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1775
Old 6 Road, PO Box 535, Brooklyn, IA 52211-0535 USA |
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Wet
Spring, Late Start, |
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Ok, I know I sounded a bit negative in my last news
article for the Mirror. We
had a terrible start this spring due to wet spring, cheap work,
and little work. Sorry! Wrong message.
Things are coming back, but we won’t keep up with
previous years. I
know it would be difficult to talk to ANY of our managers or
superintendents right now and convince them that we are short of
work anywhere!
The sealcoat crew, Newton Commercial Asphalt, and all of
our concrete paving crews are up to six days a week.
This is the time to get the work done.
We can’t do much after November 1st when the
snow starts to fly!
The ready mix plants and quarries are now selling at last
year’s pace, which is great, however, we will not catch up to
what we did the last two years due to the late start.
At any rate, I just want you all to know that I feel
better about the year now that the dump trucks are out of the
yard and staying busy.
This past spring has been somewhat interesting for us as
owners as well. We
have had the opportunity to look into the possibility of
purchasing several different ready mix companies and
construction companies. I
know most of you have heard the rumors.
Bob Harner, the owner of Des Moines Asphalt Company,
decided to sell his company.
We had hoped to purchase this company one day and be in
the asphalt business in Des Moines.
It would be a great fit for us.
We got to the point rather quickly where we were told
verbally that we would be the buyer. Next thing we knew, an Irish Company (CRH) came out of
nowhere to offer 15% more for his company.
We felt it to be rather chancy to up our offer so we
dropped out of the picture.
We were very disappointed by this development, but feel
maybe it wasn’t meant to be.
Basically,
the same thing happened to us in Sioux City recently as we tried
to acquire a rather large ready mix concrete supplier from a
retiring owner.
The owner verbally told us that we had a deal only to
have a minority owner come in and up the bid after ours was
accepted. Doesn’t
seem fair sometimes, but I guess that’s how life is.
We’ll get along fine without these companies, but we
sure hate losing them after we thought we had them purchased.
As always, we will continue to look into opportunities to
expand through acquisition.
We feel it is a positive approach to growth and an
opportunity to strengthen our present markets. Finally, I would like to acknowledge that
we received notice from Ginny Olson that she is leaving the area
and leaving us. I will miss her, not only for her great
programming skills, but also for some of the fun atmosphere she
helped create in the office.
I hope someone steps forward in the future to help with
the Halloween decorations and the Christmas decorations that she
has been so active with for the many years she has been here.
I wish her the very best in all her future endeavors.
Thank you very much, Ginny, for helping us become a
leader in the technology field! We’ll
all miss you!
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