Before ‘American manufacturing’ came with a charging cable. | Albert Kahn Associates 1924. What happens when America puts up a wall around its economy? We actually ran something close to that experiment for several decades. Beginning in the late …

Nothing to worry about. The backlog is full. | Credit: Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago You’re a Concrete Contractor in 1925. Business Has Never Been Better. It is 1925. You own a concrete construction company in an Amer…

Just another quiet little infrastructure project. | Library of Congress What happens when America decides it needs an entirely new kind of infrastructure? At first, the answer is pretty simple. Build it. Build it fast. Figure out the problems l…

All the testing said it was good concrete... It is 2 a.m. You have 40,000 square feet of slab to place today. The pump is set up. The finishers are there. Trucks are starting to roll. The superintendent wants the slab down before the heat gets…

Just another small concrete job. | Wyomingnews.com Data centers are consuming a lot of concrete. That probably isn't news to anyone working in construction right now. But here's the question I think is more interesting: What happens to the concr…

The concrete industry's daily lab. | Concrete Logic original. The federal government has a new plan to speed up innovation in cement and concrete. On July 29, Oak Ridge National Laboratory announced the launch of the Center of Excellence for Advan…

We warned about water stress in 2024. It has hit home. | AI generated. "Data centers use millions of gallons of water every day." You've probably heard that statement before. Maybe you've even repeated it. But let's stop for a second. What is a…

Canadian cement, eh? What’s the tariff all aboot? | cslships.com Who pays a 50% tariff on Canadian cement? Here is a hint. It is not Canada. President Trump announced a 50% tariff on selected Canadian goods, including cement, scheduled to take e…

The concrete will never freeze. But don’t worry, we tested the air anyway. Let me ask you a simple question. If the concrete is not exposed to freezing and thawing, why are we putting air in it? That question came up during my conversation with D…

The pour started on schedule. The concrete had other plans. The truck shows up. The slump looks fine. The crew starts placing. Then everything speeds up. The concrete stiffens in the chute. The pump operator starts fighting it. The finishers l…

Cloud Computing, 1946 Style | Credit: U.S. Army photo, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. I got the idea for this blog post from the No Agenda podcast, which I donate to every month. Hint, hint. Now would be a great time to stop reading and do…

You work hard. The concrete business is not easy. Early mornings. Long days. Weather problems. Schedule pressure. Phone calls after hours. Plenty of stress. Still, every paycheck, you do the responsible thing. You put money into your 401(k). …

RGGI headquarters in NY | Wikipedia In a recent post, I wrote about 10 Reasons Virginia Power Bills Are Going Up, and Data Centers Are Just One. The point was simple. Data centers are part of the story. They are not the whole story. Virginia’s …

What was in this mix?  Type I/II cement is making a comeback. At least that is what the market is asking for. Contractors want it. Ready-mix producers want it. Owners want concrete to act like concrete again. After years of frustration with…

The energy didn't disappear. It moved. | OpenAI If you listened to EP #159, you heard the news: a large swath of cement manufacturers including ones in are making Type I/II cement available again. The market spoke. Contractors complained. Ready-…

I was driving home from work the other day and was almost to the entrance of my neighborhood. The right lane was coned off, and there were four or five Dominion trucks lined up. Crews were setting new power poles. Nothing dramatic. No press con…

Close your eyes and swing? | OpenAI “Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.” — Warren Spahn Trying to figure out where the concrete market is headed feels a little like standing in the batter’s box. You do not know what pitch is comi…

Fortera ReCarb Plant | forteraglobal.com “What we see depends mainly on what we look for.” – John Lubbock  The concrete industry has heard enough slogans. Low-carbon cement. Green concrete. Carbon capture. Sustainable binders. Better ch…

Protect those margins...oh, we meant jobs. | OpenAI “Liars are not believed even when they speak the truth.” - Aesop Rebar is one of those things people love to ignore until it becomes a problem. Then it becomes everyone’s problem. It hits t…

No end in sight. | OpenAI The latest earnings reports from Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet were released on April 29, 2026, and they tell a pretty simple story for the concrete industry. The AI data center buildout is not slowing down yet. Wal…

Imagine building this without concrete. | Getty Images "Those who talk should do and only those who do should talk."  - Nassim Nicholas Taleb Data center owners have a concrete problem. Most of them just do not see it yet. Concrete is no…

What a load of GOB | Credit Cardinal News "The economy is a derivative of energy." - Doomberg I am part of the 7x24 Central Virginia Exchange Education Committee. It's a committee that is part of 7x24, a networking group for the data cente…

“The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.” – Adam Smith If you’re in the construction industry, you’re buying cement. Maybe you buy it directly. …

"Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire. Likewise with randomness, uncertainty, chaos: you want to use them, not hide from them." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb If you live in the U.S., Australia looks like the place that should have this f…