Strengthening with age

Gumieny is still foundation of New Berlin Redi-Mix

From right to left, Catherine Gumieny, president of New Berlin Redi-Mix, stands with her daughters Mary Gumieny Bultman, Barbara Gumieny Killey and Donna Gumieny Urich in front of one of the company’s pink and blue cement trucks. Photos by Lawrence Silver

Catherine Gumieny can drive through Milwaukee and its surrounding suburbs and point out her company’s work in office complexes, industrial parks, schools and residential neighborhoods.

But Gumieny, the 75-year-old president of New Berlin Redi-Mix Inc., said the completion of more unique jobs are some of her proudest achievements since she and her husband, Richard, opened the company’s doors in April 1958.

Among other things, the projects include a 2.5-story concrete structure in the shape of a fireman’s hat at a Waukesha fire station and a colorful, 12-foot concrete face in the pavement at the north gate of Milwaukee’s Meier Festival Grounds, where the city’s annual music celebration takes place.

“We put the smile on Summerfest,” she said.

Now that New Berlin Redi-Mix is celebrating its 50th anniversary, Gumieny finally believes her company is on solid footing.

She said she still calls on concrete recipe cards she designed way back when the company started, except with a few novel adaptations.

“We’ve always tried to be on the innovative end,” Gumieny said. “We’re not a company with hundreds of trucks paving I-94.

“Most ready-mix plants have sold out to big conglomerates. We haven’t, so we have to keep up on everything. We have to look out of the box.”

The company provided miles of pervious concrete so water quickly drains through the hiking, biking and walking paths in the handicap accessible Hart Park in Wauwatosa.

“Concrete is becoming more ‘green’ and ecologically friendly,” Gumieny said. “Snow melts quicker on that pavement.”

During the busy season — April through October — the 22-employee company operates with a fleet of 16 pink-and-blue trucks.

The color is Gumieny’s marketing creation from the early years when she had three preschoolers with two more yet to come.

“We went to DuPont to get the pink paint,” she said. “We still do that today. … Those are my favorite colors.”

A welder, Richard Gumieny was a mechanical whiz, Gumieny said, and that spilled over into innovative schemes. He was one of the first in the concrete industry to use fly ash — leftover residue from coal-burning plants — in concrete mixtures, which made them water resistant.

“That was a very ‘green’ way to recycle that coal byproduct,” Gumieny said.

Gumieny hasn’t taken a back seat since her husband died from cancer almost 10 years ago, but she has opted out of 12- to 14-hour days.

Her two daughters — Barbara Gumieny Killey, 47, vice president and general manager, and Mary Gumieny Bultman, 55, corporate treasurer — help oversee truck drivers, mechanics and dispatchers.

The sisters, along with three other siblings, grew up working in the business, cleaning offices and weighing trucks at the scale house.

Killey said a series of hefty projects in 2007, including the foundations for a 56,000-square-foot rehabilitation facility at Waukesha Memorial Hospital and a 70,000-square-foot training center at an M&I Bank branch, offset the nose dive in the residential market.

Also, colored and stamped concrete for patios, driveways and pool decks are gaining in popularity, Bultman said while pulling out a handful of brochures of colors and patterns.

“We try to educate the consumer,” Bultman said. “We work hard to accommodate our customers’ needs. If someone wants a purple patio, we will do our best to get it.”

— Maggie Rossiter Peterman