He’s Laid the Foundation for Success in Concrete

Dan Ahrens’ belief in hard work is as rock solid as the concrete company he’s been running since he was 18 years old.

He’s built Ahrens Concrete Co. into a $10-million-a-year business that has poured concrete floors in 28 states for various companies, including IBM, Boeing, Nike, Hormel, Sears and John Deere.

“There’s no question that he’s emerging as a tremendous force in the business,” said Allen Face, of Allen Face & Associates, a Newport News, Va.-based consulting firm that designs concrete floors.

“I would certainly say that Dan is among the leaders in the industry,” added Face, who also is a fellow of the American Concrete Institute.

Ahrens knows that he is competing with the big firms in New York, Ohio and California.

“It still comes down to Iowa farm boys working harder and longer and smarter,” said Ahrens, a native of Sigourney, a town of 2,330 residents about 40 miles southwest of Iowa City.

“I remember when we were in football doing two-a-days. In between, we went out and carried wall forms to build hog confinement pits. The city kids went home and whined how hard practice was. Let me tell you, practice was pretty easy compared to work,” the 41-year-old said.

Ahrens began helping his father, Ron, build irrigation dams and hog confinement buildings. He then started his own company.

He got his big break in 1983 at a University of Iowa football game, where he heard about a Wal-Mart distribution center that was going to be built in Mount Pleasant, about 50 miles south of Iowa City.

Ahrens had never poured a floor bigger than 2,000 square feet, but he talked his way into the job--a million-square-foot floor in a 22-acre building. The bid specified that 40,000 square feet of concrete was to be poured each week. “After two weeks, we were pouring 30,000 feet a day,” Ahrens said.

Wal-Mart continued using Ahrens Concrete for other stores and distribution centers, and pretty soon the company started growing. Along with Ron Ahrens, other family members in the business are mother Marge, sister Rhonda, brother Randy and Jeff Moore.

Today, Ahrens’ works an 80-hour week--advising, ordering and listening to his crew chiefs around the country. He spends little time at the company’s sparse office on Iowa City’s south side, conducting much of his business from his mobile phone.

In a recent 80-minute interview at his new 12,000-square-foot house--complete with a full-size indoor basketball court and fortified by more than 800 yards of concrete and 70 tons of steel--the phone rang eight times. He also made two outgoing calls.

His company is pouring the concrete foundation for the Coral Ridge Mall, a 1.3 million-square-foot project in Coralville, near Iowa City. It will be largest mall in Iowa when it opens in the spring of 1998.

Ahrens Concrete also is working on a 2-million-square-foot project in Memphis, Tenn.; more than 1.5 million square feet for Menard’s home supply store in six different locations; a 600,000-square-foot project in Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; and a 300,000-square-foot project in Missouri.

The company also is pouring the concrete for meatpacking plants in Georgia and Oklahoma.

“We’re probably one of the largest five flat-floor contractors in the country as far as square footage,” he said.

Ahrens Concrete has poured concrete for sidewalks, footings, floors, parking lots, post offices, government air landing strips, gas stations, manufacturing plants and warehouses.

Still, the company only has 50 employees.

“I use a lot of smoke and mirrors,” Ahrens says. “See, I taught everybody, ‘We’re like the air cavalry. You’d better be ready to go in a moment’s notice.’

“I remember times when we worked on Saturdays until noon, loaded up the trucks that night, hit the road Sunday and started at a new site Monday--I’m talking about going from Iowa to Virginia.

“We’ve poured as much as 100,000 square feet--that’s about 2.5 football fields--in a day before.”

In 1988, the company went high-tech and acquired two $250,000 laser screeds, a machine that uses lasers to control grade and make flat floors even flatter.

They’re important in places like warehouses, where forklifts that have to reach high to move equipment can be slowed by deflections in the floor slab.

Ahrens first used the new machines while working on a 1.1-million-square-foot building for W.W. Grainger in Greenville, S.C., and finished a six-month job two months early.

Ahrens says he has an edge now when he bids for jobs, and others agree.

“Laser screeds are one of the great innovations in concrete floor construction and Dan Ahrens was right at the forefront of applying that technology,” Face said.

“Dan Ahrens has nerve,” Face said. “He’s a risk taker--certainly not at putting his clients at risk--but at pushing for new technology [he] has been willing to put his money where his mouth is when it comes to trying things out.”