Norwalk Ready Mix Success Story – Working Together To Grow Business

Norwalk Ready Mix Success Story

Working Together To Grow Business

Rod Bohlender’s Uncle Jack started Norwalk Ready Mix in 1971 with one plant and a handful of trucks in Norwalk, Iowa.  He fought the ups and the downs of the economy for twenty years before his son Todd pushed for expanding to Indianola.

In early 2007 Rod began lobbying to consider dispatching software. Rod and Todd road-tripped to an out-of-state ready mix company similar in size to see the benefits of a central dispatching software solution. It didn’t take much convincing that it would be extremely beneficial to meet the needs of their growing operations, however, the price tag was a tough pill to swallow. Later that year, Rod came across an article in a Concrete Construction magazine headlining Sysdyne’s ConcreteGO cloud dispatch.

They came across some promotional material from Sysdyne and decided to pick up the phone and make a call. After a pleasant conversation with Sysdyne, the owners decided to give it a try with a pilot project. After a while, they began to see the benefits of having everything on one order screen where they could see the plants that each plant manager was assigned to. They didn’t have the resources to become a fully functional central dispatch just yet, but Rod and Todd could see the orders, truck schedules and provide assistance where needed.

It was 2010 when they decided to add a third-party GPS solution for their fleet management and integrated it with Sysdyne’s ConcreteGO cloud dispatch. They were able to receive auto-statusing from the trucks automatically in the ConcreteGO dispatch screen. This provided additional relief for their plant managers since they were already being tasked heavily. Finally, in 2013, they initiated their first fully-functional central dispatch where they would take all the orders from, and distribute them to all their plants.

That same year they installed their first Sysdyne batch control at their Grime’s location. This allowed them to manage mix designs more accurately and upload them to make global changes from a central location. They could make changes on the fly more effectively and take some of that pressure off the plant managers. They saw the benefits of streamlining the entire process from taking an order from a central location to uploading the order into a live order screen for fast and easy access. Ticketing the order from ConcreteGO and pushing it out to the batch panel was quick and accurate. This process eliminated a ton of manual input errors. Seeing the benefits only incentivized them to upgrade their other locations to Sysdyne’s batch panels in 2014.

In 2017, Norwalk RM added a fifth location and currently have approximately 75 ready-mix trucks on the road. They chose to go to the cloud for several reasons; One, in particular, was the initial out-of-pocket expenses for supporting an “in-house” software solution. In comparison, it would have been extremely costly, and the yearly updates and support were astronomical. It also provided them with more time to focus on managing their business and turn more focus on the customer. Having their own server with its own software for them to manage would have required tons of time, effort, and money – thus, they decided ConcreteGO dispatch was the better choice.

In 2020, Norwalk RM chose to move ahead with Sysdyne’s iStrada fully integrated GPS/Truck-Tracking Solution for Delivery Management. At last, they were fully integrated and automated, from start to finish. They found iStrada GPS to be ‘rock solid’ and ‘the auto-statusing that it feeds back to ConcreteGO cloud dispatch is wonderful!’ Everything, from batch weights, to driver navigation, to changes made to loads are now in real-time; customers and inspectors can also see this information using the iStrada collaboration platform.

They have recently been testing iStrada’s Paperless Ticketing Platform and thus far, have been extremely impressed! They are slowly rolling this out to their customers and have been receiving very positive feedback. They love having the ability to see the current status of their orders and track delivery performance in real-time. Along with providing more detailed delivery information to customers like the number of yards scheduled, delivered, and poured, they can track any changes drivers make like adding water at the Plant or Jobsite using the iStrada driver’s App.

They recently upgraded their fifth plant to Sysdyne’s latest Pioneer batch control system. The Pioneer is a clean install and their managers enjoy the additional features and graphics Pioneer offers. This will, in the near future, allow them to batch concrete from a remote location using Cloud Batch.

This will be a nice feature for those days that the plant manager is unavailable – The inventory will be available in real-time at the office staff’s fingertips. Having real-time inventory means one less phone call to the Plant Managers for updates, each day. The future of technology in the concrete world is here to stay; There is no denying that technology provides more vision for managers to make better decisions on a daily basis.  This forces everyone, from Drivers to Managers, to the Central Dispatch Staff to be accountable for their actions.

Rod reiterates that Sysdyne’s tech support team has been wonderful to work with. They listen to the concerns and requests and make things happen. Rod has no doubt that Sysdyne has their back and they only want to see their customers succeed.  Norwalk values the partnership they have built with Sysdyne and their entire staff!