Loaded: The Hahn Ready Mix Podcast
A podcast for the employees of Hahn Ready Mix
Loaded: The Hahn Ready Mix Podcast
79. A day in the Life of Zach Hoopes
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Andrea and Griff are joined by Muscatine Area manager Zach Hoopes, who brings his colorful personality and interesting experiences with him to the pod.
We talk about Zach's path to today and all things Muscatine.
Welcome to Loaded, the Hahn Ready Mix Podcast with Andrea Meyer, Griffin Hahn, producer Lex, and our special guest, one and only, Mr.
SPEAKER_03Zach Hipps. How are you? Oh, not too bad. Good.
SPEAKER_00This is the final holdout. Are you the final thing? I think so.
SPEAKER_03I think there's a reason that I'm the final holdout. And uh I think what we should we should go ahead and break the seal for him to make him more comfortable. Say we're gonna do this fucking podcast. Yeah, fucking right. Now he doesn't have to worry about these words. We made it explicit. Let's make it explicit.
SPEAKER_00Before we started, I was telling him that the last insurance salesman that came in had apparently listened to the podcast on the way there. And he noted that Lex had an F-bomb in the last podcast.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I don't know if I I might have I might not have marked that one because I forgot about it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, sometimes things that are in your head just come out. They do you don't want to use the word all the time, but it just happens. Yeah. So what do you do? Yep. Well, I just thought it'd make you more comfortable if we appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's kind of weird hearing you say it. All right. Cool. What uh what announcements do we have today?
SPEAKER_01I guess one announcement I have is that I've been around the plants a lot lately and noticing on first loads that I've seen a lot of bridge masters, uh, especially their side lights, have been out. And usually it's something as simple as the wire came unplugged. So just remember in your pre-trip to look at those things and make sure that wire's plugged in because it's important to make sure we have all our safety lighting on our trucks.
SPEAKER_02I will add on the hopper, there are three lights. And if one of them doesn't work, that means that things are broke. It doesn't you still have to fix the middle one just because it doesn't light up.
SPEAKER_03Still got to fix it. Yeah, you're just giving the DOT a reason to pull us over if one of those lights aren't working. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00Which we do not want.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Good. Anything else? Any other announcements?
SPEAKER_03I don't think so. I don't think I have anything else.
SPEAKER_00Good. Well, let's get started.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, let's roll, man. You ready, Zach? Sure. All right. Let's uh let's start. Just uh tell us a little bit about your life.
SPEAKER_02Um I I mean how d how deep do you want to go? This is a less than 30-minute podcast. Uh yeah, I'm 43 years old. Um, born and raised in Musketeen. Um I grew up uh between a really large produce farm and the ready mix plant. Yeah. Um I I spent most of my time on the farm. Uh one time me and grandpa got in a grandpa hoops got in a scuffle and I had to spend the summer at the Ready Mix plant, which was okay. I didn't mind it. Grandpa had some things for me to do, and it I I wasn't impressed when I found out what they were, but I did them anyways. I uh I literally painted every building on the property with a one-gallon bucket, a stepladder, and a hand paint brush. Like no rollers, no sprayers, no nothing.
SPEAKER_00Just too busy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the whole summer. Literally. I love it. I didn't know he had you do that. Oh yeah. Even the brick building, the pre-cast building. Yeah. Oh my God, that thing I could get like 10 foot a day.
SPEAKER_03Seems like a good task for you back then. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's me. I got uh I got a wife and uh Katie's great to me. She does really good with us and the kids. And I got two daughters, Grace and Natalie. They both I spend most of my time, uh free time uh chasing them around signing softball. And uh cross country started now. Both of them are running cross country. So yeah, just uh busy with athletics if I'm not here.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. And you're kind of in your adult life before you joined uh the company, you were kind of a world-class welder, right? Like you were.
SPEAKER_02I spent um I started at Moscow when I was 18, straight out of school. I welded in the pole barn there for five years, kind of had some things go sideways in my life, and luckily I I knew some people that were able to help me out. I started at Hoffman two days later and I welded there for 10 years, sanding gravel dredges, uh smokestacks, uh structural steel I-beams, um big steel beams for driveover pits for rail cars and you know, didn't they send you all over the place? Uh yeah. I went to uh Gillette, Wyoming at Black Hills Energy and did a 423-foot chimney. And then I went down to Jasper, Alabama and worked at Alabama Southern Power and did two fly ash silos. Wow. So yeah, a little bit everywhere. Cool. Um when I worked at Moscow, I was uh it was when uh 9-11 happened and all that stuff went down. And I woke up, I worked night shift, I woke up and I went in, and I'm like, hey, I I want to volunteer to go out this because they were sending the mobile lighting cranes out. And uh about six weeks later I got my chance. I spent two weeks out there. I was uh really I was the youngest uh person employed at Ground Zero. At the time when I volunteered, it was a strictly a volunteer basis. By the time I got out there, uh Turner Construction Group had taken over, so I had to work through them. But yeah, it was I didn't know you did that. Yeah, it was uh that's really cool. I had somehow I managed to uh there was two World Trade Center buildings, the two big ones, and then there was five around it that were affected by it. So it was uh World Trade Center's project seven, which uh included seven buildings. Uh building one, somehow I managed to grab a chunk of granite off the side of it. And I don't know how this happened, but I put it in my uh carry-on and I run it through security and got on the airplane and brought it back, and nobody said a freaking word to me. And I'm like, what in the hell are we doing? And now the FBI is gonna be showing up because you said it on the podcast. Really? Yeah. Wow, it's pretty wild. But wow, there was a lot to see, a lot to remember.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, for sure. For sure. How long ago did you um start full-time with us?
SPEAKER_02Uh December 1st, 2014.
SPEAKER_032014, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And that was I know this is on one of the question things. Uh it was kind of uh odd how it all happened between Bear and and Uncle Brian sending tankers over to get diesel tanks welded or get the hatches welded on on the uh pneumatic tankers. Um I don't remember if it was Brian or or Bear, but they were giving me shit about the cost. And I said, well, you know, it'd be a lot cheaper if you just put me on payroll.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And, you know, it wasn't it wasn't too much longer that we had worked out a deal and I had started in maintenance. Yeah. So you spent three years or something? Uh probably, you know, three. I think there was three years that I was just maintenance, and then there was like a transition year kind of sure. Um learning the area manager and the and the customers and and truly learning about concrete. And then yeah, been doing the area manager thing and customers ever since.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. People may not know, and we've had Sean on here that has a you know a similar role to what you have, um, but people may not know what what the area manager role really entails day to day.
SPEAKER_00So people are thinking to themselves, what's that guy actually do? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. You know, there's a lot of people I walk through the office, they're like, Zach, what the fuck are you doing? I'm like, ah, well, you know, yeah. You never know. You know, that and there's drivers that like, you know, I'll go job site, job site, you know, visiting customers. And and oddly enough, sometimes the same driver will end up at every single job site that I'm showing up to. Like, why are you following me? Well, they won't tell me, but they'll come back and they'll ask Jake, like, hey Jake, like, Zach mad at me? Did I do something wrong? Why is he showing up at all these job sites? I'm like, well, it's just, you know, that's the path I chose that day. Right. So yeah.
SPEAKER_03So walk us through uh a day in your shoes.
SPEAKER_02You know, I get to get to the office between 6:37, maybe 7.15, depending on what's going on. If we have a really big, you know, important poor that's starting early, I'll make sure that I'm there and get everybody rolling. But, you know, I usually try to get to the office and and talk to the drivers and talk to Jake and and look at what orders their firm, how big they are. Usually by the time I get to the office, you know, I've had three or four text messages and and a handful of phone calls to adjust orders and move things around. So I'll do that when I start right when I get there, make sure the drivers are good. I'll go back to the shop and check on Ryan. A lot of times Ryan will see me pull up and he'll just come up to and meet me at the shop or at the office, and then I'll pick a handful of customers every day and I'll just go out and visit customers and and talk to them, see what they got coming up, um, see what they got going for the day, the week, the month, and you know, take care of the yard, uh, spend a lot of time talking to dispatch. Uh area manager, I think, is a pretty broad term, you know, for what I for what I do. There's days that I'm in the plant, you know, working on it, opposed to you know, this morning I when I got to work, I knew that Jim needed two tankers uh loaded out of self-store or out of storage. So I blew I had to blow up two tanker loads into the silos so that I could load them. Yeah. So it just never ever every day is a crapshoot, really. Yeah. I just try to I try to start in the same spot every day and then and then adjust accordingly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I think one of the things you you do really, really well is getting in front of customers. I mean, when I mean it's not unusual for you to see 30 job sites or 30 customer visits in a week, right? So um John's probably on the same in the same ballpark, but otherwise nobody else does that much, you know. So you do a really nice job with that. How much do you because it's kind of weird. I don't think a lot of companies do it this way. They have dedicated salespeople or they have dedicated operations people. So, like, what do you think your balance is and and like how much time you spend you doing each of those things?
SPEAKER_02You know, I'm probably you know, I'm a probably a good 50, 50, 60 percent, you know, just customer relations. Um and the rest is kind of split up between maintenance at the plant. You know, there's days I end up in the loader. I try to do a really good job. Jake, uh Jake's an amazing batch guy, and and you don't want to lose a guy like that, so I try not to burn him out too bad. Yeah, and I'll make sure I can cover for him in the afternoons on the days that I don't have things going on or in the morning, or if he's got a kid that needs has has a sporting event or whatever, I'll make sure that me or Trav or somebody covers.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So what's the hardest part about your role? Do you think? Uh for me, the hardest part would be a frustrated customer. It to me, uh a customer is really important. You know, your dad gave me a a sign a long time ago, and at the time I didn't really think much of it, but now, you know, it's uh it's above my couch in my office, and you know, it's if you don't take care of them, somebody else will. And and I take that pretty personal. You know, when you see a different ready mix company in town or anywhere near town, right? Um so I think an upset customer is probably my number one.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we can tell, I certainly can tell, like when they're when things don't go right, how how much that affects you, right? Like it's it's uh you're so personally invested in their success. But I think that is part of why customers like you so much and resonate so well with you, is because they know that you're in the trenches with them and you're going to uh you know emotionally ride how their day goes is how your day is gonna go, right? And that you're in it.
SPEAKER_02So one time I I actually came to work in in in a polo and it was actually you know tucked in and I looked halfway professional and I showed up to KE flat work and Lucas Cleaver turns at me and he says, What the fuck do you got on? I'm like, all right, I'll go put my dingy t-shirt back on. You know, and I wear a dingy t-shirt, nobody ever says nothing. Yeah. As soon as one time I I got a nice jacket on, or yeah, you know, they're they're pretty quick to point it out.
SPEAKER_03Well, it's good that you can make that connection. So sometimes there's kind of a natural tension between you know what customers are asking you for and what dispatch can do. Yep. Especially, you know, it's harder when you get further away from the quad city sometimes, right? Because so many of the trucks are based in the quad cities. So how do you handle um those I don't want to say disputes, I don't think that's the right thing, but just disagreements or or the tension if you and dispatch have a different view of how things should go.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um, you know, I used to really get I used to really get fired up. You know, I'm like, what do you mean I can't take care of this customer? You're freaking crazy, dude. Like this is a for firm order. What are you wasting your time for? You got 99% on the boards on we'll call, just take the damn thing. Yeah. And, you know, the more I talk to Jurgens and and and the more I got to know them, and we got to talking a little bit better to each other. And, you know, just be like, hey, I really need to do this one this time, you know, give me, you know, and they're pretty good about giving you a solid if you need it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, and a lot of times, you know, I'll talk to a customer, customer will call and you know, Zach, I'm I'm sorry, I really forgot to put this little call in. Will you help me out?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, and and it really depends on what else we got going on. Uh it it happened today. You know, we got we had a hundred yards going to a fertilizer plant, we had a hundred yards going out to carpet pump, uh, 250 yards to pave downtown. And I had a buddy call me and he's like, Hey, I just I need two yards, 11 o'clock. I'm like, Yeah, man, I don't think 11 o'clock that's not that's bad time. And he's like, Well, why not? And I'm like, Well, you can do it right now, right this second, or you're gonna have to wait until after lunch. And he's like, All right, fine, I'll skip lunch. So, I mean, the customers work with you too, as long as you I'm the more honest and the more upfront you are. Absolutely. You know, I I've learned that the uh the hard way a few times too, you know, just not understanding the rest of the company and just focusing on musketine. You kind of I don't necessarily want to say get big headed about it, but you're like, God damn it, that's my customer. I was told to take care of my customers. Yeah, uh, give me my freaking trucks, yeah, and let's go.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So well, I I cer I certainly think that that relationship has come a long way, right? Between you you and Chris or the rest of dispatch, you know, and and it's I think it it helps be us all be more successful for our customers, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so one time uh me and Jurgen sat down with a lot of beer and hashed it all out. That can fix a lot of problems. It's been pretty good ever since.
SPEAKER_03That's good. What do you wish drivers or or really anybody listening to this um better understood about what you do?
SPEAKER_02I think just understanding, you know, the pressure coming from other c from customers about, you know, wanting to get done and wanting to be perfect. You know, a lot of people don't hear the ashtunes on the phone, um, or they don't see, you know, the stress of me trying to figure out how the hell I'm gonna do all these orders that everybody's called and I'm still trying to figure it out with dispatch. You know, it's all you know hidden hidden stuff that people don't see, they don't, you know, have probably maybe never even dealt with.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So I think that's a big Sure.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, and and then when when something doesn't go right, kind of the cascading waterfall effect of that, right? Yeah. So you can throw off those carefully laid plans you've worked on. And a a rejected load, you know, a rejected load will send me through the roof. All right, let's talk about some exciting kind of projects and things that have uh happening down in Musketeen.
SPEAKER_02You know, one of them's not really exciting. It's more of a honeydew list.
SPEAKER_00It's exciting for us when we get to come see the progress.
SPEAKER_02And I'm glad like every everybody's calmed down, take a good look at it, and and really liked what they seen. And you don't always get the resources that I had this time to to do this project. So I really like grabbed a hold of it and embraced it with the honeydew list and a few other things that I wanted to see.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um the other one is really freaking exciting, and that's a brand new plant. Yeah. And uh it's still on the ground. Uh, but you know, sometimes you may have a short little dream about what it'd be like, you know, if that thing was in the air. It's uh the dream is getting closer, right?
SPEAKER_03So you can see, you can see most of it, you know. Uh so that for those that don't know, we bought uh probably like two-thirds of a um, well, it's not it's a new plant, but it's 20 years old. It's been sitting uh uh on the ground for 20 years, but never had a single yard of concrete through it. And they had about two-thirds of the plant there. So we we bought that uh to kind of be the centerpiece of the muscatine plant replacement. Some things still to to acquire to get the rest of the plant. And then obviously there's a lot of cost in involved with foundations in and permitting and um you know building and and all that stuff. So it's it is a process, uh as I keep reminding it's not gonna be up next week.
SPEAKER_02But it's a process that doesn't happen fast enough.
SPEAKER_03Let's just put it that way. Yep. Um, but it is really cool that uh we have kind of taken that first step on uh we've got that iron. Very cool. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, uh in 2016. Well, yeah, 2016, we spent the winter rebuilding that place and Uncle Brian come back from Florida and he's like, Man, this is great, Zach. This thing's gonna last 10 more years. And I'm like, I don't really want it to last two more. Here we are in 2013. Yeah, yeah, 10 years later.
SPEAKER_03I hope he's not listening. Um I'm sure he would. Um Yeah, so that that is really exciting. And and that'll be a central mixed plant. And so um that'll give us the ability to dump truck pave down in Muscatine, get gets rid of dough balls.
SPEAKER_02The and that's a big one. You know, that's a big thing that I get from customers. The you know, another thing that people don't really see other than the driver is you know, calling about, you know, quality or you know, why aren't these guys getting the revs at the rack? Well, they are. You asked for a nine-inch slump, like that's what you're gonna get, is a bunch of dough balls along with it. Yeah. Uh so it'd be really nice to see those go away. I guess another big one that I'm excited about is uh the lack of dust. You know, with the with the dry batch and the wind blowing through the tunnel, and it just blows everywhere. And not all the drivers, you know, some drivers are really good about backing in, paying attention to wind direction and what's what's gonna get the least amount on their trucks, and some don't.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, so it's a constant, constant fight. Yeah, yeah, should help with truck cleanliness and yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, these Davenport guys will be excited to go there now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they will. Yeah, there's a well, and then and then there's a few other drawbacks, you know. Uh with a dry batch, uh, you shut the key off and walk away. Yeah, there's uh a wet batch, you know, you're you're cleaning down the slide trays, you're washing off the back of the drum, you gotta get in the drum and chip the drum. Uh it the back of the drum's gotta stay clean. You gotta check gears, gotta check rollers, gotta make sure the auto oilers, like all that stuff has to run every day, or you destroy, yeah, you could destroy a million dollars in an hour and a half.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah, a lot more maintenance, a lot more upkeep. But you should get you should gain some production speed too. I mean, muscatine's a relatively fast plant, but this should be quicker with the central mix.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, it's it's I think uh the musketeen plant, you know, once you get rolling and everything, it's all gravity fed. So once you get rolling and get moving, you know, that first hour you might be able to get 150, 160. Yeah. And then like that second, third hour, you might get 200 if you're really pushing it, but you just can't sustain it. Yeah. And with the, you know, with the wet batch, as long as you keep the plant full, you can extend sustain that for 12 hours a day. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so that'll be a lot of fun. Um, still a few years out before we're probably batching concrete, certainly before we're done with that uh project. But um the first step is buying it. First step is there, yeah. Yep. That's uh and you reference the so there's a bunch of cleanup that uh you guys have been doing. Yep. So I know you guys have been working hard on that. And and it's tough when you have a site that, you know, we've had a business on that site since 1884. Uh there's just a lot of accumulation that accumulates, yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, accumulated or uh, you know, put that busted up concrete over there. Yeah. And then we're gonna cover it up with sand, and then 20 years later, we're gonna we're gonna need to do something over there and we're gonna dig it up, and there's all that concrete that was there. And yeah, or you know, some quick fixes. A couple of years ago, I was down by the wash tracks cleaning it up and just you know, scraping up the little piles from air tests. Yeah. And all of a sudden I heard a and I didn't really know what it was. But then Jake's like, I don't have any power. What is going on? And I had cut a huge conduit in half and like right at the rack. So we got to fix that. Yeah. And we found some old railroad tracks that were, you know, four foot underground, like just a lot of hidden stuff. Lots of hidden stuff there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'm sure we'll find some as we work on the innovations for the plant too.
SPEAKER_02It'll be nice to put together a plant with like the appropriate colored wires and stuff. You know, grandpa was grandpa was a freaking genius when it came to all this stuff, but he used what he had. Yeah. And There might be a yellow wire at the bottom of the conveyor, but at the top of the conveyor, that sucker's purple. Yeah. Um, I I actually called him one day and I'm like, Grandpa, and it's this yellow purple thing. There's yellow, I said, Grandpa, there's yellow wire down at the bottom, but there's no yellow up top.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And he's like, What are you trying to do? I said, I'm trying to fix the auto shut off for the conveyor belt. And he's like, Oh, yeah. Call me back in an hour. And he calls me back 30 minutes later and he's like, Zach, is there a purple wire up at the top? And yeah, yeah, there's purple wire, just one. He said, That's wire you need. And sure as shit, that was the wire I needed.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, it's hard, you know, when you have that kind of uh over years home-built stuff, you know. Yeah, so yeah, it'll be good. Uh the other project in in process down there is uh we had a visit from the Iowa DNR. I think we referenced that before. And so we're putting in some washout pits just in front of the the washout stands there. So hopefully all that water will flow into there and we can capture any of our process water like the DNR wants us to.
SPEAKER_02So yep, that that area and the front drive are probably, you know, the Blaine and Haas uh have spent the last two weeks working on that stuff, uh pulling trees out, regrading. Yeah. Um they've done a freaking amazing job. It looks great. It does.
SPEAKER_03It does look really good. That that's a lot of stuff going on down there. Yeah. Yeah. What what do you need from people to make all these projects go smoothly? Any anything in particular?
SPEAKER_02You know, it's mostly just hands. Yeah. You can kind of like once you get moving on stuff that you want to take care of and fix on, you know, you can kind of spread out and add on to that, you know, without without much thought. You're just like, oh, that tree, that's in the wrong spot. You know, you just start pulling trees and yeah and killing weeds. And yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I'll add to that that everybody who's not on those projects, maintaining their level of excellence with keeping their truck clean and yeah, not having rejected loads and doing all the things that they're supposed to do allows for the extra energy to go towards these projects rather than fixing problems.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Correct.
SPEAKER_03Uh let's talk a little bit about workload that's coming up. What's what's on tap for the fall and muscatine and and further on the horizon? I I'm kind of waiting to hear from Wendler.
SPEAKER_02I seen a uh semi-load of wall forms come in the other day. Uh we have Unit 10 uh power plant at GPC that is also going to feed GPC with uh steam. Okay. Uh so that's a big one. I'm really not, I just know it's big. Yeah um we just finished Stewart Road, uh, which is uh just shy of three miles of new construction. Uh we're just finishing up a dry fertilizer plant over at CHS off Pettibone, done sounds like next week.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Moscow, we just started a 100,000 square foot facility with them when CDMI is doing the footings and the floors. Um All Americans got about 2,500 yards of paving to do outside of that building. Um, sounds like we're gonna do that while they're putting up the building and then do the floors this winter. Okay. West Hill is always is always feeding us something. You know, uh we're we're paving there right now. Yep. Um that's kind of slow going because you're separating sanitary and yeah, it's it's one pave then wait a month. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. So I I mean, but it's always there and it's always feeding us with something.
SPEAKER_03So it's safe to say a must team market's pretty doing pretty healthy. Yeah, yeah. It's uh it's still growing and doing well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and we're always, you know, always feeding GPC with something. Uh we're always feeding Monsanto with something. Yeah, we got we got work. I'd like to see some new housing additions come in, you know, somewhere along the line. It's always good to good to see that expansion, you know, not just the commercial side of it. Yep. Yeah, we just did that little hackett one last year, but it hasn't been a lot of those recently. Yeah, Claire Beck we didn't uh the one we did before that was um Arbor Commons, but it's like uh Duncan Drive and Ginkgo Drive. And sure. So we need some. It'd be nice to see another big one in. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Cool. Well, anything else you want to talk about while you've got the pulpit here and the ears of everybody in the company?
SPEAKER_02No, I mean not really. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00There can nothing be worried about it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, a little, yeah, not bad. Yeah, good. Well, we'll have you back. Okay, sounds good. Let's do it. All right.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll talk to you again next week.
SPEAKER_03Thank you.
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