The production of concrete and aggregate may seem like a simple process. You get the raw materials, weigh them, and mix, right? True on a basic level, but in reality, there is much, much more.
Producing concrete takes many steps; multiple tests for quality control, the maintenance of heavy equipment to ensure accurate results, multiple job sites to obtain the material, and of course, hundreds of people that work hard every day to make it all happen in a timely, accurate, and smooth manner. Pouring concrete takes a community, and at Duke City Redi-Mix we are so grateful for the community of workers that wake up every day ready to serve their hometown and beyond. It’s a process, and we love every second of it.
Here’s the breakdown:
1. An office team, led by the dynamic father-son Shiver duo, is in contact with clients, projects, engineers, technicians, the city, permitting authorities, and anyone else needed to prepare for a concrete pour or aggregate delivery. They schedule pour days, employee hours, plan ahead for weather, and even have an operation to observe drivers and their place in the process. On any given day this team is in contact with drivers, customers, vendors and many other people over 400 times per day. Wow, now that’s an operation!
2. Next, a team is set up on over 300 acres of land in Los Lunas, New Mexico. This team is in charge of mining and screening sand to take to one of the 3 concrete plants located in New Mexico. This team bears the cold and the heat on a daily basis as they load sand into a screen, operate the machinery, and then load the sifted sand into a truck to head to a concrete plant after being weighed at a weigh station on the property.
3. Finally, the driver of the sand truck drives to a concrete plant where the next team is prepped and ready to take over. Here is the process:
The end dump truck is driven to one of the concrete plants.
The sand driver dumps his load.
A quality controller pulls samples from the sand pile to test in order to ensure all aspects are in specification with engineering requirements.
A loader then pulls sand and pours it onto a belt, which is then dumped into a hopper (along with gravel).
A batch plant operator within the Duke City Redi-Mix building operates computers that creates the needed weights of the aggregate as required by the projects.
The measured mix is dropped into a mixer truck.
A mixer truck driver ensures the truck has thoroughly mixed the concrete and then transports his load to his scheduled job site.
The mixer driver observes the mix as one final check and pours the load at the direction of the customer.
Concrete is a much larger process than most people will ever know - and that's not even all of it! There’s additional steps and work that require even more involvement than expressed in this breakdown. Duke City Redi-Mix is proud to have a team in which every single job within the production is of high importance and requires precision, quality and dedication. Thank you to a wonderful team that shows up every day to serve our family and friends, and help build the places we know so well. We are thankful for a wonderful community.