Dan Z. of Beatrice Ready Mixed competed in the 2018 NRMCA National Mixer Driver Championship at Gaylord National Resort near metro Washington, DC. After winning the Nebraska mixer driver championship, he was able to advance to the nationals and competed against a field of 87 drivers from across the United States.

The drivers took a written exam, did a walk around visual vehicle inspection, and a driving skills test. Some of the challenges in the test included a tennis ball drive-through challenge, parallel park challenge, on target challenge, scale box challenge and backing stop challenge. They also had a chute a hoop challenge, shooting a basketball into the chute to make a point. A break an egg challenge, swinging the chute over an egg and getting as close as possible without breaking it. A bowling challenge, where a bowling ball is attached to the final chute of a mixer truck, while the truck drives backwards and tries to knock down the pins in one pass. Reaction time was also tested with a computer program that records how quickly a driver reacts to the changes on a screen.

Dan finished outside the top 5 but had an great experience. Dan won the 2018 championship for Nebraska in June.

Lincoln Electric System is nearing completion of Phase 1 on their new Operations Center located on 117 acres in Southeast Lincoln. Beatrice Concrete has supplied over 20,000 cubic yards of concrete for the first phase of the project which included the new operations building, fleet building and new DEC thermal building that will handle all of the heating, cooling and water for the campus. Nearly 5,000 yards of concrete has been used for footings, 10,000 yards for paving, and 7,000 yards was used for interior finished floors.

The new LES Operations Center also created other projects near the area including sub stations and power poles, which called for 2,000 yards of concrete. Lincoln Ready Mixed also supplied 3,000 yards of concrete paving for Rokeby road adjacent to the site.

Beatrice Concrete recently hosted a brisket and brat barbeque at the LES facility for 100 employees and construction workers involved with the project. Phase 2 of the project begins in October and will include LES office buildings. The project began in June of 2017 and Hausmann Construction is the General Contractor for the project. The LES project is the largest single project ever supplied by Beatrice Concrete.

Overland Ready Mixed is moving it’s Geneva plant operations to Strang, NE. The new plant is erected, floors have been poured and the walls for the office are currently being framed. The next phase of the project is to erect the building around the plant.

Plans call for the project to be completed by November 30 and the plant should be operational by January 1, 2019. The Strang plant will feature a new dry batch plant that can handle 200 yards per hour. The Geneva 1995 Con-E-Co LoPro Plant will be refurbished and moved to Silver Creek to replace a 1976 manual batch plant.

The new plant used 1,500 tons of recycled crushed concrete for the base. The concrete was crushed by Constructors. Ayars & Ayars is the general contractor for the project.