with the DOT, it was unique. As I went around to the other states as a central materials or construction engineer and and talked to the other states, they're like, You actually talk to your contractors and your producers. Um, we kind of have a closed door. And I said, they have my personal cell phone, they can call me at any time. Yeah, I want to know what the pulse of the industry is because that's the only way we can get better together. Yeah. So um, you know, that that's still open with with the DOT and and with 20 years of experience. I know most of the folks over there still, and we we I think that that vision of getting better together uh still holds. Yeah. That's great.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

Yeah, that's great. Well, and and even outside of external stuff, the uh the ReadyMix Association, Steve on your staff, Steve Malico is one of those guys that is a huge resource for us in troubleshooting concrete problems or just you know, it's a way for us. If if we're seeing an issue, sometimes we don't know if it's something unique to us or if it's an industry-wide problem. And so we can go to Steve and say, Hey, is anybody else seeing this? And he's not gonna give us particulars, like, oh yeah, the you know, it's supplier A over in Iowa City seeing it or whatever. But he's gonna say, Yeah, I've talked to four other people around the state and we've seen it. And that's really important to know that you know, maybe we're not in it alone with a particular issue or or help see trends, you know, with issues to uh to get them addressed with a bigger sample size, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:20

So and Steve does a great job and he stays educated, he goes to the ACI um com and he sits on several of those committees, he's a voting member on several of them, he knows and helps write those specifications. So when you have a resource like that that's available to you, yeah, um, he's he's an excellent, excellent resource. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. For sure. And you're right, he sees a lot of things, he gets called in a lot of parts of the state and does a great job helping with that troubleshooting. Um, he's seen a lot of good concrete and some a lot of bad concrete. Yeah. And he we try and do our best to make educate people so they don't make bad concrete.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

Yeah, absolutely. We're we're about making good concrete, and and in Iowa we make a lot of it, right? So Iowa, we we say Iowa's the concrete state. I'm wearing my concrete state uh pullover today. Yeah, right. So what makes Iowa special for concrete? I know you had this this speech down.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

Well, you know, the concrete state, we're we got that tagline. You know, there's seven million cubic yards of concrete to come out of Iowa annually. And um we in our roadway system um is is over 50% concrete roads, right? And and it's nowhere else in the country. Nowhere else. Not even like hardly I think the second was 18% or something like that. It was yeah, it's down there. So we're we have a good history of that. That the roads um last a long time. And so even if even if it the surface starts to wear out, the life starts to end, there's there's you there's a lot of concrete roads with maybe two inches of asphalt on it to help extend that. That's a cost savings for the owners. They don't have to do anything for 50 years, and maybe at the end of that 50 years they can put and extend it by 10 or 20 years with with a little bit of asphalt. But on the other part of that, Iowa leads the nation in concrete overlays to really extend the roads. When we put a concrete overlay on there, an unbonded concrete overlay, we can get 40 years easily by and with very minimal maintenance by just doing a concrete overlay. It's just another layer. It's like putting a blanket of concrete right on top of there, you have a great surface underneath there, and now you have a brand new surface, you have a great base of the old roadway, and and now a new six-inch surface. That's gonna give you 40 more years of life. Yeah, that's a big deal.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Now, when I submit these episodes, put them on our our website. We have to click if they're explicit, and you've used the A word now twice. You know, it's asphalt is a is a bad word in this in this podcast. We get, you know, I'm gonna have to say it's an explicit episode because I know it's a bad word.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

It's it's uh, you know, I keep asking folks to I don't have a good enough relationship that I that I thought with the DOT because I keep asking them to delete those bid items and just eliminate it altogether, but I I don't have that much pull. Oh, geez.

SPEAKER_04 8:20

Maybe next year.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Yeah, hopefully.

SPEAKER_02 8:22

Fingers crossed. Back to the topic though, and the other part is what what are I think what this last year, 70% of the parking lots in Iowa were concrete. And that's also not the case anywhere else in the country. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Nowhere else. Everywhere I go in other states that I talk to, they're just jealous. They're they're maybe 10% of their parking lots are are are concrete. And Iowans have really embraced it. You know, a lot of the products are made locally. We have cement made here in local, all your aggregates local. Um it supplies jobs with all the trucking and the mining, the manufacturing, that's uh it is truly a local product. Yeah. Right. Supporting Iowa economy and lasting a long sink in time. Heck of a long time.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Yeah. Well, you know, we really So question Did you even know this podcast existed? I did. You did? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Yeah. I have I've been on your website, as you know. I was I was pulling some stuff off there and I saw podcast sections. Uh I get your weekly newsletter. Not weekly, are they? Well, the monthly textbook. It feels like it.

SPEAKER_04 9:24

It feels like it because it takes you the whole month to read it, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 9:27

Right. Yeah. It's rude, India. I mean, come on. Work hard on those. I know you guys have a podcast. I have listened to one. Okay. Right.

SPEAKER_04 9:37

So get better, you should keep going.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

Okay. All right. Yeah. If you listen to the first one, we were just making fun of ourselves for not knowing what we were doing the whole time. What is your listenership? What's your reach?

SPEAKER_00 9:48

So are you Are you in the million mile buck yet?

SPEAKER_02 9:52

So we know we're we haven't really publicly um advertised it because our target audience is definitely the the employees of of Hon Radiomix, right? And we're it's pu it's publicly posted, so we're fine with anybody listening to it. But um and we're hoping that people in the community or customers that hear what we're about and what we're trying to do, that that will only be a positive thing, right? So uh we're fine with it going out, but um we're also not doing it for the public, right?

SPEAKER_04 10:23

That's not we have other ways of believe it or not, everyone is not interested in what you guys talk about all day long.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

We got it we have, you know, and we'll have probably an episode come out in between this one we're recording, but we've got somewhere around six hundred listens total.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

Uh on six uh that's too much. I think it's like 500 listens total on on uh six episodes.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

So well, it's really a good thing not for your employees not only to just know what Han's about, but to know what's happening in the industry so that everyone's telling the same story, right? And and HANA is so innovative and and your um curing project, research project you're doing over here with your two foot squares and the scaling and the de-icing. And that's that's I mean, you're bringing in great people and resources to analyze that. There's not many people that will just take that project on yourself. So HANA is definitely in innovative and a leader in that. And you're doing great things, hopefully for the not just Han's area of influence, but the entire state. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

Yeah. Well, you know, that that's dealing with um some of the scaling that we've seen in in the industry in this area. And frankly, our customers expect us to find solutions. So that's what we're trying to do there. Well, we don't want to take up too much of your time, but we we sprung this on you with no warning and and you knocked out of the park. I knew you were. Always fun. Yeah. Always fun. So, you know, uh just off the ball, no no reason why I would ask, but who's your favorite president of the association you've ever had?

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Well, I know uh who was with us the longest, you know, in my tenure here. So yeah. You're pretty much 25% of my tenure here with the Red Knicks Association. So uh it has to be Griven Haw. Yeah. Uh that's how you're making me blush. Geez. That wasn't a fair question, yes. But you didn't bring meatloaf back, and we were really expecting more meatloaf.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

Yeah. Yeah. The the story behind that is um at the annual convention one year they had meatloaf and it was awful.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Awful. No ketchup or anything, and it was dry and we chose meatloaf for the menu.

SPEAKER_04 12:40

Is this the president's job? Is this like one of the major responsibilities?

SPEAKER_02 12:44

Yeah, that's what we're saying. It makes perfect sense. Yeah, yeah. So the threat is always that somebody's gonna make meatloaf great again. So um yeah. All right. Well, I think that's all we got for today. That's probably good enough. And uh I thank you very much for for hopping on and and uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

I hey, it's great to great to spread the good love of of what you guys are doing and of concrete and and happy to help.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Loaded, the Han Ready Mix podcast. Please subscribe wherever you listen to be notified when new episodes are ready to drop. We appreciate everything everybody's doing out there, and another thanks to Greg for joining us today. Uh, everyone be safe, and thanks so much.