U S Concrete Inc's Business Segments

We are a leading producer of ready-mixed concrete in select geographic markets in the United States. We operate our business through two primary segments: ready-mixed concrete and aggregate products. Ready-mixed concrete is one of the most versatile and widely used materials in construction. This important building material is used in the vast majority of commercial, residential and public works construction projects. Aggregates are granular raw materials essential in the production of ready-mixed concrete.

Focus on core operations. We believe the best opportunities for future growth lie within our core ready-mixed concrete and aggregates businesses. We routinely evaluate our existing assets and business units to ensure we continue to maintain a best-in-class operation. We will continue to invest in our business, both in physical plants and new technologies, and we will continue to evaluate strategic acquisition opportunities. We believe our focus on optimizing the performance of our ready-mixed concrete business will continue to differentiate us from our larger, integrated competitors that focus principally on their aggregates or cement and treat ready-mixed concrete operations as a downstream outlet for their aggregates or cement products.

Pursue growth. In addition to our general organic growth initiative, we continuously evaluate both acquisition and partnership opportunities. We are focused on both strengthening our positions in existing markets as well as identifying attractive new markets. All of our acquisitions must meet our strict criteria, including fit with our strategic plan, investment return hurdles, capital requirements and attractive market attributes.

Manage costs. We are consistently seeking opportunities to reduce costs and to improve margins through our focus on existing operations and new technologies. Additionally, our regional acquisitions allow for synergies such as selling, general, and administrative reductions, economies of scale, variable labor savings, and purchasing power. We believe by aggressively managing our cost structure, we can best serve our clients with better pricing and continued best-in-class execution.

Business segments and products

We operate our business through two primary segments: ready-mixed concrete and aggregate products.

Our ready-mixed concrete business engages principally in the formulation, preparation and delivery of ready-mixed concrete to our customers’ job sites. We provide our ready-mixed concrete from our operations in Texas, New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., northern California, Oklahoma, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Ready-mixed concrete is a highly versatile construction material that results from combining coarse and fine aggregates, such as gravel, crushed stone and sand, with water, various chemical admixtures, and cement. We also provide services intended to reduce our customers’ overall construction costs by lowering the installed, or “in-place,” cost of concrete. These services include the formulation of mixtures for specific design uses, on-site and lab-based product quality control, and customized delivery programs to meet our customers’ needs. We generally do not provide paving or other finishing services, which construction contractors or subcontractors typically perform.

Our aggregate products segment produces crushed stone, sand and gravel from 16 aggregates facilities located in New Jersey, Texas, Oklahoma, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. We sell these aggregates for use in commercial, industrial, and public works projects in the markets they serve, as well as consume them internally in the production of ready-mixed concrete in those markets.

Products and services

Our standard ready-mixed concrete products consist of proportioned mixes we produce and deliver in an unhardened plastic state for placement and shaping into designed forms at the job site. Selecting the optimum mix for a job entails determining not only the ingredients that will produce the desired permeability, strength, appearance and other properties of the concrete after it has hardened and cured, but also the ingredients necessary to achieve a workable consistency considering the weather and other conditions at the job site. We believe we can achieve product differentiation for the mixes we offer because of the variety of mixes we can produce, our volume production capacity and our scheduling, delivery and placement reliability. Additionally, we believe our EF Technology initiative, which utilizes alternative materials and mix designs that result in lower CO2 emissions, helps differentiate us from our competitors. We also believe we distinguish ourselves with our value-added service approach that emphasizes reducing our customers’ overall construction costs by reducing the in-place cost of concrete and the time required for construction.

Our volumetric concrete operations, which we acquired in 2014, expanded our ready-mixed concrete delivery and service offerings in Texas. Volumetric ready-mixed concrete trucks mix concrete to the customers specification on the job site, better serving smaller jobs and specialized applications, and allowing flexibility for servicing remote job locations. Because of their versatility, these trucks offer the contractor multiple options for a single job without the inconvenience or added costs typically associated with standard ready-mixed trucks delivering special or short-loads to a job site. Because of their unique on-demand production capabilities, these trucks minimize the amount of wasted concrete, which improves margins and reduces environmental impact.

From a contractor’s perspective, the in-place cost of concrete includes both the amount paid to the ready-mixed concrete manufacturer and the internal costs associated with the labor and equipment the contractor provides. A contractor’s unit cost of concrete is often only a small component of the total in-place cost that takes into account all the labor and equipment costs required to build the forms for the ready-mixed concrete and place and finish the ready-mixed concrete, including the cost of additional labor and time lost as a result of substandard products or delivery delays not covered by warranty or insurance. By carefully designing proper mixes and using advances in mixing technology, we can assist our customers in reducing the amount of reinforcing steel, time and labor they will require in various applications.

We provide a variety of services in connection with our sale of ready-mixed concrete that can help reduce our customers’ in-place cost of concrete. These services include:

production of formulations and alternative product recommendations that reduce labor and materials costs;
quality control, through automated production and laboratory testing, that ensures consistent results and minimizes the need to correct completed work; and
automated scheduling and tracking systems that ensure timely delivery and reduce the downtime incurred by the customer’s placing and finishing crews.

We produce ready-mixed concrete by combining the desired type of cement, other cementitious materials (described below), sand, gravel, and crushed stone with water and, typically, one or more admixtures. These admixtures, such as chemicals, minerals and fibers, determine the usefulness of the product for particular applications.

We use a variety of chemical admixtures to achieve one or more of the following five basic purposes:

relieve internal pressure and increase resistance to cracking;
retard the hardening process to make concrete more workable in hot weather;
strengthen concrete by reducing its water content;
accelerate the hardening process and reduce the time required for curing; and
facilitate the placement of concrete having low water content.

We frequently use various mineral admixtures as supplements to cement, which we refer to as supplemental cementitious materials, to alter the permeability, strength and other properties of concrete. These materials include fly ash, ground granulated blast-furnace slag, silica fume and other natural pozzolans. These materials also reduce the amount of cement content used, which results in a reduction in CO2 emissions.

We also use fibers, such as steel, glass, and synthetic and carbon filaments as additives in various formulations of concrete. Fibers help control shrinkage cracking, thus reducing permeability and improving abrasion resistance. In many applications, fibers can replace welded steel wire and reinforcing bars. Relative to the other components of ready-mixed concrete, these additives generate comparatively higher margins.

Aggregate products

Our aggregate products segment produces crushed stone, sand and gravel from 16 aggregates facilities located in New Jersey, Texas, Oklahoma, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. We sell these aggregates for use in commercial, industrial, and public works projects in the markets they serve, as well as consume them internally in the production of ready-mixed concrete in those markets.