Cemen Tech was founded by Hugh and Eileen Tobler in the late 60’s as a marketing company to sell the Irl Daffin Company’s Concrete Mobile. The Concrete Mobile was the original, and at that time, the only mobile or volumetric concrete mixer. The concept of the Concrete Mobile was simple. It was designed to separately hold the materials necessary to produce concrete and to volumetrically measure and mix the materials on site, or as needed. The advantages of the Concrete Mobile were that customers could have fresh, high quality concrete on demand when and where needed.
After doing business in the Minneapolis area for a few years, the company relocated to Indianola, Iowa, in order to be more central to their territory, as well as to have a facility large enough to rebuild used mixers and to house a growing parts business.
After the Irl Daffin Company was sold in the late 70’s, the Concrete Mobile became a product of the Barber-Greene Company. Since Barber-Greene had their own distribution network and did not wish to have regional distributors, Cemen Tech was released as a distributor of the Concrete Mobile. Cemen Tech was then no longer hindered by distributor agreements and territories, and immediately expanded their services to the nation and world. Cemen Tech would also gain more experience as Larry Lepper joined the CTI Staff in 1976 and would become an integral part of the management team. Cemen Tech also installed watts line (toll free 800 number) which seems like a small step today, but was then a costly and somewhat risky venture for the new company. Cemen Tech sold replacement parts for the Concrete Mobile, but also distributed loaders, tree spades and cement silos.
During the late 80’s, Cemen Tech started experimenting with producing its own volumetric mixer, first as a stationary model and later as truck or trailer mounted mobile mixers. Cemen Tech called their new machines, “Concrete Dispensers”. Because of their close connection to the customer and end user, Cemen Tech was able to improve equipment designs and as a result was able to offer a better product.
During the years to ensue, Cemen Tech products were not only received well in the United States but also around the world, and sales grew in the Caribbean, Canada and other locations where climate created a demand for fresh high quality concrete on site. It did not take long and Cemen Tech had their first million dollar year in sales as they continued to grow through out the eighty’s.
During 1989, Cemen Tech became an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) company. Late in 1991, Gary Ruble succeeded Hugh Tobler as President and CEO, and started to put the small company on an expansionary course. The company began to buy the stock owned by the outside shareholders, and in 1994 Cemen Tech purchased the remaining shares held by the Tobler family to become 100% employee-owned. In August of 1994, Tom Palme joined the company as Sales Manager. The sales staff was expanded to include in house salesmen of which the first was Brad Ross who joined the company in 1995 and Mike Rozga who joined the company in 1998.
The nineties saw several more changes for Cemen Tech Cemen tech as they not only increased sales but also diversified their product line. The company used its technological back ground with augers to develop a means of treating waste materials and formed an environmental division, "Alka-Tech". Alka-Tech provides systems for the treatment of wastewater biosolids, and the environmental division produces installations to large municipalities for treating waste. Although it was a welcomed success, concrete continued to be the company’s main product line. Sales would be delivered to high profile customers such as AT&T, American Flyash, Wilbert Vault, and numerous other users requiring concrete. Sales and growth not only occurred in the private market but also in the public sector. Cities requiring fresh concrete flocked to the idea of the Mobile Concrete Dispenser as a means of providing low cost small yardage pours for their own uses. Cities such as Dallas and states such as Missouri would purchase several mobiles through out the years to better serve their own concrete requirements.
Nineteen ninety seven was an eventful year for Cemen Tech. The company purchased two of it’s competitors, Mobile Tech of Tulsa, Oklahoma and the mobile concrete division of C. S. Johnson of Champaign, Illinois (then manufacturer of the Concrete Mobile). With the purchase of the Concrete Mobile, Cemen Tech had in effect returned to its roots.
Building on their success in the public market and the growing popularity of the concept it was not long before the United States army would be calling on CTI to develop a modular mixer to replace an aging fleet of Concrete Mobiles which the United States Military had purchased in the late 70’s. In conjunction with Oshkosh Truck and utilizing their Palletized Load System (PLS), Cemen Tech developed a Rapid Deployment Concrete Dispenser. The RDCD is a self contained mixer that can be deployed as either a stationary or as a truck mounted mobile mixer. In 1997 the company was awarded a five year contract to build over 100 machines for the Tank Automotive Command. The contract was unique for the time, and was a sole sourced and negotiated contract. The next year, Cemen Tech purchased another competitor, a Concrete Mobile clone, Mighty CM of Willow Street, Pennsylvania. The year 1999 saw the purchase of a new and much larger facility for Cemen Tech, and in 2000, the move of its offices to the new facility. Today, Cemen Tech manufactures and markets volumetric proportioning and continuous mixing systems, cement silos, cement dump trailers, and biosolids processing equipment. This is done on the premise of superior service and quality. Due to this philosophy and the Company's success in executing it, Cemen Tech's products have developed the reputation of being the "Cadillac" of the industry.
Cemen Tech has grown rapidly during the past several years, primarily due to the extra effort and devotion to business exhibited by its employee/owners. The product line has been continually engineered and fine-tuned to become what is now the most trouble-free and highest quality volumetric mixer in the world. Cemen Tech mixers are in operation in more than 40 countries around the globe.
Last Updated: August 4th, 2008
