A Salute to a Linder Customer
Blue Dot Readi-Mix LLC aggressively pursues cost efficiencies to grow its share of Charlotte’s concrete distribution market
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Brothers and business partners Scott and Tony Griffin and their childhood friend Paul Cochrane founded Blue Dot Readi-Mix LLC in November 2004. Today, Blue Dot Readi-Mix operates eight state-of-the-art plants and facilities throughout the Charlotte Metropolitan Area, delivering high-quality products in an unlimited spectrum of mixes to local commercial and residential suppliers. “Our owners have operated multiple sister companies throughout Charlotte since the ‘90s,” explained Asset Manager Jason Spangler. “Originally, Blue Dot Readi-Mix was created to fulfill their own concrete distribution needs for their masonry business. As savvy business owners continually looking for growth opportunities, they began expanding the operation.” Spangler continued, “I was hired in 2020 to figure out the total cost of ownership of Blue Dot Readi-Mix’s assets. My background was retail inventory management for the previous 15 years, which allowed me to bring a new approach to the position. One of my main focuses is communicating with the owners when they should add or sell.”
Spangler doesn’t undersell the complexity of the position.
“Their company was successful, but they had multiple people wearing multiple hats all managing the fleet, which created communication and asset tracking gaps,” he stated. “They brought me on board to bring it under one roof.”
Spangler continued, “The first thing I tackled was rebuilding our inventory and maintenance management software from scratch. That lead to capturing all of the costs associated with our assets, which include multiple facility and service trucks, 124 concrete mixers, and 12 wheel loaders.”
Finding efficiencies
Spangler explains why asset management of its wheel loaders is an essential function for Blue Dot Readi-Mix.
“We’re a completely loader field operation,” stated Spangler. “That means we rely on wheel loaders to load all our aggregate and sand into our batch houses to produce the concrete. If one of our wheel loaders goes down, it completely stops our operation.”
An operator carries sand with a Komatsu WA270-8 wheel loader at one of Blue Dot Readi-Mix’s concrete plants.
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