As The Drum Turns…

It’s no secret that the market has been volatile over the past year. In fact, it is also no secret that a lot of people with investments have been trying to figure out the best way to protect their savings.

One proven strategy to help achieve pong term retirement security is to give careful consideration to the benefits of a well balanced and diversified investment portfolio.

This simply means allocating your money among different types of investments to help achieve a favorable rate of return while minimizing your overall risk of losing money. This results from market or other economic conditions that cause one category of assets to perform well often can cause another asset category to perform poorly.

If you invest more than 20% of your retirement savings in any one company or industry your savings may not be properly diversified. While diversification is not a guarantee against loss, it is an effective strategy to help you manage investment risk.

No single approach is right for everyone because individuals have different financial goals, different time frames for meeting those goals and different tolerances for risk.

It is important to periodically review your investment objectives and the options available in our Plan to help ensure that your retirement savings will meet your retirement goals.

It has long been a focus of our company to provide quality products to our customers in a responsible way. This means paying close attention to the way we produce our products and ensuring that we take the necessary and required steps to preserve our environment.

Producing a quality product has always been a focus from selecting the highest quality raw materials, employing the most qualified people and establishing processes and programs that ensure our products are reliable and meet or exceed the expectations of our customers.

Protecting and preserving our environment while producing our products has also been a focus. We meet and often exceed the regulatory requirements for protecting the natural resources required to make our product and minimizing the impact of our processes on our surroundings.

While we view these as our basic responsibilities of conducting business, it is always gratifying when our efforts are recognized by external organizations.

 2009 Environmental Excellence Awards

Our Salisbury plant along with the Madison plant recently received the 2009 Commitment to Environmental Excellence Awards for their outstanding contributions to protect the environment and maintain sound environmental management practices in their operation. 

The awards were announced at the recent Concrete Works conference held in Indianapolis with over 300 people in attendance.  Madison was recognized as an Honorable Mention winner in Category A for plants producing < 25, 000 cu yds while Salisbury was a winner in Category B for plants producing 25,000 – 50,000 cu yds. 

The plants were 2 of only 24 plants recognized for these awards nationally.

NRMCA Producer Excellence in Quality Award

For the third time in 4 years the company received this award that recognizes producers from across the country who maintain some of the highest quality standards in the industry.

With results measured in seven categories including Management Commitment, Customer Focus, Human Resources, Production Facilities and Equipment, Materials Management and Testing, Specification Review and Mix Design and Measurement Analysis, awards are given to entries that score 75% or higher.

We were one of only two companies to receive this honor in Category B (production between 250,000 and 1million cu yds) and one of only eleven companies to be recognized nationally. Many thanks to Eric Misenheimer, Corporate Technical Services Manager for coordinating the application process and for helping us establish the standards to achieve such high recognition.

All of these awards are the result of the collective efforts of many people and are further proof that we have some of the best people in the ready mixed concrete business.

The Salisbury Plant competed again this year in the 2nd Annual United Way Soap Box Derby Campaign Kick-off.  The team improved on last years third place finish by capturing second place.

The Salisbury employees have been loyal supporters of the Rowan County United Way and have established a string relationship with the United Way and its member agencies.

Fresh off his 2nd place finish at the CRMCA Driver Championship held in Charlotte, Josh Hogan of Randleman represented the company at the NRMCA’s 4th annual National Driver Championship held in Indianapolis Oct 17 – 19.

With his wife Lisa, son Josh Jr and daughter Rebecca cheering him on, Josh competed against 33 other drivers from producers in 19 states across the country. This year marked the first time a female mixer driver competed as a winner of the state competition in Arkansas.

The competition was very spirited as these drivers represent the best of the best within our industry. The event

Josh gets ready to drive the challenge course

involved three parts, each of which earned the participants points toward the overall championship.

The timed pre-trip inspection requires the drivers to find staged deficiencies while the timed written test measures the drivers knowledge about truck safety, product quality, truck maintenance and environmental responsibilities.

The most popular event was the skills driving course which was held in the infield of the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indianapolis 500 race.

The course required the participants to go through 8 different stations that measure the driving skill in situations ranging from parallel parking to backing and pulling forward to see how close they could come to a stationary object without hitting it.

Although he did not place in the top 3, Josh represented the company well and showed why he is considered one of the best in the country. Congratulations on a job well done.

Josh, his wife Lisa, son Josh Jr and daughter Rebecca at the awards banquetJosh is recognized with the other drivers

Josh is recognized with the other drivers

On October 14 it was announced that the company had officially acquired the assets of Franklin Ready Mix to include 2 concrete plants in Rocky Gap and Rocky Mount VA.

These two plants expand the company’s service area in southwest VA including Bluefield and Princeton WV as well as along the US Hwy 220 corridor south of Roanoke. We are excited about the long term potential of these markets and look forward to servicing the existing customers.

The Rocky Gap, VA plant will be part of the New River Valley operations area while the Rocky Mount plant will become part of the Roanoke Operations area.

We want to welcome the Franklin employees located at the Rocky Gap, VA plant to the company.

The newest additions to the Chandler Concrete Company at Rocky Gap, VA

We have started the annual review of our healthcare plan looking at our Plan performance as well as plan design and the cost to provide the benefit.

This year has been a reasonably “good” year for our plan as our paid claims have not exceeded the contributions from participants and the company which has allowed us to build our reserves for potential catastrophic losses.

While this is certainly good news, we also know that the cost of healthcare will continue to rise in 2010 as will the administrative costs to administer our Plan. Various surveys project costs to rise as much as 8% next year.

In addition, the continued debate over healthcare reform can potentially impact costs depending on the final bill and any additional requirements of private plans. We will continue to closely monitor this activity.

It is always important for all of us to do what we can to help control the cost of healthcare. Some actions that all of us can take to make this happen include;

• Making healthy lifestyle choices in diet and exercise

• Get an annual physical to make sure if there are any issues that they can be detected early

• Establish a relationship with a primary care doctor BEFORE you get ill. Having a regular physician who knows you and your health can mean earlier detection of disease/illness and often lower cost treatments.

• Consider requesting generic drugs whenever they are available

We will be announcing any plan changes as well as the cost for the Plan in the next few weeks.