This issue’s Trick of the Trade is shared by CFA member, Doug Herbert of Herbert Construction in Marietta, GA.  Doug continues the challenge to you the reader to think about the ways you’ve overcome annoying details and situations to be more effective and economical in your work.  If you are from an active CFA member company and your trick is selected for publication, your company will have 50 pts. placed in your account for Member Rewards redeemable for your CFA transactions.  If you are from a company that is not a member, we will offer you a $100 discount on your first year’s membership fees…a great way to get to know the CFA.

A couple of years ago, the Concrete Foundations Association sponsored a visit to CFA member ABI Corporation in Missouri. My dad, Barry Herbert, and I were with a group of member contractors that visited their office, shop and yard to see how they do things. Dan and Mike Bromley and their staff at ABI Corp. opened their doors and shared their business with us.

One of the many interesting things I saw there was how they carried their rebar on their trucks. They had tilted their rebar racks downwards towards the rear of the truck. Instead of placing the rebar on top of a tall, level truck rack, this angled rack was a simple stroke of genius.

The sloped rack made it much easier on their employees. They no longer had to climb up onto the bumper or bed of the truck and reach overhead to pull the rebar off. It was a lot more efficient and productive to simply stand on the ground, grab a handful of rebar, and drag it off the truck.

The rebar bundles could still be loaded onto the sloped rack with a forklift in their yard, so loading time was not affected.

A few months after visiting ABI Corp., we were designing a new footing crew truck and added this feature to our design. It has worked really well for us and we will be sure to do that for any other new trucks we fabricate.

The design has saved us many man-hours on various job sites. And we have certainly eliminated one area for possible slips and falls, which reduces potential worker’s compensation claims.

By the way, the biggest benefit of being a member of the Concrete Foundations Association is networking with other successful contractors and vendors to learn better ways of running your business.

Over the years we have gotten numerous ideas like this that have helped our company. Those ideas have improved our working conditions, reduced our headaches, increased our profit, and paid for our membership a hundred times over.

Special thanks to Dan and Mike Bromley and everyone at ABI Corp. for their original idea.