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You
could call him a block head and he wouldn’t mind. Timothy James Olson has
had his mind on blocks for most of his working life. But to explain why,
press the rewind button to some three years ago. That’s when Olson and his
wife Kathy decided that maybe they’d like to extend their usual winter vacation
to full-time living in Mazatlan. These natives of Vancouver, Wash., aren’t
of an age to retire yet, but they had begun to think about it. Kathy is
a massage therapist, and from the reports of a satisfied customer, “one
of the best.” She knew she’d have no trouble making a living here. But what
would Tim do? His experience is in the making of concrete building blocks.
That’s what he was doing back home in Vancouver. On a trip to Cabo San Lucas
a couple of years ago, he had seen some building going on with workers using
concrete blocks instead of the traditional Mexican bricks-and-sticks type
of construction. But it’s still a fairly unknown concept around here. Even
less well known hereabouts is the Columbia blockmaking machine that comes
from Vancouver, the one Tim has experience with. He went to a couple of
local manufacturers of construction materials but found them less than fascinated
with his description of the equipment he could bring here to help produce
construction blocks. In the end, he decided to import a Columbia and make
the blocks himself, and he found a Mexican partner to help finance the project.
The newly formed El Patron Block Co. found a scrubby piece of property in
El Vainillo, a village on the road to El Recodo within the municipality
of Mazatlan. It has the advantage of being near to a ready supply of gravel,
an essential material for blockmaking. They cleared off the shrubbery, leveled
off the land, and poured a concrete pad with a corrugated metal roof for
shade. Next came the setting up of their own transformer.They also needed
a ready supply of |
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gravel
and water, so they set up a 60,000-liter water tank. It wasn’t hard to find
workers from among the locals in El Vainillo, but the few they’ve hired
so far need to be trained. The work force around town either commutes to
jobs in the city or goes out into the fields of the area’s farms and ranches.
The biggest snag in getting the factory into production was the problem
of importing the block making gear, including the Columbia machine. Olson
says he went to Vancouver and loaded the parts and pieces onto five semi
trucks. He accompanied the first four, one by one, and personally saw them
over the border at Nogales. He did not go back to escort the fifth truck
through the border formalities, and says now it was a mistake — “You just
have to be there with it.” Since he wasn’t, that truck was delayed for 45
days, which not only delayed the start-up at this end, it also cost the
newborn company a surcharge for 45 days’ worth of storage. There were some
tools missing, too, says Olson. But they finally got things going in a limited
way. The Columbia is now spitting out blocks in a variety of sizes and shapes.
Tim says he can make them in various sizes from 4-inch to 12-inch or larger.
They can be smooth-sided or textured. They can be notched for the construction
of lintels, doorjambs and the like. Actually, Tim says he can make 400 different
kinds of blocks including colored ones, textured ones, offbeat items on
request. “Eventually,” Tim says, “we’ll be running 16 hours a day, seven
days a week. And we will be employing 20-25 people. Our target is to turn
out 10,000 blocks a day.” In praise of his product, this blockmaker says
the blocks are exceptionally strong. “Nobody knows how hard concrete gets.
These blocks are 1,000 percent better than bricks, they’re excellent for
earthquake-proof buildings, and they do not absorb as much moisture in this
humid climate.” |
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