U. S. Concrete CEO Bill Sandbrook surveys with satisfaction the early-morning queue of ready-mix trucks lining the massive Union Dallas project in…
U. S. Concrete CEO Bill Sandbrook surveys with satisfaction the early-morning queue of ready-mix trucks lining the massive Union Dallas project in Uptown.
Over the next nine hours, crews of the Euless-based company will offload 1,200 cubic yards of concrete from a 17-truck brigade — if the weather and traffic cooperate.
That’s the equivalent of a four-foot sidewalk four miles long.
It’s just another delivery day that U. S. Concrete and its Redi-Mix subsidiary will spend at the jobsite of the 800,000-square-foot office, retail and residential project going up next to El Fenix.
And it’s just one of the major local and national projects that Sandbrook and his team have landed since he took over the fresh-out-of bankruptcy, publicly held concrete company in August 2011.
U. S. Concrete recently finished its work on Toyota’s North American headquarters in Plano. Ongoing projects include Facebook’s data center in Fort Worth, LaGuardia Airport’s upgrade, the World Trade Center complex and Hudson Yards in New York.
Last year, U. S. Concrete sold 8.1 million cubic yards of ready-mix concrete — enough to build 100 One World Trade Centers, another of U. S. Concrete’s landmark projects.
“This is a completely different, reinvigorated and empowered company, ” Sandbrook said at his corporate office in Euless. “I expect people to come prepared. I expect them to bring their A-game just about 24/7, actually. I want my key people available all the time.
“I don’ t have patience for a lot of lawyers. I don’ t have patience for over-analysis. And I don’ t have patience for people who won’ t take a stand.”
Ronnie Pruitt, senior vice president and chief operating officer, joined U. S. Concrete two years ago because he wanted to work with Sandbrook again, having gotten to know him when both were at previous companies.
“Bill’s never too good to talk to our drivers or lower-level employees, ” says Pruitt. “He’s a real, down-to-earth guy with a great memory and a huge heart. When he tells someone something, it’s as good as any contract you could get.” In command in the Cold War
Sandbrook, who’s about to turn 60, is a strategic thinker honed by the military.
In 1975, he was appointed to the U. S. Military Academy at West Point by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. Sandbrook concentrated his studies on nuclear engineering, applied physics and management.
“I knew I wasn’ t going to be a nuclear engineer — didn’ t want to be, ” he says. “I wanted to pick the most challenging courses they had and see how I could do with them. But being pragmatic, I knew I needed some general management expertise and skills.”
In 1980, in the midst of the Cold War, the 22-year-old became a patrol platoon leader along the militarized East/West German border with 35 soldiers under his command.
“There were minefields, trip wires, machine gun posts, guards with armed weapons, all intent on keeping people from East Germany and Czechoslovakia from escaping to the West, ” he recalls. “And every single night, you would hear shooting, see a flare or hear an explosion.
“You had to be prepared. You felt like you had a real mission.”
He was there for four years, the last one as a combat engineer company commander, where he “built roads and bridges and blew up things.”
Sandbrook spent the next decade in the military teaching math at West Point and acting as the senior Army representative on Raytheon Co.’s Patriot and Hawk missile programs, while getting four master’s degrees and his professional engineering license.
In June 1992, this son of a cement man took an early retirement package and joined Tilcon New York Inc., a small aggregate company — rocks, sand and crushed rocks — with two quarries on the Hudson River and an asphalt plant.
Sandbrook became president in 1995, a year before it was bought by an Irish multinational.
He talked the board into letting him acquire and consolidate other aggregate operations, turning Tilcon into a real player in the New York and New Jersey markets. Fixing morale first
U. S. Concrete’s board wanted that leadership when it recruited Sandbrook to guide the then Houston-based company as it emerged from bankruptcy in August 2011. Sandbrook was up for the challenge.
“The company was broken. Morale was in the tank. I said, ‘I’ ll take this on,’ ” Sandbrook says. “I wanted the opportunity to see what I could do if I was solely in charge of strategy.”
Industry pals placed bets on just how quickly U. S. Concrete would land back in bankruptcy.
They were almost right.
Four months into his job, the stock was down to under $3, and its primary lender was threatening to pull the plug.
U. S. Concrete was so bureaucratic that any expenditure over $1,000 had to be blessed by corporate. A quarry in New Jersey was running at a fourth of capacity because the general manager couldn’ t get the CFO to sign off on $10,000 for tires and repairs needed for idled trucks.
Sandbrook quickly put an end to that policy.
And he moved the company headquarters in 2012 to Euless, where its Redi-Mix subsidiary was located, to cut costs and change the culture.
“Having little wins in lots of areas, listening to your people on how to make money, started to bring the team around, ” he says. Paring down, building up
Since 2012, Sandbrook has expanded core competencies, sold low-margin products and underperforming units. He’s been on a buying binge in hot markets of Texas, California, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma and Washington D. C.
The result?
Earnings before interest, taxes and debt (EBITDA) has risen from $11 million his first year to $160 million. The stock trades in the $70 range — a far cry from two bucks and change.
Given higher-than-anticipated results for the first quarter, Sandbrook says the company is poised for another solid year of growth.
Board member Bob Rayner says Sandbrook has proven to be everything the directors asked for: “A first-rate CEO with excellent leadership and strategic skills who could take a business emerging from bankruptcy, get the team behind him, turn it around and significantly grow value for our shareholders.
“Bill’s performance has been nothing short of outstanding as reflected in the growth of our share price and shareholder value.”
Last year, Sandbrook made $3.4 million, including stock. He currently holds more than 400,000 shares of the company’s stock with a current market value nearly $30 million.
That, he says, should indicate his confidence about where the company is headed.
So what’s Sandbrook’s personal life like?
“Here it is, ” he laughs, giving a panoramic wave to his unpretentious office.
Sandbrook, who got married right out of West Point, divorced prior to this job. His daughter and 10-month-old granddaughter live in Atlanta. “So I’ ve been able to focus all my attention and energy here, ” he says, then adds, “I like to hunt. I like to fish. I like to whitewater raft, ” pointing to photos.
Boxes of wine are stacked on the floor — delivered there because he’s rarely home to sign for them. And when he is home, he has a birds-eye view of The Union Dallas from his condo balcony in Uptown.
His proudest accomplishment has nothing to do with financials.
Hanging on a wall is a framed copy of a aggregate industry magazine cover in the summer of 2002 proclaiming Sandbrook as “AGG Man of the Year, ” honoring him for his first-responder work during the three days following 9/11.
