EP #159: Low-Carbon Concrete? Kiss My Grits. Type I/II Is Back!

Rich (00:00)
yeah.

Seth (00:01)
And welcome to another episode of the Concrete Logic Podcast. today I have Rich. Rich, I still feel like I say your last name wrong. How do you say your name?

Rich (00:12)
It's pronounced say-chee. Yes.

Seth (00:14)
Say Chi with Big Town

Concrete. And Rich, how many yards of concrete do you oversee down there in Dallas, Fort Worth area?

Rich (00:24)
Dallas Fort Worth area can do anywhere between about 16 to 17 million cubic yards a year in the market itself and we're just a small privately held that you know we'll do anywhere between six to seven fifty depending on the year and landing some portables.

Seth (00:39)
Okay. That's a lot of concrete. That's a lot of concrete. That's why he's on the show

today. And he's also shared with me, he's on the, he's spoken for almost two and a half decades at the World of Concrete. And now he's on the selection committee, gets to pick the folks that get to talk over there. So man, big time guy here on the podcast today. And what we're going to talk about today.

Rich (00:58)
you

Seth (01:02)
is guess what? We're going back to type one to cement and you're hearing it here first. So, yeah. Type one. I'll see you there back type one too. And, and, the podcast end of episode. That's it. Well, before we, but yeah, hold on before we get into that though, rich, I just want to remind everybody how you can support the show real quick.

Rich (01:12)
Yeah. So, first is always. Yeah.

Seth (01:26)
First thing you can do is if you enjoy the show and you learn something from it, please share it. Share it with a coworker, colleague, somebody in the industry. Get the word out there. There's a lot of folks listening. I hear, I run into people all the time. They say, you're the podcast guy. I am not the podcast guy. But I do appreciate you guys listening to the show. Please, please share it. Next thing you can do is if you go to the,

the homepage for the podcast. It's at ConcreteLogicPodcast.com. There's a couple ways you can get a hold of me. Up at the top, there's a now a menu selection. It says Ask Seth. You click on that. It shoots an email form up. And what I'm looking for is guest or topic suggestions. And folks are using that. I appreciate that.

If you, if you don't want the email form and you just want to leave me a voicemail on the same homepage, you can click on the little microphone icon and you can leave me a voicemail. Same thing. Give me topic, guest suggestions, what you want to learn about, who you want to hear from. It's a fantastic, when I hear from you all. the last way is, on the same homepage, there's a big blue donation button, click on that. And the way that works is, put out the podcast.

And if you get any kind of value out of the podcast, all we ask is you send some value back and that can be any amount. It might be a dollar to you, $5, $50, $500 bucks, whatever. That's for you to determine. So you click on that and let you put whatever amount and that supports the show. And then you can always, if you're looking for like lunch and learns or something more, I guess, more in a academic form.

We have the same topics on the Concrete Logic Academy. You can check that out as well. So ConcreteLogicAcademy.com. Or if that's too much for you to type in, we also bought the domain ConcreteSchool.co. So that ConcreteSchool.co, click on that, goes the same place. With that, Rich, let's talk about it. So we're going back to type one too. So all of our problems are solved. ⁓

Rich (03:34)
Yeah.

So a couple of things first is, Seth, always thanks for having me on. I think you're doing yourself a disservice just calling yourself the podcast guy. It's very clear from the feedback I always get is that you're the number one podcast for our industry. And so thanks again for taking that leadership role and talking about things that people either want to talk about or to, you know, you with some bold leadership have said we're going to talk about it. So I appreciate that.

always an honor to be on your podcast. So thanks, Seth. So yeah, interesting thing happening in the market right now. And I think, you know, this is not, I don't want to talk about 1L from a standpoint of it does or doesn't perform. I'll get to some issues there in a second. I think what's happening is as a concrete producer who sells concrete to contractors, I have an availability of material.

Seth (04:01)
Thank you.

Rich (04:24)
that I'm allowed to choose and use per specifications and contract documents. Going all the way back to 2020, all of a sudden 1L became available. And then 1-2 became less available, which meant 1L was more available.

Some people will tell you that, all of a sudden the market got flooded and manufacturing decisions were made for a variety of reasons. It doesn't matter. We just had an abundance of 1L and less of 1-2 unless you were importing or that was your only manufacturer in their decision. My point to that is many of those manufacturers who are making 1L cement, were making 1-2, then made 1L, are now migrating back to 1-2 in a very rapid and quick way.

There are letters out to customers that say this when these products are available. Many of them have pre-qualified their one two with DOTs for use. So this is not a snap decision that was made last week. There's been some strategy there and in the marketplace we're already starting to see those one twos now become more available. So that's happening now.

Here's the interesting part, Seth, and I'm gonna go give a little history lesson here. In 2020, 2021, 2022, I produced about two and a half million yards of concrete in the largest concrete market in the country. For...

that time period, I had a 100 % placement rate, 100%. I didn't have a load of concrete rejected for that time period. And you're thinking that's impossible. Nobody is has a record that good in rich. know you as a concrete producer. You're not that good, Seth. I'm not. I'm telling you that.

But what happened was the market for every load of concrete that went out there that you didn't accept for air, slump, time, temperature, whatever reason, there were two things that were absolutely true. One, there was not a backup load of concrete coming behind that.

And for every load of concrete you wouldn't accept there were 10 other people who were willing to buy it and the condition it was, where it was, for whatever use they needed. And yes, those are both true statements. Because the market demand was so high and there was a supply shortage on several of the raw materials, it didn't matter. They took the concrete. And then about, you know, after that around 2023,

some of those limitations sorted themselves out and all of a sudden people were like, hey the slump is half an inch out of spec, we got to reject this truck. So that happened. The same thing is going to be true here. For the last several years when it came to 1L cement,

there were conversations being held about water demand, cracking, scaling, low strength, retardation on set time, all of these things that were put into the bucket of 1L cement. If we had just been on 1-2 cement, none of this would have happened. Okay. Let's give you that and say, great, now we're going back to 1-2 cement.

So just like 2020, 2021, and 2022, I should have about a two year time period when I produce concrete and sell it to you Seth as a contractor.

And I shouldn't have a single complaint about cracking, low strength, retardation of set time, water demand issues, none of that because I took out the alleged offending material that caused all of that harm, all of those problems, and I've replaced it with the product that shouldn't have caused any of that. I'm going to be fascinated to watch how the next two years happen.

when we go back and some of the bigger markets migrate back into one to cement because you can't use any of those complaints because all of those complaints were blamed on a particular type of cement. And when we change that type of cement back to the one that you claim never had those issues been doing this 30 years Seth they had issues but the claim was we've never seen cracking like this we've never seen retardation low strength gain scaling.

I'm not sure how you explain that. Or imagine you're a large contractor that said, we're only going to do projects with one to cement. We won't quote that. imagine you're a state DOT who says we won't use one else cements on any of our pavements or bridge decks because they cause scaling or damage. Okay, we're going to give you what you wish for. So when you have scaling or damage occur on those bridge decks,

Seth (08:23)
Yeah.

Rich (08:47)
It can't be the result of one, two cement. So it's an interesting it's an interesting paradigm and logical doom loop that people are going to put themselves in. And I don't know how to I don't know how to solve it. I just know that it's coming.

Seth (08:51)
Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's going to be people that said, you know, we adjusted to type one out. Now we're going back to type one too. So now we got to, you know, change how we're doing things. Cause I, you know, I've, I've seen people post on LinkedIn that say, you know, they, you know, Hey contractor, you just don't get it. You just need to change your methods and adjust to the material. that's why you're screwing up. so the, guess those people that those contractors, like you said, are pushing back and saying, Hey,

We're doing it like we've been doing it and the materials screwing it up now those people won't shouldn't have any problems, right? Cause they can go back or keep doing the way they've been doing it. But then on the, on the, on the flip side, can kind of, I can, you know, I work for a contractor. So, you know, I have my, my, my biased, but you know, it kind of feels like that you're getting,

Rich (09:33)
There you go.

Sure.

Seth (09:55)
I feel like we're in a washing machine here. We're getting slopped around here. It's like one minute you're doing this with type 1L and we're all in on type 1L. Now we're going back to type 1-2. So you're going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And that doesn't help the industry either.

Rich (10:07)
Yep.

Yeah, but Seth, here's my thing is, you you use two phrases in there that I think are important. One, you said you're a contractor. So you recognize who you are at the micro level and what you have to do every day for a living. The second thing you said was it doesn't help the industry. So that's macro. At the end of the day, as much as I love the industry, I love to support, I love to help, and I love to educate. I still have to run my business and so do you.

And if you and I figure out how to do deal with changing battlefield conditions, whether it's materials, weather, supply chain, labor, equipment, we do that. Some companies do it poorly. Others do it successfully. This is nothing new, Seth. It's just not. We've seen this. Do you remember things like, I don't know, when we went from natural sand to manufactured sand?

Seth (10:58)
Yeah.

Rich (10:59)
And people thought that that was the end of days and you can't produce FFFL numbers with manufactured sand. That's impossible. You can't do that. Do you remember when we went from, we went to the first generation of polycarboxylate admixtures and people said that's, you can't do that. We've got strength problems, set problems, cracking problems. We've seen this before. This is not a new challenge for us.

Seth (11:23)
All

right.

Rich (11:24)
It involves people doing their homework. Seth, every day I have variations in material out there at my plants. Every day. Clean aggregates, dirty aggregates, in spec, out of spec, pumps that have to get moved, and concrete has to sit for two hours. All of these things happen every day, and yet somehow we're still able to build things successfully.

This is not new for us. And so I'm always fascinated when somebody says, you know, hey, you know, we've never seen this before. Really? You've never seen a, you know, it's the Mike Tyson, right? Everybody has a great plan to get punched in face. Welcome to the ready mix industry. Welcome to concrete contracting.

It's fascinating to me to hear when people say, I've never had low breaks before. I've never had cracking before. I've never had a set time problems before. Okay, because I'll pull out the letters that we wrote 20 years ago. They used type one cements or that was another one. Seth, you remember when we used to have type ones and type twos?

Seth (12:18)
Right.

That was early in

career. wasn't even paying attention. just, yeah.

Rich (12:28)
And then we put type 1 slash 2 on the same milsert and the engineering and architecture community lost their mind. Well, I only want to type one. I didn't ask for a type two. It's the same cement, y'all. It's the same thing.

Seth (12:43)
Yeah, we're talking about all these switches and you mentioned this letter that's going out from the cement suppliers out there. What's the reason they're saying that they're switching back to type 1-2? What are they telling their customers?

Rich (12:46)
Yeah.

But they're not. just saying it's now available.

Seth (13:00)
Okay, so they're just responding

to the market because everyone's saying that's what they want.

Rich (13:05)
It could be a combination of those things, Seth. could be they're responding to their customers. The customer says, is the flavor of ice cream that I want. I want you to go back to making vanilla. I didn't like new Coke. I want you to make the standard Coke. Right. It could be because of production costs.

One L could be more expensive to produce because of higher grinding time or those kind of things. It could be a of both. It could be a combination of logistics of, we can't get the limestone finds anymore.

Seth (13:38)
I don't believe that. Do you believe that? They can't get life's no fines.

Rich (13:40)
⁓ No, but what

I'm saying is it doesn't matter what the rationale is. They're a company that sells a product just like I do or you do. You don't have to defend, nor do they have to defend, why they've made a change in what's available. And the marketplace will decide whether or not they want to buy it or they don't.

Seth (13:46)
Yeah.

Rich (14:00)
You know, imagine if somebody had decided, hey, we think it's in our best strategic and financial interest of our owners, investors, that we want to make a type 1L cement that's a 1L 25 tomorrow. OK. The market, what if the market says we love that flavor of ice cream? We're going to buy you out. They're going to go greatest decision ever.

What if the market says, we hate that flavor of ice cream. We're not buying a pound of it. And they don't sell a pound of it the next day. The market decides those things, and they don't have to defend their rationales to why they did or didn't do something. So I think any trying to second guess or read between the lines.

Go for it, you know, is my comment, but it doesn't make my decision any less, it doesn't affect my decision on how I sell biomaterial to sell concrete to you. It just doesn't. I'm still gonna make my decisions based on how I run my business with my customers.

Seth (14:50)
Right.

Right. Did you all go to Type 1L down in your market at all? Okay.

Rich (14:58)
Oh, yeah, in a huge way.

So we had that series of black swans occur down here in 2019 and 2020 that we swung the Dallas Fort Worth market swung from a one to to one L. So we were 95 percent one to to 90 percent one L inside of 18 months.

And that was with six different cement vendors available in the marketplace. The state of Texas. And again, somebody will probably dispute me on these statistics, and I'm just going for my gut right now. Probably went from. 95 % and 90 % one to. To 7570 to 80 % 1L inside of 24 months.

And the one two was the remaining one two was we had two cement mills in the state of Texas that continued to produce and the rest was imports. But the domestics were all one L and you're talking the largest, you know, the the market with more cement mills than any other state in the largest concrete producing market in the US.

Seth (16:08)
So

how are you going to operate your company with this switch? you going to have some plants with 1L, some plants with type 1-2?

Rich (16:17)
Yeah, yeah, we'll do that. And then the other thing, Seth, is going back to 2019, 2020, every one of our submittals on the cement side has said type, you know, ASTMC 595 type 1L or ASTMC 150 type 1-2. The submittals from a paperwork standpoint have said it could be either.

And in six years of doing that, do you know how many people have ever said, hey, this is a problem? Zero.

Seth (16:46)
Yeah.

Rich (16:47)
So my point is that it could be either in the submittal process, which is an entirely different kind of thing when it comes to the paperwork and the histories, which is a whole separate conversation. Super nerdy, but a powerful one. So no, I'm not bothered by it at all.

And I'll convert as the marketplace, you know, what's available. And then the other thing, Seth, is don't forget, I run a business economics control a lot of my decisions, too. ⁓ And the other one is I've been asked this question a couple of times, and I'm to make a pretty bold statement here when it comes to quality, because I think this is plays into this conversation. Hey, Rich, are you concerned about the quality of the project? Are you concerned about the quality of the

Seth (17:11)
Right. Yeah.

Rich (17:29)
the concrete and those kind of things? My answer is no. I'm not. You know what quality I'm concerned about Seth? I'm concerned about the quality you ask from me. That's it. You're the guy who buys concrete from me. You're the person whose quality level I care about.

I don't know what your arrangement is with who you sell your product to. I don't know what their arrangement is with who they sell that concrete to. I care about the quality you ask for and you specify to me because that customer purchaser and manufacturer relationship is the only one I care about. It's a strong statement. I get that. It's very bold, but it's also very true.

And so when you ask that question about what are you going to do in your markets and with your plants, I'm going to do what my customers ask of me.

And if you know and Seth you know this as a contractor hey rich I've got a spec that requires me to put in five pounds per yard of ground-up unicorn Can you source ground-up unicorn and put that into the concrete for me and can you quote that accordingly? You bet I can Seth Absolutely would love to to quote that for you You and I have seen this time and time again ⁓

Seth (18:29)
Mm-mm.

Yeah.

Rich (18:35)
Not hard to do. And then all of sudden I'm going to get you a quote for the thing you asked for. And you're like, hey, maybe we don't need the ground up unicorn this time. And let me speak to my customer about it. OK, you do that. Let me know what you want to do, Seth. But my point is to that is the purchaser and manufacturer relationship is at the heart of all of this.

That's where this really counts. And so when you say, what are you going to do in your markets? I'm going to do what my customers ask me to do, allow me to do, and the relationship allows me to do. And that's it. It's no more complicated than that. If you were operating in the market I was, Seth, you and I would have had this conversation three weeks ago about this shift going, hey, Seth, I don't think this is going to affect your projects at all. Here's the direction I'm going to go with the plants that are supplying

your projects and you're going to go great rich thanks by the way we got a project that starts at 2 a.m. tomorrow we good yeah Seth we're tell and tell me I'm wrong Seth tell me that's not that's the conversation that goes on ⁓ and I will tell you as somebody who's worked

Seth (19:29)
No, you're... Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Rich (19:41)
you know, with contractors and customers. When you just have a direct conversation, be amazed at what you're able to accomplish.

Seth (19:48)
Right. Not over email

or text message. Yeah.

Rich (19:51)
Right. And not with what somebody used Google for to, hey, I've looked this up and this is what I'm being told. mean, Seth, I'm going to deviate for two seconds. is nothing more interesting than watching somebody walk into a job site trailer meeting holding a piece of paper that says, I just used AI to tell me what's going to happen out here. Like,

You know, we have safe words when I go to these meetings with people that, know, that one of the safe words is raspberry. I'll share it with your audience here. A lot of people shouting that at me as I walk past them sometimes now is, you know, somebody will walk in with that AI research about one L or one two cement. said, see, this is no good. And and they could watch my body posture change and they'll stay under their breath. Raspberry, raspberry. Don't do it. Don't take the bait.

Seth (20:28)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Rage bait.

All right. Well, cool. I appreciate you sharing that. Yeah, like you said, it'll be interesting to pay everybody pay attention to this, you know, switch back to type one, two and see who's crying about that.

Rich (20:54)
Yeah,

it's not going to happen overnight, but it's going to happen quickly. And like I said, the market has already got information out there. Manufacturers are already speaking to their customers in a public way about it. And so.

In some markets it may change pretty quick and some it may migrate over time and some you may the market may change and somebody's gonna pop their head up and go well what about this change and somebody's gonna say what change well you know from one L to one two and they're like that happened six months ago. But my point is and I think your question to me is is this happening? Answer yes. ⁓

Seth (21:26)
Sorry.

Rich (21:27)
Yes, that's it.

Seth (21:28)
All right, Rich, I appreciate you coming on the show today.

Rich (21:31)
You bet Seth, love doing it.

Seth (21:33)
All right, folks, until next time, let's keep it concrete.