GivenHansco’s software suite • View customer account balances and ticket history • Give salesmen job site awareness that allows them to solve problems on-site For managers and owners, it’s a huge benefit to be able to see instantly things like orders, yards delivered, what stage a job is in, the exact weight that’s on every truck and the location of every truck in real time. For a salesperson making a call, the app can bring up open and overdue invoices. The amount of help this gives to concrete producers is potentially enormous. Give me a call at 888-378-6210 and I will be happy to discuss the app and pricing with you in person or over the phone. It seems reasonable to say that– once you…
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Looking ahead to the fall and winter seasons, I’m getting excited about a sophisticated and cost-effective way to heat aggregates, batch water, and practically everything else around your plant with a single solution. The TURBOMATIC is made by Polarmatic, a Finnish company that has expertise in making concrete at some very cold ambient temperatures. Their single solution for heating both aggregates and water for every purpose makes a lot of sense for winter concrete production. Why aggregate heating? What’s driving everyone toward better aggregate heating methods is the use of higher-strength mixtures with less water content. Water alone can no longer provide enough heat for batching concrete in cold weather. The TURBOMATIC is good at one thing– extraordinarily efficient generation and distribution of heat. Not…
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It’s July as this is written, but for concrete producers in the Northeast, it’s not too early to start thinking about upgrading your hot water system with an extremely efficient gas-fired heater. The Firestorm direct contact water heater from Heatec, heats water on demand. That means there is no need to heat, store and maintain the temperature of thousands of gallons of water. The burner is fired to heat only the amount of water being used. The result is fast response: you have hot water when you need it, without paying to heat water you don’t use. (You can, of course, use the Firestorm to heat water for an existing large storage tank, if desired.) It is easy to tell how extraordinarily efficient the Firestorm…
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Would you like your batching and accounting systems to work together better? Do you wish you could avoid costly downtime when your batching computer crashes? Are you tired of indifferent customer service when you call for help? GivenHansco’s Keystone plant automation and accounting suite is what I am currently recommending. What really puts them above some of the competition is customer service. They cater to the small to mid-sized producer, and are so service-oriented that I often have very little followup once I’ve sold their product. They really have been true to their word as far as backing up their product. A manual panel that’s really manual: Another thing I like is the fact that their manual panel is truly manual. On a major competitor’s…
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What’s the secret weapon? Marketing—possibly the most misunderstood word at a concrete batch plant. Don’t wrinkle your nose and move on. Instead read on and profit handsomely. To put it simply, marketing is the process of introducing your goods to the people who need them. In our industry, those goods are concrete. So what’s the difference between sales and marketing? Sales is the process of generating orders by persuading others. Marketing is the process of generating leads by informing others. You generate leads by making your company and your product known to potential customers—by creating a trusted image in the marketplace. What is your current image in the market? How are you perceived by your customers and potential customers? Say you have a concrete…
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Concrete batch plants have changed significantly over the last 20-30 years in terms of technology, efficiency, speed and lower maintenance. If your plant is showing its age, consider investing in new equipment. The role our company plays in specifying, installing, troubleshooting, repairing and upgrading ready mix or precast concrete plants provides a unique opportunity to see what works and what doesn’t when it comes to batch plant efficiency. I’d like to share five principles we have observed that always seem to lead to more efficient, and therefore more profitable operations. A simple definition of concrete plant efficiency is the ratio of (a): the cost of inputs (employee hours, materials, energy, equipment, etc.) to (b): the revenue generated by sales. In other words; the lower your costs and…
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An interesting thing happened to me the other week that became the catalyst for this article. I was responding to an e-mail inquiry who had requested that we contact him with additional information on one of our products. Before I wrote back to this person I wanted to learn more about his business, so I did what 70 percent of Americans do every day; I Googled his company. And to my amazement, this rather sizable, regional producer did not have a web site. I looked for over 10 minutes and finally found the company phone number, thanks to the online Yellow Pages and Manta.com. Why did I find this shocking? It’s amazing in this day and age that the same person I received an e-mail…
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Have you ever driven by a concrete batch plant while a cement tanker is blowing off and see that unmistakable gray plume of dust billowing out of the top of the silos or bins? Ever wait for what seems like forever for your cement batcher to either weigh up or discharge a load? Aside from risking unwarranted attention that could lead to an unwelcome visit from the Federales, both of these issues are a huge waste of time and money. Think about the hundreds and possibly thousands of pounds of cement that are blown off into the atmosphere over time. Last I checked, cement isn’t free, in fact it’s pretty darned expensive. Add potential fines to that waste and your head will spin. Clogged bin vents and dust collectors can…
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Buying or leasing a used concrete plant can represent a significant savings over new, but only with careful planning, shopping and inspection. Don’t buy someone else’s problem. Do your homework. Here’s an outline of the key areas to consider when you’re in the market for a used concrete plant. 1. Planning Add Up Budget Items Know your limits by budgeting before you get too far down the road. Don’t break the bank. Many buyers of used equipment should look at both new and used concrete batch plants to see what makes the most sense financially. Hidden costs can quickly escalate the price of a used plant making it difficult to justify over a new plant at times. – Purchase price – Zoning, Permitting – …
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As all of us know, the ability to use process water at a concrete plant is looked upon differently by state DOT’s. As an example, California’s DOT (Caltrans) allows the use of process water up to a specific gravity of 1.04 in some state mix designs while my home State Pennsylvania, along with several other states, bans its use entirely. Picture courtesy of WADOT via Flicker The USEPA has laws that prohibit the discharge of concrete wash out water into our waterways without proper treatment and for good reason. On the other hand, a majority of states won’t allow its use. So, you can’t discharge untreated process water AND you cannot use it in state work. It can be very frustrating to concrete producers whose…
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