76. Chipping and Washout

Andrea is joined by Lex and Daren Fick to talk truck chipping weights, dump sites and proper washout procedures.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to Loaded, the Hahn Ready Mix Podcast with Andrea Meyer, Lex Hahn, and Darren's with us today. Woo! Hey everybody.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

What's up?

SPEAKER_00 0:21

This is a loose Friday afternoon attempt at a podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Oh, it's not an attempt. We're gonna get this done. I feel confident.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Yeah, you came in here telling us we need to be ready.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

I have a plan. Come on. I expect you guys to perform. We are ready to go. See what happens. Do we have any announcements today? What no, there's no more soccer stuff or fantasy football or anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

But I think we should hand this over to Darren. He's the man. I will I have I will make two announcements.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Are these announcements or are these pleas?

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Yes. They're announcements with a plea kicker. Okay answer. I uh the chippers will be done with everything going the way it should. The chippers will be done tonight. They have seven or eight trucks left in Geneseo, and then they're gonna be on their way back to Texas. Um they chipped a lot of concrete out of a lot of different trucks and some Central Mix drums. It's gonna be pricey when we get all the bills. We're already up a little over 11 grand for just the first three days. Um there are ways, and we'll talk about that to help that situation and keep that down. I think some of it is trucks get moved around and people get moved around in them, and maybe think that it's not their thing to worry about. The bigger announcement that I have that they're gonna be gone is I've noticed an abundance, and I think this has a lot to do with not having dump sites close by, which is really unnerving. And I know it drives dispatch nuts, and I know it drives the drivers nuts. But please, above all else, we cannot dump leftover concrete at our plants or wash out water, or just, hey, all I got is a little bit of water in the back of the drum, and I'm just gonna spill it right here. It just makes everything worse. Um, there is no plant that we have that can contain or can afford to have that kind of wash out water or concrete at it day in and day out. We don't have the ability or the equipment to keep it cleaned up. So please keep that in mind. If you've got five or 10 gallons of washwater, let somebody know we'll do the best, or we'll use a pit and we'll dump it. But don't dump it in the middle of the yard. We had one at River Plant that they dumped it probably on a Friday. And by Monday, it was so hard. Lex and I were standing there and couldn't make a dent. So and it's right next to River Drive where everybody and their mother can drive by and see it, and we look like really unorganized.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Like we're not doing our best.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Like we're not doing our best work.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Yes, yes, I agree. Uh, I have another reminder, and I will probably say this every week for the next four weeks or so, but it is back to school time. The buses are running, their test routes I already saw. Oh boy. Uh the crossing guards will be out. That means the speed limits are in force. I just it's it's a weird seasonal thing that happens that we have to be aware of and remember to not be not be passing the buses, be on a lookout for kids in those crosswalks, and slow down. What do you have, Lex? What's your announcement today?

SPEAKER_02 3:54

I have no announcements, but Darren brought up a good thing about chipping drums, and that's something I think we should focus on a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 4:02

First, starting out with proper washdown procedures. From what I hear, I've never driven a truck in my life.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Not yet. Not yet. There's still time.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

In time, maybe. What I've known now is that with the amount of chipping we have, we probably need to work on our washdown processes. We can start with end-of-day washdown, which what two to three hundred gallons maybe take three or four minutes to get your water in your truck at the stinger.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Yeah, I think we had another episode with where we actually timed it, and I'm not sure what that is, but I will tell you that the best way to look at it is think of it like a washing machine. If you fill that washing machine completely full of water, the water really doesn't do much other than move back and forth or slash back and forth around. It really doesn't create any abrasive action in the drum. If you put, if you put that bowl of washing machine a third full, the water gets sloshed around and it moves the clothes around and does the same thing happens in a mixture drum. It's a corkscrew. You want enough water to get where it'll splash and move and bounce off the fins and create more agitation in the drum. So more water is actually worse than no water. So what I'm saying is 200 gallons, 250 gallons is plenty. What I used to do, this is just me, get a couple hundred gallons of water, put it in the drum, beat it up. I would actually run it back a little bit and then run it back in and then run it back out and then empty it. And then I would use 50 gallons out of my water tank to help finish that and knock it out. And by the time you got to that, you pretty much had a clean drum. You don't need the water to be clear coming out of the back of the drum. It's a nice thought, but it doesn't always work that way. When we wash out centramix plants, that's a big problem too. People will put a thousand gallons of water in the drum and it really doesn't do that much good. You want just enough to get the mixing action you need. That's about 250 gallons.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

And this is at the end of the day, right? You're talking about end of day washouts.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

The biggest issue with buildup in trucks, and a lot of people will say this is well, I got stuck with that one load that one day that was really hot. I can tell you that when they chip out trucks, you can see layers of concrete. So it didn't happen in one day. Typically, a washout when you're on a job site, the most important thing you need to worry about is washing the back foot and a half in the drum. If you can get that off the fins.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

What's the best way to do that? How do you get it off the fins?

SPEAKER_01 6:53

You want to be up on the ladder, look around and see and wash inside the drum.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

You need a video. He's doing a lot of hand motions here.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Well, we don't have video. Thank God. The best thing is to reach in and wash without getting your hand in dangerous positions, to wash that first foot of the drum around the helper fins and then that first fin.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

So you're sort of angling the way that you're the water's entering the drum to hit all of the sides around the fins.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

What I will tell you is most of the time during the day, when we come back, you're getting loaded pretty quickly anyway. If you have water reaching in and trying to reach in behind the fins and wash out, you're going to get some, but you're not going to get very far and you're going to risk hurting yourself because you're going to get your hand caught between a fin and a hopper, and it's just not worth it. Do the best you can. You're going to get some concrete buildup on the backside of your fins. There's not much you can do about it. If you take care of that and do it properly, and you get loaded when you get back, the concrete's not going to set up on the fins that quickly. It's just a matter of the plastic concrete. The most abrasive thing we can put in that drum is more concrete. And it will actually help clean the fins off. Once that concrete is in there and it's solid and set up, it's just the beginning of the end. You just start building on top of it. You can't stop it.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

So, what if you are on one of those long hot jobs? What's the best thing you can do in that situation? Pray?

SPEAKER_01 8:32

If one of the things I used to do, and one of our greatest customers, and I've known him for years, and I consider him a friend, is Ronnie Relk. We used to go on milk runs, is what we called them, where you would do five or 10, 11 jobs with one load of concrete. And it was miserable. And Ronnie didn't want you to add water. But there was a secret to it when you went somewhere and they would tell you, hey, add three or four gallons. Fine, get up there and use your water hose and wrench your fins while the drums turn in nice and slow and add the water and let that water mix in while you're going from one place to the next.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

Because if you wash that off in the back, now you've got clean back fins and the loading's easier, and that helps. And that little bit of water is all Ronnie wants, or somebody else might want. If they're coming out every 15 minutes and telling you to add three or four gallons and they're wheeling something or they're taking their time getting it, use your water hose, spray the fins off a little bit, get that stuff knocked off, and do that. The other thing I will tell you that helps, and not a lot of people like doing this, but if you take 10 minutes twice a week and go up on the ladder on your drum, that back ring between the lip at the very back and the roller ring where the rollers sit on, and you use a hammer, and I understand nobody wants to ding up their drum, and I don't want them to either, but use a piece of wood or something up there that you can hit and tap on the backside of that drum. Anything that's caught in that first two feet will fall off inside the drum. It's it it just comes off. It comes off very quickly. If you do it a couple times a week, you're gonna you're gonna save yourself a lot of heartache down the road.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

I like it. What other tips do you have, Lex? You did some field research on this?

SPEAKER_02 10:30

Yeah. Since we're talking about washdown processes, especially on site, a big thing that we've started this year, especially in the city of Davenport, is wash down or washout bags. From what I've gathered from some drivers, is that there's a definitely not the perfect way to do it, but the most important thing is to make sure you line up your shoots with that bag. And make sure you scrape if you have anything in your chute and it wasn't properly scraped out, scrape that out before you even start washing down. Correct. And then first wash that first chute, make sure that you're hitting your bag, then go up top and start washing down your collection hopper, and then slowly wash down from there. And you should be able to hit that bag while cleaning all of your shoots, all of your hopper, everything.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Without overflowing the bag.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Without overflowing the bag. You should have plenty of water to do so.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Larry used to have a very good plan with that. I asked him years ago because I he always came to work clean, and when he left, he was just as clean as he was when he got here. I said, How in the world do you do it? And he said, I never wash up. Never wash up. Always wash down. Start at the top, work your way down. By the time you get down off the ladder on the truck were the chutes, all you have to do is pick the chutes up and hang them. He never had dirty shoots because he didn't want to carry them. And he never had dirty clothes because he always wanted to look as good when he went to the bar after he left work as he did when he got here in the morning.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

You know what's funny? Lex used to not ever be dirty in here the past few weeks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

Well.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

He looks like he's been working some. He is that true, Lex?

SPEAKER_01 12:16

He's done some concrete testing lately.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Oh a little bit of dirt on your forearms right now.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Dirt on the dirt? Dirt?

SPEAKER_00 12:24

I don't know what it is.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

Concrete on your arms. This is graphite color.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

This is just oh way different than dirt.

SPEAKER_02 12:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Yeah. Color doesn't wash off real well.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

It's the same, but it's different.

SPEAKER_02 12:37

Um speaking on that, on so if a customer needs to wash their tools off, I've heard that this is something else. If a customer needs to wash their tools off, let them wash them in your chut. Because not only are they cleaning their tools, they're also cleaning your chute in the process. That's an excellent idea. So that was an idea from a driver. Mag tips here.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Mag float, margin trials.

SPEAKER_02 13:01

Doesn't matter. Shh, right there in the shoot.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Like that.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Two for one.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Two for one.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

There you go.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Come alongs. I advise not letting them climb up in the chutes to wash their boots, though.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Well, probably not the same. If they can sit on the ground and put their boots in there, that's okay.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

But yes, there are ways and there are simple ways that just makes sense. Larry used to tell me when you go in the shower, you don't start with your feet. Nope.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Very true.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Very true. You start with a top and you work your way down. Same thing with a truck. That way you're never washing concrete up onto the drum from down below.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Got it. What about tell us about the dump sites? Like, what's the deal with that? Why do they keep locking us out?

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Well, there's a couple of reasons. One, they're getting very, very full with uh crushed material. They crush leftover concrete into material that a lot of customers use for base, which is great. And they sell it fairly inexpensively. So it's a good way for them to base a job and get good compaction. However, there's a lot of construction people now that are doing their own crushing, which has kind of watered down the market a little bit, and there's a lot of it out there. And if you're not selling it super cheap, they're not going to come buy it from you because they can buy it cheaper somewhere else. So that's part of it. The other part is when they give us a place to dump leftover concrete and then to wash out. I'm one of those people who don't like to get my feet muddy either. I don't like to get my feet dirty. So you tend to try not to get too far back into the goop. And there might be some back there. There might be some where somebody just dumped. The problem is that's where you need to put it. If you've got a spot where you can dump, everybody starts working their way out away from where it starts. And the farther you get out, the less room you have to go dump things. And eventually they're like, well, we got to clean this up now. We don't have the equipment, so you're going to have to. So they close it. Then we can't go use it. The best thing you can do is dump that leftover concrete as far back as you can get reasonably without falling over or doing something. And then once you've dumped it all and it's all out, pull forward just a little bit and wash out in a spot where you can, where you're not leaving concrete. Dump the leftovers back and then pull forward into a little wash and then take off.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Got it. So there's a little bit of a strategy that we can use to help them help us.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

And yeah, and if they're if there's a place where you back up on a ramp or a hill where they want you to dump it over the edge, I know this seems counterproductive. Add a chute. So you can dump it out over the edge instead of dumping it right there on the top of the hill because you're doing the same thing. You're filling that spot. Now you got to keep moving forward. Add a chute. It sucks. You got to wash a chute again, but you're saving us time in the long run, or you're saving them a lot of heartache in the long run. So if that's the option, it's better to dump it over the edge as much as you can.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

How do you know, like, how do you know how far?

SPEAKER_01 16:20

Well, you kind of have to get close and then back up and take a look or move your shoot around and figure out where it needs to be.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

Backup cameras? Is that what we need?

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Um, no, I I've never been a proponent of backup cameras. I try not to use the one in my pickup, and I'm not a big fan of that either. But it's it's mainly just get out and look.

unknown 16:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

You know, goal. Get out and look, see where it is. Swing your shoot around and say, okay, I'm I gotta add one and then get out and then back up six more feet or three more feet and get it over the edge and then let her go. Sometimes it may take just a little more water, another five or ten gallons, and get it to push out a little farther.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Got it. Did you get any other info on the dump sites?

SPEAKER_02 17:05

Yeah, I think mine was similar. It's like, hey, you're going in the goop and you need to go in the goop because that is where it starts and it it struggles. And yeah, it's gonna stink, but if over time we are in that goop, where do you think that goop's going? It's going out onto the road. Yep. And in time, they're gonna have to clean that up for us so that we can back up to where we need to be. So we can't.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

So the worst thing we can do, the worst thing we can do is start dumping further out because that makes more mess, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:39

More mess and less space and whatever. And having no dump sites for us is very hurtful for our efficiency and productivity.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

It's a pain for everybody. Having driven a truck, it's a pain to have to go somewhere and dump leftover concrete. Nobody wants to drive from Davenport to Sylvis to dump leftovers and then come all the way back. It's just a waste of time. And especially if it's late in the day and you're ready to be done, nobody wants to drive 20 miles out of the way to go dump something.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

Yeah. And you even save something, like say we have to drive through the goop. If you need to wash your tires or you need to wash your boots off, pull up, pull forward, take that extra three, four minutes to do so. Because if we can keep those open, that saves us hours and hours. Absolutely much time.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Makes a huge difference. You know, I keep going back to the same dude, and that's Larry, and he used to say, My boots wash off. I don't have a problem washing my boots off. And he did. So all right.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Did we miss anything? Did we cover everything we wanted to cover?

SPEAKER_02 18:53

Somehow. I think you did some.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

I think you did pretty good. If we missed anything, we would love to hear it in the comments. If you're a professional driver with tips on keeping one of those, how many drivers were there that had minimum chipped out of their trucks?

SPEAKER_01 19:06

There were quite a few, a lot less than normal. I will say there were a lot of the usual suspects with minimum.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

The ones who are good are good and they know who they are.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

And they know who they are. If you have And I gotta give my shout out to Woodsey because he was he was one of those that came. He was very happy that his was minimum.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

And we uh we are too. We appreciate it so much. And if you have tips to share with everyone, put them in the comments, send them to us in an email or text message, and we will try to share them on a future episode. But we appreciate everybody working hard. Thanks for listening to the podcast, and we'll talk to you again next week.