Gotham Ready Mix, a concrete supplier in New York City, is no stranger to innovation, delivering performance materials to mid- and high-rise residential or commercial projects across the Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Bronx boroughs.
The producer started in 2019 with 35 trucks and three plants in Brooklyn and Bronx. Fast-forward to 2024 and it has grown drastically. Gotham Ready Mix now has 110 trucks and six plants over five locations. Another 20 trucks are currently being built and the company will add another plant in 2025.
“We have grown quite a bit over the last 4.5 years, expanding our customer base and enabling us to be less concentrated,” Gotham Ready Mix CEO and Managing Member Philip Mazzone says. “Our operation has changed for the better, and we’ve been able to speed up all our existing concrete plants and find any flaws and correct them as we continue our growth.”
Operating in a bustling city with a small plant footprint creates its own challenges. “The way we see it is if we can make our business operation work in New York City with minimal real estate, we can basically succeed anywhere,” notes Mazzone.
The key is controlling fleet flow. “If your traffic flow is in order then everything else falls into place,” he says. “Once your traffic flow is interrupted, that’s when all the trouble starts with congestion and bottlenecking of trucks. It literally will bring your operation to a halt if the flow is not foreseen prior to putting up any plants.”
EFFICIENCY DRIVERS
Innovation plays a big part in how Gotham chooses to grow and how quickly that growth has come to the business. The company continues to add innovative tools to be as efficient as possible.
“We always aim to stay ahead in our market,” Mazzone says. “We are constantly entertaining and implementing anything new that can benefit our business. We should never sit back and relax. When all is moving along well, that’s when we put our foot on the pedal and research ways to keep our company way ahead of the game. We accept constructive criticism from our employees because they are in the forefront daily, reading and understanding different markets to see if anything other companies are doing across the country might benefit us here.”
The company explores all ideas to load faster, put out a good product and service customers in all aspects of business. Gotham attributes its quick growth to its investments in technological innovations. The producer has multiple GPS systems, for example, and has built super-fast dry batch plants that can produce from 240 yards to 296 yards per hour.
Other innovations include incorporating the CarbonCure Technologies process, which lowers the carbon dioxide emissions associated with a delivered yard of ready mixed. CarbonCure injects CO₂ into a batch, where it converts to a mineral and augments compressive strength, allowing Gotham to reduce cement content and lower the carbon footprint of its concrete.
“By incorporating CarbonCure systems throughout our company, we were able to comply with New York State’s recently passed Buy Clean Concrete guidelines of low embodied carbon concrete, before it was mandated,” Mazzone observes.
Gotham Ready Mix captures CO2 emissions data through a partnership with Climate Earth, netting Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) on mix designs at each location. EPDs are the international standard for all construction material or product carbon footprint reporting, according to Climate Earth. In addition, Gotham Ready Mix is also committed to sourcing aggregates locally, cutting diesel emissions by 50 percent through barging, and reducing the number of trailers on the road.
“This also enables us to support our local business vendors and operate with a greater capacity, knowing we have our material sources minutes away from all our concrete plants and not relying on material being trucked in from outside the city, which is not as reliable with New York traffic,” Mazzone says. “This all equates to fewer big tractor trailers on the road, which means lower diesel emissions being spewed in the air and fewer vehicle accident scenarios.”
ON BOARD Q
Gotham has also chosen to deploy CiDRA SMARThatch units to track concrete quality in real time and generate data for reports on each load. “Having our entire fleet equipped with these hatches gives us and customers alike real-time stats on our concrete being delivered,” says Mazzone. “The hatches monitor air, temperature, slump range and any water being added in the field. Having these reports handy has been a game changer when comparing field test results versus actual concrete results we are delivering.”
In tandem with this, the company has also implemented BCMI’s Material Pro app to track analytics. “BCMI has a vast array of KPIs (key performance indicators) including a customer scorecard, and most importantly a scorecard for our company that we share with customers,” Mazzone explains. “There is no more stretching the truth in dispatch because we lay it all out in the open for all to see, which is especially important in maintaining our full transparency approach.”
Transparency has become a business cornerstone. “We’ve created a transparency within our company that is not all that common in our market, and by doing so, our customers are learning and growing with us,” Mazzone says. “Eliminating the mindset of us versus them and having our customers see the honest approach we offer, naturally builds our reputation for the better. They know that we understand we are in this together and there is no price anyone can pay to establish that comfort level.”
What’s next for Gotham Ready Mix? The company’s five-year plan includes entering other markets. It is currently in the process of developing a northern New Jersey location, which Mazzone expects to be up and running by the first quarter of 2025. He anticipates the operation will be the largest of all Gotham’s facilities and most likely be the fastest dry batch plant in New York and New Jersey.
“We took all the best qualities of our existing plants in New York and designed the ‘Golden Child’ of plants for New Jersey,” Mazzone affirms.
Jennifer Jensen is Media & Public Relations Specialist for Redmond, Wash.-based BCMI Corp. She has nearly two decades of experience in writing and editing for construction and mining related publications.