Latest / The Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast / 017 - Bobby Dowdy
Transcript
- Dowdy - 101726: Welcome in to the Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast. On our way to being the world's number one concrete podcast, if you're gonna be number one, you gotta have Bobby Dowdy on your show coming in from MMC Materials. Bobby, thanks so much for being here, brother. Appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, it's funny, you walk around the show, sometimes when you're in these things, you meet people that everybody knows. You're one of those guys. What's it like walking around being the most popular person at a convention? I'm not definitely not the most popular. I don't know. It's it's real needed. shows as long as I've been coming, you see the same people. Sometimes you don't see them but once or twice a year, so it's it's really nice to be able to reconnect each time. It is nice. You're down in Mississippi though. Yep. Has the fall weather started to break yet or still today. today. Or yesterday. So finally we're st we'll be back up in the 80s next week. You know. But it's a it's better than the 95 to 100 we've had for four months. Yeah no it's been over 95 degrees into October. yeah. Record heat a couple of days ago, coal front comes in. So hopefully. We're we're recording this. We are live at Concrete Works here. it is Saturday, right in the middle of the third Saturday in October football game. Eight minutes to go in the fourth quarter. Mamas losing. I I'm not looking good for the old old tide. It's not looking good. I don't even know why I'm doing a podcast right now. We should be in front of the TV. That's exactly right. I'm just glad Joey Bale's not here. Yeah. and Lee Thrasher's not here either. that's right. So I'm not having to deal with any either one of them. my buddy Matt Wilbanks, I'm not having to deal with him either. Thank goodness. They're all they're they're all somewhere else. Because I'd made a bad comment earlier about Joey. I said, too bad he's not gonna be here because Alabama's gonna take care of business, but it's not looking like that now. It's not looking, I'm just straight. I'm just straight. So I I need to I need the audience to understand that I'm playing hurt, emotionally hurt right That's exactly right. That's right. So what what's the number one thing right now that is most exciting in your life? I know you had an exciting meeting yesterday. It's actually the third the th this will be the third podcast we've talked about RES, but you're the chair of RES now. Yeah, yeah. Thanks to Justin Lazmi, he he left it in my uncapable hands, but we're you know. well the worst part is now he's in the audience and he feels great. That's right, heck with me. You know, I tried to give him a job yesterday, but know, toting the mic around, but we didn't have a lot of questions that he had to do that far. But no, yesterday we had a good meeting, it's a marathon. Anytime we we have the RES committee, a lot of topics to cover. But the the the big discussion was somebody brought up blended cements and that's always, you know, it it stirs the pipe for a lot of people. Now every you know we're hearing that a lot of cement companies are going back to the one two. I was talking to the heads the president of one of these big cement companies, one of the largest, and he said they're going back to type one too, and I I asked why. this is privately asked why and I loved his response was that's what my customers want. That's right. And I I said, you know what, that's the that's the perfect North Star in my opinion, if you're gonna run a business, especially in the concrete world. Your North Star should be what is my customer what they Give the customer what they want. They said they're tired of one. It's all right Well, I'll go back to making the other thing. That's right. I mean, why not? Because obviously, you know, I made the statement in the meeting yesterday, it's almost like, you know, some of the producers, cement producers, had been producing one L for a while. but some of them it's like they made one, two on Friday and come in on Monday and started making one L. That may not be that may be an exaggeration, but it's not far off, you know, for some of them. Yeah, so So how, you know, and it was rolled out to the concrete industry. You know, we've made it through, we've had some hiccups with it, but there's a lot of people had a lot more problems with it. especially up north, there's a lot of scaling issues that we don't have to deal with down here. Yeah, you're in Missouri. We probably should have told people. Yeah. I'm a I imagine that fifty percent of the people listening to this already know who you are. We're in we're in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, and some in Louisiana. So yeah, so the scaling's not quite an issue with the pre freestall isn't really a thing down down south. But the the one else meant you still went through that transition though, right? Yeah, yeah. And you know, we were told just, you know, and even the some of the DOTs allowed us to just change our mixes over early on because we ha it was such a quick transition, you didn't have time to and and for the most part We haven't had any, like, it hadn't been a big strength issue. It's been more of like the scaling issues up north, cracking issues, and it just and I mentioned it I think on the last podcast when I was on, it's like it's more susceptible to the ambient conditions than the one two. Somebody said yesterday one two was more forgiving in the meeting. And I thought about it's kind of like a professional golfer can hit any kind of clubs. He's gonna play with them. most elite but a golfer that's not some of the best they want those forgiving irons. They can't hit you know blades. They're harder to hit. Yeah. One at one two cement's more forgiving to make for a finisher. You know, if if it's more forgiving, it's easier to get a better finished product than a the one L might be. That's fascinating. These RES committee meetings, I heard they could be three, four hours when you guys you guys are going going deep in there. We we started at at eight and finished at eleven two. So as chair, you stopped it right after that. Well, we we were wrapping it up, but yeah, it's it's it's a marathon for sure. That's great. Well they got you for another two years on on that committee. That is correct, yeah. So that'd be it that'd be a lot of fun. I'm I'm curious so like when in twenty twenty two it felt like everybody switched all at the same time to the type one L. And I was talking to one of the cement producers back then and was like why why why did you why'd you switch? Why can't you give some people one L and some people one? And they said, you know, you can't just turn these cement plants on and off. You can't just turn the kiln off, clean it out, and decide. To start making a different product. Right. And people at the time were asking for 1L. And we thought we were going to this huge low carbon world in all of our products, not just select products. Correct. And they said, well, we had to make a decision. It was either one or the other. You can't make both out of the plant. And at the time, everybody decided one L was the thing. And it just feels like it does feel like the contractors, most of all, just weren't involved in the transition. Correct. You know, I I think that everything everybody keeps talking about, you know, they weren't educated and all that, but the industry should have done a little bit better job you know, rolling out this isn't a just a one to one change, everything's good. There's things, water demand issues, being more susceptible to ambient conditions, needing more evaporation retarders. we never carried re evaporation retarders before. We carry now and you know some of our projects. But d but do we did we actually know that that was gonna happen? I I didn't think so because I sat in on some of those presentations where honest people From the cement side, good people did a lot of work, and they're like, hey, it's one to one. But they were talking to ReadyMix producers saying if you're using 564 pounds of type one, too, you just use 564 pounds of type one out and you're good to go. And that next step of who's the ready mix producer's customer, it was like we didn't take that next step and say, Hey, let me know if you see anything different here, and we can work through it. We're sending you a new mix. And I think that it my opinion, that was where the breakdown was, and I was happy to hear that part of y'all's discussion in RES was, let's not make that mistake again. That's right. Well, it it got brought up when Slag came out a long time ago. Or fly ashes came out a long time ago. They just rolled it out and it wasn't a addressed and all the good things that they said would happen, it really didn't happen like using forty percent slag when it's forty degrees outside just doesn't work. No, you gotta hit it. Yeah, you gotta know what you're doing with it. Slag makes great concrete. It makes great concrete. But you gotta prepare for it and know and when they roll something like that out, nobody's prepared for it. I think we're a lot better now than we were. But everything gets blamed on one L cement now. So I don't know what when they go back to one-two, what are the finishers gonna blame it on? I don't know, but I know you're gonna be there taking the brunt of it. I I I feel good that you're there leading that chart. I think we're in good hands with you and the other people that are that I know care. Right. They're and gonna be able to spearhead us into into the future with this. So thank you. You know, we'll s we're gonna make it work no matter where it goes. That that's exactly right. Guys, this is why you come to Slump Monkeys and get people like Bobby Dowdy in here to bring that knowledge that you can see that this industry cares, that if we didn't roll it out right the first time, we're gonna roll it out right. It doesn't mean that anybody did anything wrong or nefarious. It's like what's the best practice? That's right. We just learn more. We just learn we just learn more. So appreciate that. Bobby coming in from MMC Materials. If you see Bobby out and about, connect with him. His Ready Grout product is absolutely incredible. Non-shrink Grout, if you need it, he's got it. He's the man. Anything else you want to tell the before we get out of I just appreciate the opportunity. You're the man. Thank you everybody. We're out of here. Thank you.