Women in Concrete

I'm talking women in the business of concrete, not women actually in concrete, that would be injurious to their health (for those who don't know; concrete mix burns and can kill you if you get too much of it on your skin). There are many good women in concrete, one I recently read about owns Tec-Crete Transit-Mix Corp of Queens, New York, NY.

http://teccretenyc.com/pages/about-us/

Founded in 1998, owner Ms Linda Gisonda won a Women Business Enterprise (WBE) award in 2013. Yay. 

Tec-Crete have a total of 4 dry batch plants across two locations. As their name suggests, this will be an operation where the ingredients for the concrete are discharged into the truck, water is then added to the agitator on the back of the truck and the mix is completed while the truck drives to the site (alternatively, a dry batch may make its way to the job site with water and the mix completed at the destination). What dry batching allows for is longer delivery distances, however that generally comes at the expense of payload, as a heavier truck is required to do the mixing.

Another way of doing things, very popular this, is to completely mix at the plant, the mix is then discharged into the agitator on the back of the truck. This type of plant is called central mix. The advantage of this is fast batching, and the mix can be discharged into anything, even a dump truck. Another advantage is smaller trucks fitted with lighter agitators can be used to deliver the same or greater payload, however they can only do so over a much shorter distance compared to transit mix. 

So there we have the age-old quandary, tyranny of distance vs capital cost vs operating costs. Which is better? My father always preferred central mix and spoke of its advantages often. Transit mix certainly comes into its own if distance is a factor (or waiting times before discharging loads), which is often the case in Australia for instance.

Like this:

Distance or waiting times, lower cost of batching plant, heavier trucks required (less payload), higher cost of running trucks = Transit Mix.

Short distance or waiting times, higher cost of batching plant, lighter trucks (more payload), lower cost of running trucks - Central Mix.