The Power of Brand Loyalty

Starting a business in the concrete industry can be a challenging venture, but one that the team at CORE Ready Mix took on with gusto in 2015.  

“When we started, we knew the market was starting to pick up,” Jon Deering, General Manager at CORE says. “We started with one plant, a LO-PRO 12, and never looked back. As our biggest customer grew, we needed to grow right along with them and wanted to make sure our equipment could keep up.”

Today, the company has expanded and now owns a total of five plants, 72 ready mix trucks, 118 employees and serves mostly residential construction in the Phoenix Valley area. When CORE was looking to expand their locations and markets, they made a conscious decision to standardize all of their plant facilities moving forward, and chose CON-E-CO as their partner. 

Strength in Standardization 

Brand loyalty in the construction industry only goes so far however. Contractors need to know they can rely on the equipment and the service they will receive well after the purchase has been made. CORE knew exactly what they were doing when they chose to only purchase CON-E-CO branded plants because they knew they’d have a great partner to help along the way.

“I had experience working with CON-E-CO plants in the past and knew that was the standard we needed at CORE,” Deering says. “I've always known the quality of the plants and they are the market leader, in my opinion, on everything all together.”

With eight years of significant growth, CORE has added three more LO-PRO 12 plants and one CON-E-CO Decumlative - which could be a lot to manage without the proper support. From machine reliability, all the way up to the expertise of CON-E-CO’s staff, the team at CORE has been pleased with the entire process and they know they benefit from having all CON-E-CO plants in many ways. 

“Knowing this equipment inside and out really allows us to dial in each plant better,” Deering says. “The batching software can only go so far and you still need to be able to mechanically adjust things. If we have one batch operator that finds out a trick per se that gets the plant operating better, that benefits all our locations. Our team is able to communicate exactly how to do that with one another and that’s a huge deal. 

The standardization also helps with staffing issues with each plant being the same, and helps keep downtime to a minimum with spare parts on hand that can be used at each location. 

“The inner workings of the plant are all the same, we use the same batching software on them all and that makes it very easy for me to send one individual from plant to plant,” Deering says. “It also gives us the ability to keep less spare parts on hand, which is another big thing since all the plants are the same. I don't have to have a valve at each plant as a back up, I can have one valve for all five plants in case something would go wrong and that helps a lot as well.” 

Deering also knows that CON-E-CO’s maintenance program is a big key to their success. 

“We definitely follow Astec’s recommended maintenance program and I completely agree with them on their intervals,” Deering said. “That's a big one for me. The CON-E-CO team is very good about telling you what to maintain, when to maintain it, how to maintain it, and that works. That works 100%.”

Scale Up & Stand Out

As the company grew, their needs for each new plant changed. The modules that CON-E-CO offers on their plants helped them to scale each location as needed. 

“On our first plant, we put one of the biggest silos we could put on it,” Deering said. “On the second plant, we bought much smaller silos so when we bought our third plant, we were able to take the silos from the second plant, move those to the third plant and put bigger silos on the second plant.  We've continued to do that depending on the area.

“If we know it’s going to be super busy from the jump, we may just purchase the larger silos right away,” Deering continues. “The ability to almost have Legos to add things to each location, move them and take them off has been a huge help.”

With CON-E-CO now under the Astec umbrella, Deering says he has seen upgrades to the equipment and his team has been pleased with the changes.

“My electrician mentioned that there's been some upgrades on the electrical side and the electrical boxes,” Deering said. “They have been very happy with that and the dust collection system upgrades have been a huge plus.” 

With CORE working to stand out in a competitive market, they have also found the team at CON-E-CO to be extremely accommodating with the overall aesthetic the company wants to achieve. 

“We’re very particular about our paint,” Deering laughs. “We have a whole paint scheme on each of our plants and CON-E-CO has done a great job of making that paint scheme work. We design each plant with our dealer, DHE, and we stand out because of it which is huge for us.” 

At the end of the day, it’s the support that keeps people coming back and Deering says Astec has worked hard to find the right people to represent their product. 

“The team at DHE have been great to work with,” Deering says. “I like that you not only get the relationship with CON-E-CO but also the vendor. Astec has done a great job finding the right people.”

 All of this is what keeps CORE coming back. 

“I've been around many other plants and again, CON-E-CO is the top of the line and why we rely on them every day,” Deering concludes.