Introducing Todd Cope: An Aggregate Industry Expert Joins Stockpile Reports to Help Businesses Make Better Inventory Tracking Decisions

Author: Stockpile Reports

Employee Spotlight: Todd Cope | Blog | Stockpile Reports

Stockpile Reports is excited to announce the addition of Todd Cope to the team as a Sr. Solutions Consultant.

We are thrilled to welcome him and his 20 years of hands-on aggregate and ready-mix industry experience. What makes Todd unique to our team is that he has lived the complex struggles of an onsite aggregate and ready-mix district manager firsthand. His ability to understand and relate to the pain points of our consumers and find solutions for those customers is invaluable.

History & Experience

Originally from Montana, Todd, his wife of 26 years, Pam, and two daughters, Cami and Kylie, now reside in Washington State. Their love for the outdoors makes Washington the perfect place to call home. In Todd’s spare time, you can find him hunting, gardening, and attending home games at the University of Washington with his friends. In the coming months, Todd and his family, including his new son-in-law, Marcus, are going to be visiting Mexico, one of their favorite beach destinations.

Todd was born and raised in the building materials industry. From a young age, Todd has fond memories of playing at the asphalt plant that his father managed. “My father was in the construction industry when he transferred [to Washington] from Montana. He went to work for a company out of Tacoma, operating an asphalt plant. So, my older brother, Bryan, and I basically grew up using the asphalt plant as our jungle-gym or big toy. We were living it, hearing about it, getting dirty to the point that at the end of the day, my dad would take us home, he lived on a lake, and he would take us to the end of the dock and just throw us in.”

Todd and his brother spent many of their childhood days at the plant, playing and getting dirty, so it wasn’t surprising that Todd began his career in the same industry after attending college at Central Washington University. Throughout college, he worked for his father at various building materials companies and in concrete construction. One day, “my dad came home from work and said that an owner of a company that supplies equipment parts for the aggregate and asphalt industry was looking for a salesperson.” Todd went on to work for the company for the next 10 years, becoming their general manager, implementing manufacturing and fabricating processes, and being an influential leader in the organization.

After his tenure with Wear Parts Northwest, Todd went to work for another company in the industry primarily selling equipment, such as crushers, screens, and conveyors, to aggregate companies. “One of the best things that I look back on in my career, being in the industry and being in sales, is that I was exposed to hundreds of different operations and thousands of different people that had different ways of doing things. I learned a great deal from working with these people and operations. I was able to apply that in my next role, which was with Rinker Materials.”

In 2005, Todd joined the Rinker Materials team as a project manager in the aggregate division and worked with them through their acquisition by Cemex, one of the largest cement manufacturing companies in the U.S., in 2007. Promoted to the Health and Safety and Environmental Manager for the NW region, Todd continued his career with Cemex and went on to manage their ready-mix division in northern Washington. “I would have to say that looking back on my days right out of college, being involved with concrete construction, helped me navigate the first years as the district manager.” Todd was at the helm of a ready-mix division, facing the challenges and opportunities that came with it. The same challenges he is now solving for customers with Stockpile Reports.

After 12 years with Rinker Materials and Cemex, Todd went to work for another aggregate equipment company, selling crushing and screening equipment. Shortly thereafter, David Boardman, CEO and founder of Stockpile Reports, contacted Todd through the Washington Aggregates & Concrete Association (WACA), where Todd was the President and sat on the Board of Directors. David was looking for someone who had gone through the acquisition with Cemex and we “really just hit it off and from that point on, we stayed in touch and talked a few times.” Over the course of the year, Todd and David continued to have conversations and when David reached out about an opportunity to join the team, Todd accepted.

Solving Problems for Aggregate Companies with Stockpile Reports

What makes Todd’s experience uniquely valuable to the customers of Stockpile Reports is that he has truly “felt the pain” of running and managing an aggregate and ready-mix plant. He understands the struggles and opportunities of managing and accounting for materials, ensuring quality and timeliness, and the importance of reliability and precision from a leadership perspective.

In our interview with Todd, he said that he is most excited about joining Stockpile Reports because the software that Stockpile Reports offers “solves major issues in the industry.” Stockpile Reports “leverages technology with minimal personnel and has globally transformed inventory measurement, not only in aggregates but in 14 other categories.” Because Todd had experienced the struggles firsthand, he’s excited for the opportunity to help business owners and leadership teams improve their inventory processes and deliver precise and reliable data so that companies can make sound strategic decisions.

Thoughts on Stockpile Reports for Logistics

We spoke to Todd about his take on Stockpile Reports’ recently announced service offering, Stockpile Reports for Logistics, and here is what he had to say:

“It’s a game changer. I know firsthand after managing a ready-mix division what a remote ready-mix plant goes through to get aggregate inventory to be able to make the ready-mix concrete. Not to mention the cement. All that material has to be logistically shipped in and with the archaic system that we had, we had internal issues that we had to overcome.”

More specifically, he identified challenges that are all too common in the industry.

  1. Trusting the Numbers: In Todd’s experience, regardless of the amount of detail that was shared, there was always distrust in the aggregate inventory numbers his team was providing to the executive team. He would share drawings and provide details around how the piles we prepped for measurement, how they were measured, how they were re-measured, when they were measured, who measured them, and so on. There was always a level of distrust in the accuracy and reliability of the numbers.
  2. Frustration Between Production & Leadership: The constant level of distrust created frustration and animosity between the boots on the ground employees and management. Inventory numbers needed to be measured when the production plant was closed (or during “dead time”), meaning employees were required to work overtime in the early hours of the day to complete the task. He changed that.
  3. Risk Management: Because inventory needed to be measured when the inventory levels weren’t fluctuating, inventory, in Todd’s particular case, was being measured at 4 AM every morning. This can be a dangerous job, Todd said. “You are on the plant in the dark with only one other employee at 4 AM.” There was a lot of risks involved. “They would have to shimmy up a silo 80 feet in the air in the middle of winter and drop a tennis ball with a string attached to it to get some type of ambiguous dimension and calculate it out. And what it really came down to was they were risking their lives for 2 hours of double overtime pay.” What many operations don’t know is that there are solutions out there, like Stockpile Reports, that eliminate this risk.

Why Stockpile Reports?

Todd has seen the enormous growth that Stockpile Reports has experienced. He has lived the struggles of a plant supervisor and a district manager. He has been through acquisition, faced the internal political struggle, and seen, firsthand, the need for precise and reliable inventory tracking that mitigates undue risk to employees. He understands the problems and challenges that companies face when it comes to inventory tracking and Todd’s desire to help companies better track and make decisions based on their inventory is backed by years of experience in the industry.

Todd believes in the integrity of the services that Stockpile Reports is providing to their customers and sees the potential for many other organizations to utilize it as a tool to improve their inventory tracking processes, make better and stronger strategic decisions, and resolve disputes when it comes to their inventory.

To contact Todd Cope directly, please email him at todd.cope@stockpilereports.com. If you are in the aggregate industry and need help with inventory management, inventory tracking, and/or inventory measurement for stockpiles, Todd would be happy to speak with you and find the right solution for your unique business.

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