Introduction

In this engaging episode of "Monday Morning Coffee with Inside the Firm", the hosts welcome Roggen Frick, a seasoned construction professional and co-owner of Bear Iron Works. With a rich background in construction management and a passion for innovative solutions, Roggen shares insights into his journey, the importance of soil in construction, and the unique offerings of his company.

Background and Journey

Roggen's journey into the construction industry began at a young age, influenced by his father's entrepreneurial spirit. Key points from his background include:

• Early Exposure: Roggen started learning about construction at just three years old.
• Education: He earned a degree in Construction Management from Colorado State University.
• Career Path: His experience spans various roles, including foreman and project engineer, before founding Bear Iron Works.

Bear Iron Works and Soil Screening

Bear Iron Works specializes in manufacturing products for the civil construction sector, particularly focusing on soil screening. Roggen explains the significance of soil in construction:

• Soil Types: Different types of soil, such as clay, silt, and gravel, play crucial roles in building foundations.
• Soil Engineering: Civil engineers often work with soil mixtures to create a solid foundation capable of supporting heavy loads.
• Challenges with Clay: Clay is particularly problematic due to its tendency to expand and contract, causing structural issues.

Soil Screening Solutions

Roggen elaborates on the innovative solutions Bear Iron Works provides:

• On-Site Soil Screening: Their rock screens allow construction teams to screen and sort on-site soil, reducing the need for expensive trucking from gravel pits.
• Cost-Effective: By using their equipment, companies can save significantly on material costs, especially in areas with poor soil quality.

Historical Context of Soil Screening

Roggen provides a brief history of soil screening, highlighting its evolution:

Historical Milestone	Description
Roman Era	Discovery of concrete, leading to advancements in construction.
Modern Engineering	Understanding soil's structural properties and its impact on buildings.

Future Aspirations

Looking ahead, Roggen shares his vision for Bear Iron Works:

• Product Expansion: Plans to develop new attachments for mini excavators and skid steers.
• Market Reach: The company serves all 50 states and has shipped products internationally, including to Guam and the Caribbean.

Advice for Entrepreneurs

As the interview concludes, Roggen reflects on his journey and offers valuable advice:

• Understand Your Offerings: He emphasizes the importance of recognizing the value of services provided, particularly in logistics and delivery.

Conclusion

Roggen Frick's insights into the construction industry and the innovative solutions offered by Bear Iron Works provide a fascinating glimpse into the world of civil engineering. His journey from a young enthusiast to a successful entrepreneur serves as an inspiration for aspiring business leaders.

For more information about Bear Iron Works and their products, visit beariron.com.

Transcript

00:05
Welcome to Monday morning coffee with inside the firm. Each week, our hosts will be interviewing local, regional, and national business leaders to give you an inside peak into how they lead their business to success in the ever competitive business climate. Welcome to Monday morning coffee with

00:27
inside the firm. Today, a very special guest, former Colorado, Roggenfrick is a seasoned construction professional with a lifetime experience in the field starting at just 3 years old, even earlier than me. He earned his degree in construction management from Colorado

00:41
State University. Go Ramy's. And he has worked in various roles from foreman to project engineer before founding Bear Iron Works, a company that manufactures products for the civil construction sector. He integrates ERP software to streamline production and remotely

00:59
manage his business. He also offers project management services to Rhino Construction in Colorado beyond his professional work. He is also a self-taught expert in web development, graphic design, video editing, and small engine repair. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Pleased to be

01:16
here. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. Uh I'm I'm curious to pick your brain. you sound a lot like me um in terms of all the things you're trying to do. I I I love the enthusiasm. I love the background. But before we get into what you do now, tell us how you got here. Are you from a

01:30
family of entrepreneurs? Are you the first? Where does that spirit come from? Yeah, so my dad, he's always been kind of an entrepreneur uh my whole life. He's been on and off uh doing his own construction business and working for big contractors such as Kwit. And so

01:46
I've been by his side the whole time watching him start and run businesses and um he's he kind of actually came up with the idea for our business that we're doing now and I took it and ran with it and now we're co-owners and we have a pretty good thing going. Yeah.

02:01
Very cool. Cool. I love that. I wish my son would uh would be like more like you. I'm I'm just he's a he's an artist and he got kind of some create, you know, he's got a very creative guy, but uh in terms of just trying to maybe take on what I'm doing. Not interested.

02:17
Totally cool though. Um let's talk about what you do with soil. I think that's the most one of the most fascinating things that you do. Maybe help us understand like what exactly you do with soil. Why would somebody want to screen soil? What's the best soil that maybe is

02:31
is is useful for building? So, yeah. Yeah, I mean you got all kinds of different soils, right? You've got you've got clay, you've got silts, you've got rocks, you've got boulders. It's all in that category of soils. And so when you're doing any type of construction, you need to have a solid

02:47
you need to have a solid foundation, but that foundation needs to set on solid soils. And so they're actually the class uh of engineering called soil engineering. And that's what civil engineers do a lot of the time. Um, and part of that is making the right mixture

03:03
of soils, right? So, you have a little bit of sand, a little bit of gravel, and the goal is to try to make this kind of like engineered soil that can hold a lot of weight and will perform well under heavy loads. And so, that's all kinds of construction, you know, road

03:16
construction, building construction, everything needs to sit on a good soil. Um, the worst soil to work with is clay. Anybody that's worked with clay, uh, especially wet clay knows how horrible it is because it just absorbs and it's kind of like a sponge. It just expands

03:31
and then when it dries out, it shrinks. And that expansion and that shrinking causes a lot of issues uh on buildings, roadways, bridges, anything. And you can see that a lot in Colorado because Colorado has quite a bit of clay. Um, Colorado also has a lot of rocks, right?

03:46
And so when you have on-site soil, um if you have s good sands in it and good size gravel, you can sort that and size it out and you can save yourself money by uh not trucking into soil. And so that's what we provide as a solution for that. A simple rock screen that you can

04:05
um screen your on-site soil with. Um that way you don't have to purchase it from a gravel pit, especially if you have that um available. Um but our screens can be used for all kinds of different things. anytimes you need to separate soil out or size something, you know, we provide the tool for that

04:19
without breaking the bank. And are you guys are you guys uh are you guys would you describe yourself as like bleeding edge with what you do in soil screening, cutting edge? Are you guys how are or maybe you're just a competitor folks that are doing this? So I would I would say our product is a

04:37
it's kind of like a value, right? We've seen the need for good screening solutions in the construction industry and so Americanmade uh that way through multiple projects. I mean because you're going to be dumping, you know, some people are dumping boulders on these

05:00
things and they need to last. Um and you know, the the the idea for it's been around a long time called it just a grizzly rock screen. Um, and we've feel like we've just really tried to take lean management principles, cut away all the waste, and really just make a good

05:15
solid product for the industry. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, did you So, this has been this is maybe we could learn just maybe learn a little bit more about the history of soil screening. And so, you know, remember like there's there's folks here that I have no I'm one of them, right? I have no idea. So if if I

05:36
if I was to be just a malleable piece of clay mentally for you, what how how could you help me understand the history of it and how you guys fold into that as it relates to your competitors? So yeah, I mean I think like the history of soil screening, right? Like there's

05:52
it's something that you know we've known for a long time. It goes back all the way to the Romans when they discovered concrete because concrete is it kind of starts out as the soil cement's kind of a powder, right? You mix water in it and all of a sudden it becomes a hard rock.

06:04
And that's how we can use it for the basis of construction. Um, and we've constructed things throughout time. Um, you've seen different civilizations, you know, they use clay, uh, like Kasa Grande National Ruins is like they made this big house out of clay and it's just

06:18
kind of like this silty clay stacked up and it hardens. Bricks are made out of soil. You know, it's soils are kind of like the foundation of construction. Um, and so as we progress and we get better at construction and construction science, that's where we really start to

06:34
understand, okay, there there's structural properties to the soil and you know, we see how like I mean, you go look at an old building that's 100 some years old. You're going to start seeing cracks in it um throughout the throughout the building on the walls and

06:48
the foundations maybe. And a lot of that has to just do with the soil that's underneath it and how that building is settling and going back into the earth, right? Because the earth's always moving. Um, and we've gotten better at that as humanity over time. And now

07:01
we're to the point that, you know, we engineer our soils for what we're doing. And you can see that a lot in Colorado. I always think it's a great example. Uh, because when they're building subdivisions, um, they will over excavate about 20 ft down and then bring

07:17
in an engineered soil and fill that back in. That way the houses have a very good solid um, soil footing to to sit on. And um you know, my products are they're not a big screening plant like you'd see at a gravel pit. It's not a big industrial operation. It's made for the guys that

07:35
need to have some type of solution on site because you might be excavating and you just run into bad rocks, bad soil, and you got to fix it without trying to break the bank. Yeah. Yeah. It Yeah. And for folks that are are listening to this show who are outside of the very very

07:54
poor soils that we have on the front range of Colorado and it that's you know it's away from the mountains. So a lot of people my dad was shocked to understand. He he like he's like well what about all the all the granite out there? And I go like it's not like that

08:07
on the planes. It's it's really poor. Even I'm a gardener as well and you know even for gardening it's pretty terrible until you amend it for like a decade and then it finally gets pretty good. I mean it's a good substrate for stuff. So, so for for that audience who doesn't

08:24
understand the issues we have out here, um, one of the things I would tell them is right now is that a lot of times we'll we'll have to do this overx that you that you spoke about and then we're bringing in fill. Uh the ba sort of baseline standard is two different ways

08:42
that we see in the soils reports we get which is you can either reuse what's there and recompact it up to a certain ASM standard density test or you can actually bring in like a class one or a class 2 fill which would go under roadbase is basically what it is. What's

09:01
and you but you're offering like a third solution is that am I hitting it right here? So, well, I'm offering I'm offering the the screen the product to actually be able to make that type of soil on site. So, I mean, usually, okay, let's say you need some class one road

09:14
base, right? You'd have to call up a gravel pit and you'd say, "Hey, I need so many trucks. Uh, start sending them my way to my site. You're going to be paying, you know, current market rate $130 or more an hour for trucking plus whatever the cost of your soil is."

09:31
And as you're bringing all that in, you know, that's starting to rack up, especially if you've got a long distance between you and that near gra nearby gravel pit, if it is nearby, if you're lucky enough. Um, so the solution that we offer is, you know, okay, let's take

09:47
um there's there's spots in Colorado, you know, especially like along the river, like next to a river, right, where you've got a lot of river rock in there, you got a lot of sand, you got a lot of different stuff that can be classified down into class one road base. You just have to see all all a a

10:03
specification is on soil is just the makeup of it of what it needs to be this percentage of sand. It needs to be this percentage of gravel of this size and it can't have any boulders of 3 in or bigger. So we make the screen, you know, we can screen down all the way to a

10:18
quarter inch with our screens that we make and they're interchangeable screens. And so you can take our screen, get some interchangeable screens, and you can make the specification that's in your book. So then, you know, a $5,000 rock screen, you know, if you have quite

10:37
a bit of soil that you need and you have salvageable soil on site like you would have on the side of a river with a lot of river rocks and things like that, you'd be able to make your soil there instead of paying all that money per hour to truck it in and then spread it

10:51
out and do all the work there. Oh, I love that. I love that. Well, maybe we could tie this into is there maybe you could paint for us without naming names and just you know some of the maybe the most unique way in which your which your screens have been used for a local site

11:07
like that or or a project. I would love to hear more. Yeah. So, one of the first few that I made uh because when I started this business I was making them myself. I was doing all the welding everything and I'd deliver them to the site. Um and out in dosero there's a subdivision that was developed out

11:23
there. Um, all of those houses, all the soil sitting underneath them was screened with one of my screens. So, like I said, they've got a lot of river rock. So, they screened off all that river rock. And then, you know, River Rock you could sell to landscapers and stuff like that

11:37
if it was a certain size. Um, but they made that entire subdivision. I think they probably made about 50 homes in there. Um, and they just use on-site soil. They save a lot of money on trucking. Yeah, I love I love that. Um, tell us about baron iron works a little bit more. I mean, how can people

11:56
work with you so that they can make money in that way? Yeah, so we've got a couple different ways. I mean, and our products all kind of tie together. So, the rock screens are our main product, but we also make bedding boxes, uh, which is used in a trenching operation.

12:11
We also made, uh, the first bedding box for a mini excavator, uh, that also has a skid steer attachment plate, so you can actually use it for landscaping, too. So you can keep your landscape materials in there uh moving around. And we also make a concrete wash out tub. I

12:24
mean, I think that if you really wanted to use my products to make money, the biggest way to do it is you could take concrete wash out tubs, start a concrete wash out service, collect all that concrete waste, bring that back, uh, brush it down, screen it off, and then you can resell that uh, recycled

12:44
concrete back to contractors because that's, you know, it can be considered sometimes uh, similar to a roadbased type material and can be accepted on jobs like that. Um, but you can also do a screening service. You know, a lot of time we'll get people asking for

12:59
rentals. Can we rent the screen because we only need it for a couple weeks. We don't need to own we don't want to own one. Um, or I know in New York uh state, they used to have a company that would go around and they would screen everybody's soil for them. If you needed

13:13
stuff screened, this company would just show up and do it for you and then they'd leave. Um, and that was big up there for a while. And I don't exactly know what happened to them. It sounds like that they may have went out of business or stopped doing that um as

13:24
much because now we've been sending more that way. Um but there's Yeah, I mean there's all kinds of ways to uh make money with with screen and dirt. Dirt has uh quite a bit of value in it. Um especially when you're in an area where you know the soil is not so good, but

13:40
there is good soil nearby to be used. Yeah, I love that. Where do you where do you see Baron Iron Works going ultimately? Do you have a 5 10 year sort of strategy or are you just trying to keep things going at this point? Yeah, so we're trying to, you know, expand our

13:57
business and expand the products that we make for the the civil construction industry. Um, you know, we're looking at maybe getting into some attachments possibly for skid steers and for mini excavators. Um, we've even come up with a new type of attachment for a mini

14:12
excavator, uh, where it attaches to the blade on the front of the mini excavator. And it's kind of like a big bucket. And what it allows you to do is like, let's say you're doing like a fencing job. You can put your posts on that bucket and kind of carry them around with you and use your excavator

14:27
to stage them out or do your work. You can fill it up with soil. You know, maybe you're um doing some landscaping and you need to have some some rocks with you. you can keep the rocks in there and kind of take that around and um really just trying to be a little bit creative with our solutions as and

14:43
offering a good value to our customers is what our goal is and just keep expanding our product line. Yeah. And speaking of those customers, so um I think you said you were you're now located in South Carolina before we started the show. And but where does your company serve? Is it all is all 50

14:60
states? How does that mobilization work? Yeah. So, we serve all um all 50 states. Uh we're all the products are manufactured in Grand Junction, Colorado still. Um so, I'm out here representing the East Coast. U my dad still represents the West. Um and yeah, we we'll ship them straight to your door.

15:18
Uh it doesn't really matter where you're at. We've shipped them all the way to Guam, um all the islands down in the Caribbean. Um because there's a need for these everywhere. Yeah, 100% 100%. Um, I got two questions that I ask every guest as we come up on on the end of that

15:34
interview. And the first one is, knowing what you know now, and if you could go back in time to when you first started your company, what is one piece of advice you'd give your former self? Um, really understand the services or like the the little benefits that you're

15:49
offering. Uh, when I first started, I was doing the deliveries myself and I was doing like free deliveries within 200 miles. Um, and that really was hurting me because I would have people drive and meet me at that 200 mile mark. So, I was always driving at that 200

16:04
mile threshold to do free delivery and I wasn't making the products when I'm doing deliveries and I'm paying to go deliver it. Um, so really just have a good understanding of what you're offering would be the advice I would give. Yeah. I love that. I love that. I

16:18
mean, it sort of speaks to vertically. I I I feel like your transition made you were like, "Oh, I probably need to get a little bit more vertically integrated." Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And as the company grew, you know, like I started out being the guy doing the production

16:30
and doing everything, accounting, deliveries, and now we've built an operational team that's truly a manufacturing company. Um, and I've been able to focus on being able to be a resource for my customers and being able to answer questions and focus on actually like growing the business

16:48
itself. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Um, thanks for being such a great guest on the show. If people want to find, follow you, get in touch about your company and your services, where can they do that? Um, they can go to bearironworks.com. You can check out all the products that we

17:01
offer. Um, if you call the number on there, you can get a hold of one of my team members and you can ask for me and I can uh get you can get transferred over if you want to talk. Groovy, sounds great. Thanks again for being a guest on the show. Yeah, thank you. Bring me to bring me to

17:33
life. Bring me to life.