54. Keeping Plants Running with Jeremy Drake

Andrea and Griff are joined by Jeremy Drake to talk about plant maintenance, multi-functionality and working with Grandpa Tom.

Also some I-74 Bridge horror stories!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome to Loaded, the Hahn Ready Mix podcast with Andrea Meyer, Griffin Hahn.

SPEAKER_02 0:13

How's it going?

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Empty seat producer Lex.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

Uncle Lex is in, or Uncle Lex. Uncle Lex. That's what my kids call him. Producer Lex is in New Orleans.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

So it'll be exciting to hear. He'll be surprised when he gets to edit this podcast when he gets uh next next week. Have him report on Wendy Learned Edwards. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Now we have a topic for next week. Perfect.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

It's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Get ready, Lex.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Yeah. I was impressed though. He had everything set up on the computer. So I'd appreciate three buttons and yeah, what he showed me last week was a lot more involved than now you know. Yeah. So it's good. Well, uh, today we also have Jeremy Drake with us. How's it going? Pretty good. Good.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Reluctant, but happy to be here.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

At least one of those two things. All right. What uh announcements you got today?

SPEAKER_01 1:10

I have a couple things. Again, I would just want to remind everybody to look at your paychecks. Um, this will be last week's checks now when you're when you're listening to this podcast. These will have the first deductions for your benefits for this year. So this is the best time to check it out. Make sure everything looks like what you signed up for. Nothing new or crazy is on there. And if you need any help understanding it, I know that there's like abbreviations. So sometimes it's not really clear what you're looking at. So come on in anytime, see me or Marla and Angela are also able to answer payroll-related questions. Leah, the person who has been doing payroll for us, has recently completed her CPA exams and is moving on to another, you know, next level accounting position. So we're really uh sad to see her go, but excited for her to take that next step. And we are um interviewing people to fill that position. But in the meantime, Marla and Angela are handling it. Um, we also, I think people know this, but I just want to reiterate it for everyone. We have a cell phone that is dedicated to payroll and contacting candidates and those kinds of messages. So at any time, if you have a question about payroll or benefits or anything like that, you can text message this phone number, and whoever is doing payroll at that time will respond to you. So that number in case anyone doesn't have it is 563-726-9638.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Great. I'm gonna be honest, I didn't know we had that cell phone number either.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

So well, you typically have several resources that can help you with your paywall-related questions.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

You know, Leah sits right outside my office. Yeah. I could just walk out, but that's good to know. Yeah. Great. Kind of on a similar vein, you know, we're getting the seasons just around the corner, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:54

It's March. We see the light.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

We see the light in. And uh this winter, I think we had a larger than normal group of uh specifically drivers retire or or step away for different reasons. Um and so we're we're definitely going to be on the lookup, look out for some new folks to to fill out the numbers and and uh keep the trucks full. So if you have someone you know that you think would be a good fit, you know, what would would work with the values we have here and is a hard worker and and um is looking for an opportunity, definitely um get them in touch with Sheldon and let's uh let's get them on board. So we'll be starting that kind of the the the new hires, bringing them on here pretty shortly. So yeah, if you have any ideas.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Yeah, all of our positions are posted on our website. So that's the best first step for applying and of course contacting Sheldon too. Um, but truly our best hires, our easiest hires, the people who do the best are people who are referred from someone who already works. The people that stay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

We appreciate that. And if anyone has any questions about any of that stuff, let us know.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

Yeah. Barry, you ready to get into this? Yeah, let's go. All right. So I think most people listening to this will know, but we're cousins, right? So we should get that. And you've worked here your entire life, essentially, right? Yeah. What were your earliest memories? And like when when did you start working here?

SPEAKER_04 4:18

I started falling grapple around when I was probably five.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

Five.

SPEAKER_04 4:22

Kind of babysitting duties, I think, probably were were there. Probably when I was 10, started painting, or nine or ten, started painting buildings with a guy named Dean. He ran the dredging operation at the time.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:37

Back then we only had one plant. It was right, well, right when we bought Grunders, where Grapple bought Grunders. They only dredged about one day a week. And so Dean and I painted buildings the rest of the days, or maybe go mow grapple's yard. So those are my earliest memories of actually doing some physical labor around here.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

Yeah. Cool. You you've held a bunch of different roles and done a bunch of different stuff in your time. Can you kind of go through, you know, over the last what is that, 40 years?

SPEAKER_01 5:09

When did you start getting paid?

SPEAKER_04 5:12

Probably when I was 13-ish. Okay. I think uh just starting out at 350.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Stretching those child labor laws a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 5:20

Yeah. 350 an hour. I think I and uh I remember a buddy came on to help me. We picked up shingles at grappa's house, and he was so excited because his parents never paid him either. So he thought that that was pretty cool. Started out just kind of following grappa around in summers, and then my stepdad came on probably the mid-90s, early 90s. Started following him and the maintenance guys around all summer, probably late 90s when we picked up, got a lot busier, got the IPSCO job. I ended up in a loader most of the summers, driving an end loader. Spent my summers doing that. I think Elders was built in '97. And uh after we built that plant, I spent my summers up there driving loader for a few years. Also would help out in the truck maintenance garage in the winter. Early 2000s, I worked as a mechanic for a while for Denny Bourne, who was a longtime employee here. Probably for a few years and then transitioned back into the maintenance side of things.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

I always remember I'm gonna make this episode explicit now. I would I would whenever I would go into it. Yeah, whenever I would go into uh the shop and Denny Bourne would be in there. And like you were talking like six, seven years old, and Denny'd be like, Oh, watch out! Little fuckers here every time. And so yeah, that was that I remember Denny well. He was an interesting character for sure.

SPEAKER_04 6:49

Probably in 2012, I think, with the block acquisition, I moved into operations role and did that for six years, and then uh was gone for two years and came back to the maintenance side of things and kind of been there ever since.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

Yeah. All right, let's rewind it. So you spent a lot of your childhood working with Grandpa Tom, and I know that's shaped a lot of you and and how you view work and and all that. So let's just talk to me a little bit about like what did you learn from him and and and what was that like getting to work with him? Because I didn't get that opportunity.

SPEAKER_04 7:28

Uh he believed in hard work, but he also believed in taking care of his employees. He expected a lot uh out of people, but he also made sure that everybody was taken care of, no matter what it was. I think as a company we've always we've continued that tradition and being flexible with employees with different issues that come up from time to time. And I do think that's what makes us special here.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:54

He was very good at paying attention to the small detail in whether it was a truck or a concrete plan or even personnel with being able to see issues with them or a piece of equipment before.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

But less but less if the power was still hot when he was working out.

SPEAKER_04 8:14

He wasn't much on the safety aspect of things on any side of anything. Very frequently he asked me did he if the power was off when I was wiring something. I said, Well, yeah, and he he would use a choice word to to make fun of me. He was an interesting guy, uh, very knowledgeable. He just had a way of being able to dissect a problem and maybe not right away. I know it kept him up at night. Like he'd come back a day or two later, he's like, Oh, I've been thinking about this all night. Here's what we're gonna do. And uh he was really good at that. Resourceful, yeah. Extremely just trying to model after him. Yeah. And in that aspect, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Is there any like sayings or or rules that he had that like have stuck with you that like sticks out that the way he did things?

SPEAKER_04 9:04

No, just always do the right thing. Yeah. And you never have to worry. Yeah. Um, I know your dad says that a lot as well. But it's easy to do the right thing when there's certain people around, but uh the people that do do the right thing all the time are those are the successful ones. Yeah. Ones that are gonna make a difference.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's fast forward to today. So you manage the the maintenance operation for the plants and all the maintenance team. Talk to me a little bit about you know, uh it's one of those things where I think a lot of people here maybe don't know everything you guys do. Talk to me about, you know, kind of what your team all handles because it's really multifunctional.

SPEAKER_04 9:45

Yeah, it is a diverse wide range of stuff we do from conveyor belts to screws, conveyors, screw conveyors to the central mixed drums. Uh building and fabricating different structures, silos, whatever it may be. The overall uh trying to take care of everything and and the preventive and maintenance side is something that we've really been working on for the last 10 years plus.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

And even more so recently, the financial side of things and trying to figure out costs, projections moving forward and kind of trying to forecast what our s what our spend's gonna need to be on on plant equipment and and major repairs and things like that. Yeah, for sure. Your guys also fill the gaps operationally all over the place, right? So because your your work tends to be uh the planned work is concentrated in the winter, right? And then the the rest of it is really reactionary to when something breaks down. There's an opportunity that your guys are relatively often running a loader or jumping in a mixer or moving equipment on the flatbed or batching, you know, and and filling in wherever we have holes. And I think that that team, the ability for your team to do that is pretty unique, you know, when I talk to other ready mix companies. They don't have the the multi-tool you guys you guys are. So I I think that's a pretty cool thing. Um I don't know your guys like that aspect of it, or or what do you think?

SPEAKER_04 11:19

I think they I think they enjoy most of that. Obviously, some kickback when it comes to driving sometimes. We got a pretty good group of guys anymore. They're pretty understanding when it comes to there's certain days that we're just gonna have to do jobs that we don't want to do. And they understand that that's not a permanent place for them. So I think they enjoy the diversity of things sometimes in the mixing up of things. It's not so monotonous and and it's not the same thing every day. I think that's what the good part about that job is is besides winter where you spend three or four weeks in a plant, or most days you're at a different plant every day doing something different.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

Yeah. So what what makes someone a good fit for your team? What what what are you looking for when when you're looking to hire someone for that group or or looking at somebody that's already working here that you think would be good for the group? I mean, what's what are you looking for?

SPEAKER_04 12:16

Work ethic to begin with, and then uh mechanically inclined. Um a lot of it we can teach, but I think you have to have a somewhat sort of skill knowledge of how things work.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

I probably wouldn't be a good fit.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

I was so proud of myself for not saying that and then you said it anyway.

SPEAKER_02 12:37

Yeah. Yeah, not my strength. I'll I'll be the first to raise my hand and say that. Yeah. You guys have been working hard this winter. That's when, like we said, most of your planned work happens, right? What do like the major stuff you guys have been working on this year? Just to give a taste of the kind of things your team does.

SPEAKER_04 12:54

We build a substructure under the scale and muscatine and uh put new direct contact load cells on. We did the same thing in Eldridge. It's a lot faster weighing up material and more accurate, slowly transitioning all the plants to those as we can. Lined several different ag bins.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

And we should so if anybody doesn't know, so ag bins have a ton of wear, right? From the the rock and sand moving through them. And we don't want to replace those bins all the time. So we put a sacrificial layer of steel or ceramic in a couple places, right? And that part wears out, and then we can put replace those liners. And we do the same thing, you know, in in like our central mixed drums. Um, it's poly in there instead of steel, but it's the same idea to have a sacrificial layer. It's kind of like when someone puts an asphalt overlay on top of a good concrete road. They want to protect the road with something that wears away and then they can be replaced, right? So anyway, so just a background in case people were not wonder wondering why we were doing that.

SPEAKER_04 13:55

Aaron Ross Powell We line some drums like you just stated. Gears on drums, the gears wear out from friction. Those are the big projects we did. But anything from replacing airlines to filters, change all the gearbox oils every year. Uh just give the plants top to bottom look over and fix anything that we may find.

SPEAKER_02 14:20

Yeah. Well, it's a really important function to do, right? So get ready. We we have to catch as much stuff and and and preemptively fix them in the winter so that we don't have plants down right during the season. So it's uh definitely a critical task. Well, I think it's cool that you know, you and I and Jeff sit down and in the fall and and you've kind of done an assessment, right, of every plant. And that's where we decide what what needs to be done and what can wait a year or what what's on the radar for a few years away. And I think that's that's I I don't think most people realize that that whole process happens, but I think it's really important. You guys deal with a ton of different pieces of equipment. But what what's your like most problematic thing you see uh that breaks in plants? Is it belts or is it gearboxes or what what you know, what what's the what's the thing that you are always keeping your eye on closest because you know it's most likely to go?

SPEAKER_04 15:16

Probably bearings. Having a good plant operator in or loader operator that takes care of some of the greasing and daily maintenance is it can make a huge difference and how long those bearings may last. We got a pretty good group of guys in the plant manager's position as well. So we're lucky there. Bearings, belt splicings are are probably the two biggest ones.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

The belt splicing brings me into my my guess of your answer to my next question, which is like, what's the worst horror story of when uh something went wrong and you guys were had an emergency to go fix or in maybe in the middle of the night or or whatever, you know, what what's what comes to mind?

SPEAKER_04 16:03

74 brains.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

I was guessing we were gonna talk about the the main belt on molding plant in 74. I think it was July of 19, maybe.

SPEAKER_04 16:15

Yeah, that sounds about right. It was extremely hot, 110. I mean just crazy hot for July. And uh we're putting uh nitrogen on the ag to cool down the aggregates in which nitrogen is what, negative 200? I don't even know. It's it's cold. Yeah, negative 207 degrees. So it was freezing the belt, yeah, eating the top layer off. We were eating through a belted day, I think for like three days in a row.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

Yeah. So if I remember right, we had like Tuesday footing during the day, and we ruined the belt, and Wednesday night, your team was out there switching the belt out. And then we had a Wednesday footing and we ruined the belt, and your team fixed it all night. And then Thursday we had another footing and we ruined the belt.

SPEAKER_03 17:06

And I think you were like, we can't, we don't have anything tomorrow, we'll deal with it later. Yeah, it was it was a rough two days there.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

Um Well, I think we were borrowing belts from other companies because we were booth for all the spares we had, right?

SPEAKER_04 17:19

So we even talked about taking one off of here, and we were hoping uh I think we did take one off the river plant, and uh we were hoping that used belts were a little harder and lasted a little longer. Turns out that maybe that's not entirely true. It was it was a thought process. We were trying to eliminate how to what worked and what didn't work.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Yeah. So that was a rough one.

SPEAKER_04 17:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:43

That was rough. That was stressful. Because we're like, uh hope we can do this more in the morning than we get this thing up. Yeah. Any others like that that come to mind?

SPEAKER_04 17:53

No. Um that was probably the worst one by far. That project was just had so many difficulties in its own, right? Yeah. And so the concrete testing was so strict, and you know, we were trying to get it in such a narrow gap. And so we really screwed up drums, yeah, screwed up belts. I mean, we we had a rough go there for a while.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

Yeah, it was tough.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

It seems like and I don't know, I don't know which comes first, what the c cause and effect is, but there's been several times where I get somewhere and it's a huge gigantic mess, and you guys are right in the middle of it. Like whether the mess happens first and then they show up or they show up and then there's a huge gigantic mess after they're done.

SPEAKER_04 18:37

They're probably a little bit of both.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

That was going to be my next or or maybe ties in. I said, what gives you the most pride about the work that your team does?

SPEAKER_04 18:47

Just knowing that almost anything that happens we can fix with within that day. I hate rejected loads. I hate them.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Oh yeah, you get spicy when they put it down, it's like, oh, plant breakdown. Yeah. You're like, no, no, it wasn't.

SPEAKER_04 19:02

So we try to do a good job. And I think it's important that we don't have those rejected loads. I mean, there's always going to be some, right? Yeah. There's there's certain things that you can't just control. I mean, if you threw enough money at anything, you could control it all, but like it wouldn't be cost efficient that way. Yeah. Just being able to always fix something or at least get us by till we can get it 100% fixed.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

I think it's really cool and unique for people on your team and and our truck maintenance guys too. Like there's so many people that when something is broken or going wrong, they're out, right? And your guys, when they get the call that something is going really wrong, they have to go in. And so I think it's a unique type of person that says, Yes, I'm there, yes, I'm on my way, yes, I'm gonna fix this, as opposed to so many people who are like, oh, no, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Like Griffin and I.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

Just to like big picture, thinking about all the time that you've been here, been a part of this company. How much uh what's the biggest change, the biggest difference from when you started and when you were young? And and what do you think Grandpa Tom would say about what we've all become, you know?

SPEAKER_04 20:17

I think uh the size is probably the biggest change. You know, we when I first started, we had one plant musketine. And then Grandpa bought the grounder boys out, which added three more plants, but um but it didn't add a massive volume of yards either. And and grapple was around for when we moved to the Quad City Market, yeah. Yeah and that next year your dad bought uh builders, um which really jumped us up in yardage. Um something we'd never really seen before. But and then in 2012 when the block acquisition happened.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

Yeah, doubled again basically.

SPEAKER_04 21:03

Yeah, things really took off from there. And he was he was around for for some of that, but not like on an active level, day-to-day operation. I think he would be impressed on how efficient uh we run things, whether it's from the truck maintenance to the maintenance to the dispatch. I think we have a really good group of people that try to work together. I mean, there's always bumps on the road, right? But generally speaking, we do a really good job of working together as a team. I think that he would probably be the most impressed with that. Yeah. Cool. The least. I think he would have a hard time with this current generation, but I think uh I do as well sometimes. It's just different learning how to adapt to the different personalities and how to handle those employees differently. And it it is a different world, different environment than uh I grew up in. And even more so from where he came from. Yeah. I think that would be the hardest thing or the thing that he would le like least about everything.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

Yeah. And obviously the technology totally different too than this time.

SPEAKER_04 22:12

He would not like to take off.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

Well, I appreciate you coming on. I think this was a uh a fun discussion and and I think you know, insightful into the the past of the company, and and I think that's pretty neat.

SPEAKER_04 22:26

So thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 22:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

And it's not so bad, right? Now that it's over.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

It wasn't terrible.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

All right. Thanks. Thanks for coming in. Thanks for listening to Loaded the Hon Rady Mix podcast. We'll be back again next week.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

Ciao.