GCC Mid-Continent’s Lowe takes NRMCA National Mixer Driver title

Sources: National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, Silver Spring, Md.; CP staff

By Don Marsh

Larry Dale Lowe, Jr. of Sallisaw, Okla., won the 2011 National Mixer Driver Championship in San Diego, topping a field of 25 competitors representing 18 NRMCA producer members from as many states. A 12-year GCC Mid-Continent Concrete veteran, he qualified for the September 25–26 event by taking this year’s Arkansas Ready Mixed Concrete Association Truck Rodeo.

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Obama talks transportation funding, Jobs Act at Hilltop Concrete

Sources: White House press staff; National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, Silver Spring, Md.; Hilltop Basic Resources, Cincinnati; CP staff

With a rickety, steel trestle bridge as a backdrop, President Obama told a September 22 gathering at Hilltop Concrete’s downtown Cincinnati plant, “We used to have the best infrastructure in the world. We’re the country that built the Intercontinental Railroad, Interstate Highway System, Hoover Dam [and] Grand Central Station.”

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Group spotlights third-world, block-making skills during Clinton Climate meeting

Source: Build Change, Denver

In its continuing effort to build earthquake-resistant houses and change construction practice permanently in earthquake-prone developing countries, non-profit social enterprise Build Change announced its Commitments to Action for this year at the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting in New York on September 20. The organization commits to training vocational teachers in earthquake-resistant building techniques in Indonesia and to improving block-making skills in Haiti.

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Hollowstone LLC molds new paradigm for concrete masonry

After a four-and-half-year struggle with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, inventor John August received US Patent #7905070 for an “Interlocking Mortarless Structural Concrete Block Building System.” Years went by as the assigned examiner kept denying his claims; each time the inventor had to rebut the examiner’s take on the proposed patent, but finally 18/22 claims were approved.

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