17. Embracing the Challenge with Dave Foor

Andrea and Griffin have a great conversation with Muscatine Driver Dave Foor. We chat about smoking meat, Harley Motorcycles and loving the challenges present on the job. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to Loaded, the Hahn Ready Mix podcast with Andrea Meyer and Griffin Hahn and the best producer we could find, Lex Hahn. Best only producer we could find.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

This is our take two of the intro.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

We had a little struggle getting started.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Thanks for being here, Lex.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

We also have a special guest in the studio with us today.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Welcome, Dave. How are you? Good. How's everything going? Good. Good. We have Dave Ford, driver and musceteen with us here today.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Are you happy to be here or were you forced to be here? I got volunteered by Jake and Zach. Okay. Start getting mixed signals here.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

Like, I'm pretty sure you told me before that you wanted to be on the podcast. And Andrea says you told her that you wanted to be on the podcast. And then it's like, no, I don't. They're just Zach and Jake are making me. I feel like it's mixed signals.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

It's both. It's both.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Well, we are happy you're here. Um what's new? Did you guys have a good Father's Day?

SPEAKER_02 1:16

Yeah, we've we failed last week to talk about Father's Day, didn't we? It's hard when we record over the weekend. It's like um we we record up before the weekend and then uh it comes out afterwards. So we always have to be thinking ahead. But um Dave, how was your Father's Day?

SPEAKER_01 1:32

It was good.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Yeah? Did you do anything fun?

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Not really, just hung out around the house. Did you smoke something? No, actually I didn't.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Meet, I mean.

unknown 1:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

This is the loaded podcast, so you know. I had um my kid or my oldest son, we did a cardboard boat regatta where we built the boat out of cardboard and duct tape, and then um the kids jumped in a pool and tried to swim to the other side or paddled the other side. It was an absolute riot. So you built the boat? He and I built the boat together. But yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Okay. I mean, how'd that go?

SPEAKER_02 2:10

It was fun.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

And then after I didn't see a trophy or anything, did you? You didn't win?

SPEAKER_02 2:16

No, actually, he started crying and wanted to get out because it was over the deep end and he was scared. Um but then we did a dad heat afterwards, and all the boats sunk immediately when we jumped in it, which was pretty hilarious.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

So you didn't win that one either?

SPEAKER_02 2:30

No. No, no, last place for that tracks.

unknown 2:34

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

But we had the coolest looking boat, I think. So there's that.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Uh my husband unfortunately had kids on Father's Day, so he always gets overshadowed on Father's Day because we're celebrating Evie's birthday.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

He took uh six 12-year-old girls on a hike for Father's Day.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

Brooke, you should just come hang out with us on Father's Day and we'll celebrate you.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

He did the right he did the right dad thing on Father's Day anyway. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Celebrating somebody's birthday. What other announcements do we have?

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Um I have just one thing I wanted to mention again, and that is the idea of see something, say something, right? So if you see something that isn't quite right, please let someone know. The easiest thing to do is just send a message to dispatch and then they can get a hold of whoever the right person is. So this can be something as simple as an overflowing washout area or a mess that's been dumped somewhere. But it could be something, you know, most recently we had a critical issue where the cement pipe at the river plant was damaged and it was reported to us by like a tanker driver that showed up later. But like as soon as we know about something like that, then we have a better chance of getting it fixed and getting it addressed quickly. So just wanted to encourage everyone to continue to look for things that are going wrong and let us know so we can address it.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

Yeah. Yep, that's good. Uh, I have an exciting announcement. The bathrooms at the main office, the men's and women's bathroom, are done.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Functional, functional bathrooms.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

We don't have to have 70 people using a single toilet anymore.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Um that toilet really was a champion this year. I don't know what we would have done with it.

SPEAKER_02 4:15

It was like five weeks. It was like five weeks. It felt like a year.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

It felt long.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

Yeah. So we're that toilet is now the handicapped bathroom is now gonna get redone. Um, but the men's and women's bathrooms are open. So hallelujah. We're excited about that.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Progress. Just small wins, that's all we need.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

Okay. And before we get an interview with Dave, I have a promise we made last week to bring some driver stats for loads. Okay. We said that last week that we're year-to date, is that what we're talking about? It's year it's it's year-to-date as of June 1st. Okay. So it's a little bit outdated. But I thought maybe we'd play a game and guess who had the top five loads so far this year.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Quit looking at the loads.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Dave, you can you can't cheat. Looking at it. All right. So there's five people. Any guesses out there?

SPEAKER_00 5:02

We'll we'll we have to try and guess Dave because he's here, so we gotta say he's probably in the top five.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

Dave is close to the top five. Oh shoot, not white.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Yeah, Riedel is always up on the list as the first Riedel is number five.

SPEAKER_02 5:16

So that's a good guess with 86 loads so far this year. Dave, you had 79, so you're not far behind. Uh, I'm always behind Riedel. Yeah. 86 so far for Riedel. He definitely gets a lot in.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

All right. What about uh I'll say up here, maybe like a Brian Woods, maybe a TJ?

SPEAKER_02 5:35

Uh TJ was just outside the top five as well. Brian Woods, you did get that's number one. Yes. 96 loads uh thus far this year. Mr.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Reliable and also doesn't waste any time. It's like his mission to lap somebody on uh on a pour where that's an opportunity. He loves to do that.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

Yeah. So Brian had 96. Awesome. Uh we have somebody with 95 right behind him.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Who's that?

SPEAKER_02 6:01

Andrew Ron. Oh, okay. Eldridge. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

He's efficient.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

And in a clean, clean truck.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Yep. And then we had uh tie for third with Chris Jones and Sam Irwin both also.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Oh, Eldridge is getting they have a lot of those short short hauls right there close to the plants.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

Yeah, that's true. It gives the advantage. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that's the top five so far this year as far as loads hold. So nice work, you guys. And um that's uh put a marker out there for everybody to try to topple them off and get more done. So yeah, cool.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Just getting started too. Yeah, the real volume comes from this point forward in the year.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Yeah, for sure. For sure. All right. Dave, you ready for this? I guess. All right, all right. Okay, so are you from Muscatine originally? Or where did you grow up? You grew up in Muscatine? Yeah. Okay, cool. Cool. And you've been with us uh like a little over four years, is that right? Yeah. Four years, 20 yeah, 2021 when you started? Yeah, that's my fifth season. Okay, cool. Cool.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Um, what'd you do before you joined us? I lived in Tennessee. I made sausage for Jimmy Dean. You did? Yeah. Well, that sounds like a good job.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Oh no, this podcast is about to take a turn. Greg Griffin's gonna start asking a lot of questions. A lot of questions about how to make it.

SPEAKER_02 7:19

Uh loyalists than Jimmy Dean, but Jimmy Dean's still good. But yeah, I ran uh big old grinder. Oh yeah? Yeah. Was that fun? No? It was all right, I guess. It was okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

It paid.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Not nearly as fun as this.

unknown 7:32

No. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:34

No. Okay. All right. What about before that? Would you what's let's run through your your history here. What what do we got to do?

SPEAKER_01 7:41

I worked for uh Haunt Industries. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

For uh quite a while.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

And then I started my own shop, my kidding shop, and I ran that for a few years and then I moved down to Tennessee. Cool. Cool. I didn't know you had your own shop. Yeah. Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

What do you do for fun? What's your outside of work life?

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Ride Harley's.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Ride Harley's.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

Smoke smoke meat, that's what I know you for. Every time I'm in musketeen, somebody's telling me that I just missed a great meal that Dave brought in.

SPEAKER_02 8:11

Yeah, I do that occasionally. Okay, so what kind of smoker do you have? Uh Oklahoma Joe. Oklahoma Joe, like an offset or a pellet smoker?

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Offset. Offset, you're the man. I also got a pellet uh smoker too. It's a cabinet. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Uh I have a uh I'm trying to remember now the it's the one with the bull horns on it, uh, pellet smoker, uh rectech, a rectech, which is great. But uh someday, like one of my retirement goals is learn how to do offset smoker with like where you pick up the piece of wood and feel like, yeah, this is gonna give me five degrees and throw it in there. Like that takes another level of talent that I do not have.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

You gotta be on it. You can't just let it sit and do nothing. Right. Well, you can you can sit next to it with a beer and then throw wood in every once in a while and spend all day. That sounds like a really good excuse to be on it. The pellet smoker makes it too easy. It's then you can just easy bake oven. Yeah, you can, you know, you can like watch the kids or you know, do chores and be a responsible adult. No, no, that's no fun. No. That's a set it and forget it. Yeah, yeah. So the offset's the way to go. Okay. Great. Great. Uh what uh Harley, do you do uh do any big trips or you go places?

SPEAKER_01 9:29

I've uh rode it all the way to to AJ's bar, oh, down by Missouri. Okay. And I've gone to Des Moines on it. Cool.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

Have you you haven't been out to what's the big um Sturgis? Sturgis? You've been out. I've never been out there.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Not yet. He's gotta he's gotta work. It's a bad time of year to make that trip.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Yeah, yeah. All right, cool. Okay, so um what's your favorite kind of thing about working in this industry or working for Han RadyMix specifically? What's your what do you like about the job?

SPEAKER_01 10:02

It's challenging at times. Yeah. I like challenges. Yeah. Different every day. Well everything, yeah, every day is different too.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

So that helps. Yeah. Good. Good. All right. What do you like how would you define a good day? Uh I go home the same I came in. I love that. I love that. Yes. You know, uh anything like like um operationally wise, like, like, what what are you looking for that goes well on a job site?

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Uh you show up, everything's right, everything's good, the contractor's not yelling at you. Yeah, well that's a that's a big that's a big win.

unknown 10:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

What do you hope for when you come in on a day? Like, are you hoping for uh go to the same job over and over again? Are you hoping to go somewhere new? Like what do you what do you look forward to?

SPEAKER_01 10:51

I just like uh going out and meeting the guys and joking around with them and having fun. Yeah. I don't I take the job seriously, but I don't take it.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Yeah, no, it's good to be lighthearted out there. You know, I think um the the tension sometimes is really high on a job site, right? So it can be sometimes. It's always uh part of our job to be the calmest or most relaxed people on a job site, definitely, you know, and that's for our whole team, right? To to not be ratcheting up the tension, but to be to be cooling it off, you know.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Yeah, throw a couple jokes out, get them laughing, and you're good.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Yeah, I think that's one of the most uh consistent things you see from the people who do come, you know, have have success and have been around for you know five years or more, or the people who can be lighthearted and not take it too seriously. And we try to interview for that, but it's really hard to tell. You know, people are nervous in an interview to begin with, so you try and give them the benefit of the doubt. But then I also try to, you know, say, tell me about when you've been really mad or what's something that makes you really mad so you can hear, you know, what does somebody have a long fuse or is somebody really reactive? Because we don't want to put people out there that are gonna just lose it on a job site.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

So you're one of our trainers. Yeah. Do you like that? That's a challenge. It's a challenge. You just said that your favorite part of the job is a challenge, so that's great.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

We're happy to provide that for you.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

We literally have this on record. Good.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Yeah, it can be it can be challenging. Some it depends on the person. Some people react better to the job and learn it faster, and other people don't. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

So how do you stay patient? How do you how do you stay calm and cool with a brand new person in the driver's seat?

SPEAKER_01 12:38

I just go to my happy place.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

What do you tell people? Like, what are some of the key phrases or key lessons that you try to teach people when they first get started with you?

SPEAKER_01 12:49

I just tell them that, you know nobody knows this. You know, born with this knowledge, you gotta learn it, you gotta do it to experience it to know what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

So Nobody's expecting you to nail it the first time, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:04

Yeah. Well, and I'm sure you'd have that conversation we just had about the attitude on a job site, right? Well, I mean, that's an important thing to instill with the the trainees when they're when they're learning is be that relaxed. Have have fun with it, right? And and the contractors will definitely respond to that.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

I I also give them a challenge. I say you know, I tell them that your job is to make me bored. Well, that's great.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

So that's a good day then when you have a trainee driving you around and you're bored?

SPEAKER_02 13:32

Yeah. That means they're ready to go. Yeah. Well, we'll keep trying to funnel you more since now we know it's your favorite thing. We've we've extracted that out of you through this conversation. I like that. That's good. Tell me about do you have any memorable jobs or moments driving a truck that come to mind?

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Yeah, I got put out on my own and the like the first job or two, I knocked a pole over.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Like a telephone pole? It was a light pole. I was like, I was like, oh, I'm fired.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Oh. No? Gotta work harder than that to get out of here.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

I think I remember that. Who who came out? Were you were you there or did you leave and somebody came and looked at it later?

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Well, I went the contractor wanted me to turn around, so I went to turn around and then I came back and I told him that's why I just knocked that light pole over, and then Zach showed up.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Uh how'd that go?

SPEAKER_01 14:26

He was pretty happy.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

A typical, typical reaction from Zach then?

SPEAKER_02 14:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

I think I remember that too.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

I thought you were you had your phone out. I thought you were looking up the uh picture from it that we can put it in the show notes. Like, look at this poll dated. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

I was getting ready. I have a loaded question this time, so I just remembered it.

SPEAKER_02 14:46

I want to make sure I'm ready for that. Okay. All right. Um, working down in Muscatine, what do you think makes that group kind of unique down there that's different from the You say unique, I would say special. You know, however you would like to define it, they're we're a different kind of group. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Special.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

You guys have a lot of fun. I can tell that. Yeah. I think there's a lot of initiative to to do kind of community-related things. Like when you bring food in or, you know, the Thanksgiving and Christmas meals they do down there, you know, a lot of the times it seems like when we do things like that, we gotta organize it from the main office here and you guys just run with it, which is which is great. Yeah. So it's not bad. It's not bad. It's not bad, he says. Okay, how about this one? I think this is a good question. What do you wish the dispatchers, customers, or the office staff uh understood better about your role and what what drivers do?

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Uh I think it'd be helpful if they actually went out and saw some of the places we have to go and try to fit a truck in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

It's it's uh it's challenging. Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, it's your favorite part.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

So I would send you on those. Yeah, I've thought of that too. That'd be so great if you know at three o'clock when we look at the list of jobs, if we could just run out to all of them and put a flag, you know, turn here, go here, whatever, like make it easier, get the obstacles out of the way. But it's it's wild how many jobs we don't even know about at three o'clock the day before that. It just is impossible.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Yeah, and uh directions would be good. That way we know which way we're coming in. Yeah. You know, know what to expect before we get there. Yeah type thing.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, and we've we've talked about this and we haven't done a heck of a lot of it, but we've talked about trying to get people from the office and from dispatch out doing ride-alongs, right, to see what it is like to live a day or at least a load in your shoes, right? We have not done a great job of that, but maybe that's something we we need to try to revisit for sure.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Yeah, I I did that a lot when I first started and I learned a lot, even like simple things that you don't even think about, like how bouncy it is just riding that truck down River Drive right here shocked me. Like you would never know that if you weren't actually riding in the truck to see it.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

You know, when I first drove, uh Slopertown Road that's right there by the the Davenport Airport was the bounciest road on earth. And when I was first trying, I wore it weighed like 110 pounds. And I had to wear my hard hat in the truck when I drove down that because I would bounce out of literally hit the roof of the truck. I was bouncing so high. So yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

You must have been going too fast. Probably.

SPEAKER_02 17:41

Probably. Yeah.

unknown 17:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Well, I always told them if you want to know how smooth the road is, take a mixer down it.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

Absolutely. Okay. Um what do you have any questions for us? You've got this this podium here. You've got this opportunity to make us answer anything you want for the world to hear while you're sitting here. I don't know. I can't really think of anything. That's okay. That's right.

unknown 18:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

What here I thought you'd say that you won't were trying to get a raise for your friends Jake and Trav, but you missed your opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

Oh shoot. Shoot. So we talked about motorcycle riding and about smoking. Do you have any other hidden talents that the world needs to know about?

SPEAKER_01 18:27

No, I pretty much gave up on ranching.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

Yeah. An all-star video gamer or anything fun. Nothing? Okay. All right. Cool.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

I don't have any other questions, but I do want to make sure you know how much we appreciate you being on the podcast. We appreciate you training all these people. I know it's a, you know, sort of thankless and scary job, but like you said, everybody had to be trained at some point, including you. So we appreciate you doing that for other people. I do have a loaded question, which is actually a follow-up to a previous podcast. And this listener says, in the last podcast, you mentioned not salting new concrete the first year. Can you explain why that is important and why the emphasis on that first year?

SPEAKER_02 19:10

Sure. So in general, as concrete is if it's allowed to continue to be exposed to water, concrete will gain strength in perpetuity, right? It will continue to get stronger. So the first year is, you know, we we think about concrete strength said in 28 days. That's the that's the typical time when concrete is being tested for strength. But it gains strength after that 28 days. It's not done. And so that first year, especially stuff bored late, concrete bored late in the year, is a lot weaker. The the bonds within the concrete are not as mature and have haven't grown to their kind of full extent. So that means that first winter is the most susceptible. And what salt does, uh a lot of people think that salt like eats at the concrete. And that's not really true on how it works. So two things can happen. For one, there is if you put a little bit of salt in a cup and just lay it out in a relatively humid environment, the salt will literally pull the water out of the air and you'll eventually have a little bit of water.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Or like a water ring a lot of times.

SPEAKER_02 20:24

Yeah. Yep. Yep. And um so salts attract water that bonds with the salt from the atmosphere. And so if you have salts that have penetrated into your concrete, they will pull water out of the atmosphere or prevent its evaporation. And so your concrete gets saturated with water. So and then when that water freezes in the winter and it expands, the that expansion effect is so much worse if the concrete is saturated. Right. So that is one thing. And then when salt water freezes at a lower temperature than um than water without salt, right? So what happens is you can actually get more freeze thaw cycles in a winter with a salted slab because um it's going to, you know, if it let's say the low for the day is 15 and the high is 25, right? Um so when that when that salt water freezes at a lower temperature, you end up with more freeze thaw cycles. And that can cause more distress, right, than than just typical water. So that's that's the first thing. And then also in the joints of concrete, if you ever look at concrete and like the joint, like three inches wide, is just completely gone. There's a where my kids get their hair cut, that's like it's right there. I look, I see it every time. Um, what we have going on there is called calcium oxychloride formation, and that is where chlorides from salts have literally bonded. With the kind of inert calcium hydroxide present in concrete. So it's a nerdy answer, but that will completely destroy a joint, is specifically where that normally happens. So all of that stuff is more likely to happen in the first year because the concrete is less mature and has not reached kind of its ultimate strength and resistance. Less concern about that with concrete poured in April than there is concrete poured in October. But just to simplify things, we say for the first year, just don't salt. So that is that is the whole kind of reasoning behind the uh the salt. Now, if you put a sealer down, that can really help prevent a lot of those salt-related distresses from happening because the sealers prevent the salts from entering the concrete.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Okay. Good job.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

You can wake up now.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

I'll make my plea once again for people to please send in loaded questions that are about anything other than concrete. We could make this an interesting podcast if we talked about other things too. That'd be fine. Yeah. All right. 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 23:12

Thanks so much.