13. A Career in Concrete with Daren Fick

Andrea and Griffin interview Hahn Ready Mix's Plant Operations Manager, Daren Fick, and talk about his long and interesting career in the industry. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to Loaded the Hahn Ready Mix podcast with Andrea Meyer and Griffin Hahn. Producer Lex is here, and today we have a special birthday guest.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Yes, Mr. Darren Fick himself. Had to get the birthday in there, didn't you?

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Yeah, we're celebrating 60 years of Darren Fick.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

What a great day.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

If you say so, I'm still here and above ground, so it can't be all bad.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Was this your birthday wish to be on the podcast?

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Oh, yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

I can't think of anything better than we could possibly give him. I'm so glad we were able to make your birthday dreams come true. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

If anything, my son will be absolutely in love with this whole podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Yes, you're famous.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Yep, I'll be famous now. I'm gonna be broadcast nationwide.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

To all 45 of our listeners.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

And maybe more.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Oh, we have so many guests in the room. So many guests.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

And a one and a two and a three.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Happy birthday to you. Oh, this is Happy Birthday to you.

SPEAKER_03 1:18

Happy birthday. Happy birthday to you.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Thank you all so very much. The Honre Mix choir is going on tour. Live by Sheila. Yeah. Live by Sheila. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

The timing of that without even having to edit, getting everyone in here right on the spot is next level for us.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

I had now set up in my text message to Sam. And then as soon as you guys hit it, and he was it took longer than I thought. I was worried we were gonna miss the segment.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Was that the whole reason you were sitting there like looking off like, okay, we keep talking?

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Yeah, I know. I was trying to stall so that we could nicely done. Yeah. That was great. That was highly.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

That was very good.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

So we we just to kind of pull the curtain back a little bit. We just recorded the safety episode that was posted last week, um, back to back here. But we had to do it so that we could do this on Darren's birthday. So this is a couple weeks down the line. But when you're hearing this, so if you tell Darren happy birthday today, um you're you're late. I missed it. You're late.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

But we celebrate it.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

It will still be a wonderful gesture. So go ahead. All right, Darren. 60 years and 40-ish about of it in the ReadyMix industry?

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Pretty close. Started in 88. Yeah, May of 88. So we're 37 years and most of that with on ReadyMix in one form or another.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Yeah. Great. So we're gonna be quiet. You just tell us about your life. Uh it's not all that scintillating, I promise. Um tell us all the fun stories from the Marines.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

That's what we need to hear.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

No, I think that's why I'm here.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

This has to be this has to be a children-friendly podcast, I think.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

So I think we've been explicit at least once. Um we just have to mark it if we are.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Yeah. Well, there you go. Um just once I got out of the Marine Corps, I couldn't figure out what I was gonna do with my life and what I wanted to be when I grew up. So somebody said, Let's try driving truck. And I said, I don't know how to drive truck. And they're like, you'll be fine. Just grind your way through the gears for a few days and go for it. So I did. And uh we won't talk about my first trainer and his initial thoughts of my driving and how well I did.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

Well, I think that I think it's actually a good thing to know that it's hard. And anybody that's listening to this that's just starting, like, you're not expected to be great at it right away because nobody, nobody is, or very few people are anyway.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

It is not an easy thing to learn or do if you've never done it before. And even if you have, in some respect, or driven truck, it's not natural to have things spinning two different directions at the same time. And getting used to the concrete side of it and having a perishable product, all that makes a big difference. So spent a couple years in Phoenix doing it and moved back here because this is where the family is originally from and got on with Han. Han Grunder at the time. Uh, I don't can't remember when your dad actually purchased the three Grunder plants, but this was not too long after that.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

We'll we'll do a history of Han Ready Mix podcasts at some point. I'll have all the data for that. You should do that on the next one, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

I'll let you know when my next vacation is planned.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Ouch! Wow. But I started driving and got into uh QC a little bit more here and worked for four years, and I wanted to be a manager. And at the time, there just wasn't a real call for it here. So I left and went to Texas. Managed a ready-mixed plant there for a lot less money than I was making here by the hour. My wife really questioned my thought process on that one. And then went from there to Georgia and did the same thing, and they worked a lot of hours there, very aggressive, but and then decided to come back.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

So you were in Phoenix before your first stint at Hahn?

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

Oh, I always thought it was after. I thought you left here, you left Durant to go to Phoenix and then went to Georgia. I didn't realize it was Texas. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

No, I left Durant to go to Texas, and I worked there for about 14 months.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

And then went a headhunter called and I didn't know any better. So I started talking to him and went out and took a job in Georgia.

SPEAKER_03 5:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

And worked there for about two and a half years and then came back here. Um, or I might have lost my wife. So came back here and started working at Builders, which you're Brian had then acquired builders as well. So I went back basically back to work for the Han family again.

SPEAKER_03 6:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

And I've been here since April of 98.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

Yeah. Well, all right, let's talk about how your role has evolved from April of 98 when you came back till today. And I know that's that's been an interesting spin.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Uh when I first started, I started driving truck just like I had before. Uh Roger Birdsall at that time hired me. Uh, and I started driving, then moved into the loader position at the plant we had downtown, ran the loader for a while, then went back to driving for a brief stint. And then somewhere in the middle of all that, Wayne came in and when he started, he's I don't know how it got came about, but the managers changed quite a bit at the builder's plant then. God, I can't remember. We went through two or three different people. And it all happened on one weekend when at that time Alcoa was going, and the guy who was running the plant at the time didn't like the idea of having to come up here and run the plant and open it up just for the shutdowns. And so he got a little upset, and there wasn't a whole lot of extra pay involved in doing that. And he decided he wasn't gonna do it anymore. At least he thought things weren't gonna get taken care of. So he came in the next morning and told Wayne that he wasn't gonna do it anymore. And Wayne said, Do you want to do it? And I said, Sure. I spent about 15 minutes talking to your dad at the office at the time about salary, really wasn't much of a talk, it was just him telling me what he was gonna pay me. And it was fine, it was more than I was making, and I said, Sure, why not? And it's just been from there until God, I don't even remember when I started as an ops manager. It was after the block.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

So when I met you would have been, well, when I started working with you, I guess, would have been 2008. You were running the builder's plant right after we'd moved it to the West End here. Okay. Because it was you and Johnny was in dispatch there, and Paul Burbach. Paul Burbach was out there, yeah. Yeah. And that was, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

That was 2008.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

I started in 2012, and you were an ops manager then, so somewhere between it was after the block acquisition.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

So whenever we acquired block was was 2012. And then at that time, Gary Tooman was running the area. And I may have made my opinions clear on what I thought with Wayne, which he was very good at smiling and nodding and saying goodbye to the crazy person as he left. And yeah, was not too long after that that I finally said, I'm ready.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

And he said, Okay. I actually was in Wayne's office when you came in to talk to Wayne about that. I remember this. Were you? You came in and you said, I just want you to be to know that I am ready and willing and interested in doing more if the opportunity arises. And Wayne said, All right, let me think about that. And I think it was very shortly thereafter that uh your role kind of changed there.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Yeah, I remember my final talk with him was look, I can read the writing on the wall, I can see what's going on. I want that job. Yeah. So and he said, Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

What possessed you? What made you think you wanted to do that job?

SPEAKER_01 9:44

That's a great question. There are days when I seriously consider my thoughts, as my wife has for many, many years. What is wrong with you?

SPEAKER_02 9:54

Well, I know what it was. He just didn't want to take orders anymore. He was the overflow uh order taker, and that was very stressful for Derek.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

I'll do anything but this.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

I used to think the greatest thing in the world was the day they took the phone away from me back there, and all I had to do was batch concrete and not listen to the phone.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

And they haven't looked back.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

What I want what I would say to anybody in this business is be careful what you wish for, because you just may get it.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

I uh your phone still rings. It's just not customers usually now.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Yeah. There's still a lot of customers that I've hauled a lot of concrete to around here that I have a deep connection with. I've known them for a long time. So I saw two customers today. Did you two customers exist today? That's great. I don't have that on my team's channel, so I can't.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

So even since then, your role has evolved a little bit, right? A lot of driver management that we've kind of um That was our original connection.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Darren and I were hiring drivers and dealing with some really wild situations when I first started.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Yeah, it was mainly the guy who took them out and decided whether or not they could drive first. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

So I would interview them and I would say, Darren, take this person out for a drive. And he would come back and sometimes be really happy and sometimes be shaking and scared. Disappointed.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Disappointed is an actual is an excellent word, but yeah, that's yeah. There were some, but there were some that were great. I could tell before we left the street that we were gonna be okay with some of them.

SPEAKER_03 11:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

And some of them I came back red faced and walked in and said, No, you cannot hire this person. It just didn't work. Yeah. But I uh I've had yeah, I did that for a while, and then we had many, many issues early on in that process that were above and beyond my control, despite Wayne's tag for me. But we got past that. Yeah, and I've gotten it's probably better that I don't.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

Well, your your roles, even in the ops manager position, your role has changed, right? So we've added responsibilities and taken, you know, parceled stuff out, right? So you're not as um day-to-day managing the drivers as you used to, but at that time you were like the quad city area manager was the title, right? So you had kind of everything operations-wise quad cities, and now then we gave you all the plants everywhere, um, with and then uh got shelded in with the drivers and the quad cities, which just seemed to uh help the focus on both sides of that spectrum. So that's good. Yeah. And then more recently, uh, as technology keeps getting a lot more challenging, you've really just kind of taken it upon yourself to step up to be our pseudo-in-house IT person.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Level one tech support is.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

I again really need to rethink my thought process in a lot of these. The more and more we go over this, the more and more I think I need to seriously stop and think before I say things.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

We appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

We do. I mean, it's um you obviously have an aptitude for it, right? And so that is that's special because most of us do not. And and you've always been wonderful with the.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Speak for yourself. Even Lex is looking uh offended by that comment.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Well, he's a producer of a podcast.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

I can't possibly just volunteered to take over your AT uh assistant, assistant level one tech support.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

You can have my little bag with all the wires in it and everything. You'll be great.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

Yeah. Lex is gonna live that same thing. Be careful what you wish for. Yeah, that's a fact.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

No, I've it's evolved a lot in the last even 10 years. Yeah. So it's become quite a bit different. I love what I do, or I wouldn't do it. Yeah. That's what people ask me that all the time. How can you do that? But especially when you talk about the bridge and other things we've done when we go to different places, and they ask me about it. And I said, if I didn't love what I did, I wouldn't do it anymore. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

So that's a great segue. My next question was going to be what's your favorite part of the job or working in this industry?

SPEAKER_01 14:13

It wasn't my favorite to start with. My favorite part now is the logistical side of being ready for whether it be weird pores or odd mixes or strange things that we have to do in order to that has become one of my favorite parts. Yeah. Whether it be listening to to Bear talk about let's go, or just figuring out what we can do and how we can get things moved to make it happen. Right. That's probably one of my favorite parts. Well, you are the go-to guy for that, so I appreciate that you love it.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

I love being that guy I can handle. Yeah. I like being that guy. Well, you know, it's it's there's so much variability not only in the workload day-to-day, but the type of work we do. I think people outside the industry don't really understand that, you know, we have 2,500 mixed designs, and we don't know on Tuesday if we're gonna do 300 yards or 3,000 yards on Thursday, right? So we have to be prepared for all eventualities with all sorts of different materials, and uh, you're at the heart of putting a lot of that together. So um it's it's a big deal. That's what I love to do.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

That's the one thing that's fun. I mean, as long as we have people, it's good. And I don't mind sitting down and batching concrete.

SPEAKER_03 15:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

I'm a little past the stage of hopping in a truck now, but I you know, I can if it have if I have to, it's still available.

SPEAKER_03 15:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

But I that's that's what's fun.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Yeah. All right. What's um what's your biggest challenge that you still grapple with?

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Uh the same thing that's always been my challenge in this job or in any job, and and you, Andrea, need to stay out of this. My biggest, my biggest challenge is following through and remembering what I've said I was going to do. Sure. I am like you don't have that little, I don't have the remarkable, and I'm not good at writing down what I'm gonna do. So I was great. We get you on that. Uh I I am terrible about saying I'm gonna do something, forgetting that I said it. That comes with age. You'll learn. And then a week later, they're like, Do you remember when you said you were gonna uh uh yeah, I'm trying to do that again. But that's one of the hardest things I have is that I forget what I'm supposed to be doing next. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

You just have so many good ideas and such good intentions, but then you also have so many fires that come up throughout your day. That is your real job, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Yeah, that and that is, but that's still. I wished I was better at it. My wife is phenomenal at making lists.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Oh, yeah, women are women are really good at that.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Okay, I said my wife, I didn't say women in general, but they're uh, you know, it's just one of those things. I need to be better at that, and I that's probably my biggest challenge is making sure that I follow through with stuff. Yeah. So it's easy when we do things every day. But what were some of your favorite projects throughout your long career that you've worked on? The first one that always comes to mind is the walk out interchange at I-80. When I started with Han in 1990, and that would have been in July. We we had gotten the bid on that job, and I want to say it was late that year, or maybe that summer. We had won the bid. That was a two-lane overpass at that time at Y-40. And we had bid it with McCarthy and someone else, and I don't remember to this day, but we bid it with the Iowa DOT to make that a four-lane overpass and then redo all of the exit and entrance entrance ramps. And that winter, uh, at that time, Matt, who was my plant manager there, decided that I needed to go to DOT school and learn how to do gradations and run all that stuff. Well, I had done some QC work in Phoenix, but very little. So I went to DOT school with Mike DeVore, and we stayed in Fairfield in a little motel that they had there. It was really bad. But we uh I got certified for that, and for the next two years, that's what we did. Yeah, we worked on that interchange and did the bridge, and I did all of the QC work for us, writing out those little tickets that the Iowa DOT used to have. And I had to go break beams, so I would haul a load of concrete to the job and then go over to the job trailer, and the Iowa DOT text would have a list of the beams that I needed to break, and I would break them and then record it. So your mixture was your QC truck? My mixture was my QC truck. I love that. And for a little over two years, that's what I did, and then turned in the plant book, and that was one of my favorite projects because I truly did almost everything. I batched concrete on that job at different times, and yeah, we it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. Oh, I didn't know that story. That's great. It's it got pretty scary at times, but yeah, it was a lot of fun. We enjoyed, I enjoyed that one.

unknown 19:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

What other ones come to mind? Um, I've learned a lot from all of the big ones. Uh, the bridge obviously is in the most forefront, and the the one thing that's happened recently fun is a really tough one to use.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

Valuable lessons were were learned by all of our.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

I learned a lot from that job. Uh, a lot of things that I don't ever want to learn again or know again, but it was still. It was we said it before that project started. I think it was you and or Wayne both said it. It's one of those projects that 30 years from now, yeah, we'll be able to say we did that.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

And that was a lot of fun. Uh that one and the other one that I remember very vividly was the Walmart we did on West Kimberley. And we did that with a company out of, I think, Quincy, Illinois. It was a J H. Yeah, yeah. That's right. And we paved that parking lot. When I say paved, I use that term somewhat loosely. It was more like six-inch slump paving.

SPEAKER_03 20:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

But we oh no. And it it was a tough job. We were coming in at midnight and pouring a thousand yards and then going home, and it's just a long, long, long day. Yeah. So things are a lot different now. They do things differently. Since COVID, the business has changed a lot, the thought process has changed, which in some ways is very good, and in some ways is not so good, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:03

Well, definitely, you know, our philosophy is we have tried to limit the amount of night work we get because you lose the drivers for the day before and the day after, right? So it almost doesn't matter what kind of night charge you put on it, it's not worth it when you impact your ability to service customers the next day. So that's been kind of a strategic decision we've made to try to avoid that whenever possible. Um it still shows up sometimes, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

I think they've learned how to disguise it better when they put it out for bid. Yeah, that's true. They've hidden it very nicely in the small print, but that's okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:41

Yeah. We do what we have to do. So what advice would you have for someone that's just starting in this industry?

SPEAKER_01 21:52

It's this it would be a lot like the same I would vi the same advice I would have for anybody who's going into the military. This is A great way to learn and to develop yourself going forward. It's not for everyone, it's not simple, and it's not necessarily easy, although it gets easier the more time you spend in it.

SPEAKER_03 22:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

It's a great way to make a living. It's, in my opinion, the same thing as working for a utility company. Everybody's going to need lights and gas, and it seems like everybody's going to need concrete. Right. Absolutely. So it's always there. You can go anywhere in the world and do this as long as you can drive. It's it's pretty self-sustaining over as far as a career goes. Yeah. Because you can go anywhere and do it.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

Well, and you're the you're the example of where you know you started just driving a truck to see if you'd like it and you built a career with many different roles out of that, right? So the opportunities are are there, right? So that's a that's a big deal. And and you showcase that, right? You live it. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Somebody who wants to go to school and get a degree and learn to do a particular field, this isn't for you.

SPEAKER_03 23:11

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

If this is something that you are not sure, I didn't, I was not a student. I am not a good student. And I knew that. But I went to college for a semester and absolutely completely blew it off and decided I needed to find something else to do. And it took me a while. So after four years in the military, I decided to find, and then I jumped from like three or four different jobs to find that one.

SPEAKER_03 23:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

And a buddy of mine was like, Come on, let's go. We can both drive truck. I'm like, okay. Yeah. Here you go. 30 some odd years later. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

I like that uh sort of grand big picture advice, but what about practically? Like, if you had a chance to say one thing to every employee at this company, one thing you wanted people to do better or to pay attention to, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Well, the easy answer is the one that we tell them all the time. But I would say focus on what you're doing. Do the things that seem tedious because they make the most sense. And the only way I know that is from doing the tedious things for 37 years trying to get there. Learning the simplest thing like learning slump. Luckily, I went to a company where the first thing they said was, you need to learn how to slump concrete in the truck. Okay. So I got a guy and he told me how to slump concrete in the truck. I got here, like the first job I went to, the very first morning, I said, okay, where am I going? They said, You're going over here to this job to porter basement. I said, What kind of slump do they want? Medium. I went, okay. Little things like that. But now, of course, now it's four, four and a half, five. You know, you want to know what you want to. It's the little things, the tedious things, are the most important things in this business. If you overlook those, you're gonna forget something, you're gonna screw something up. And it's easy to just do them. Yeah. That's what I would give anybody who's doing it. It may seem dumb. Go ahead and do the dumb things if you think they are. They're tedious, they're small, but they're important.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Very good. I think that's a good note to end on.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

You're an excellent podcast guest. Your uh tone and cadence is excellent. I think this is gonna be a great podcast.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

Tone and cadence. Very nice. Yes. Okay. My son will be thrilled to hear.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

You said um about 120% less times than Griffin does.

SPEAKER_02 25:44

Um, yeah, that's true. Well, well, we'll give a shout-out to Henry, by the way, too. Shout out, Henry. He's, you know, he's listening, so he's gonna be very proud of you. He will be thrilled to pieces. Yeah. Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

All right. Well, thanks for being here, Darren. Thanks for listening to Loaded, the Han Ready Mix podcast. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening, and we will talk to you again soon.

SPEAKER_02 26:07

Thank you.