CONVENTION CRASHING: WORLD OF CONCRETE EXPOSITION

Saturday, Jan. 27, 2007 | 7:11 a.m.

It's painted deep, lustrous red, with orange flames curving back on it as if swept by the wind. The billet aluminium parts of the body gleam icily. The tonneau cover is lifted to reveal a decadent bed of red leather. And its wheel revolves around a custom rim.

Yup, that's one heck of a wheelbarrow.

"That's a $32,000 wheelbarrow," says Rik Gagnon, vice president of marketing for White Cap Construction Supply. "That's in better shape than my car."

It was resting behind the velvet rope at the World of Concrete Exposition at the Las Vegas Convention Center on Thursday. Many of the anticipated 85,000 conventioneers are stopping to gape and point at the 'barrow, and a few even wander back to see its inspiration, a hot rod 1931 Ford roadster pickup truck designed by Boyd Coddington of TV's "American Hot Rod" fame. But it was felt that the pickup by itself just wasn't enough.

"It's not really construction construction," Gagnon says, "so I said, 'Hey Boyd, build me a wheelbarrow.' "

And it's just nuts to the concrete industry guys, this dandified wheelbarrow that could never be used to haul actual cement slop.

Me, I'm more impressed by the industry's regular and highly practical tools for everyday use that I'm already trying to justify home-ownership of. Like a diamond-bladed chain saw, say. Lots of everyday uses there. Opening cans, topping hedges, fending off killer robots, etc., etc.

The shotcrete concrete sprayers from Allentown Equipment sure looked really promising, all big motors and the general appearance of a concussion-inducing garden hose. The engineer, Eric Slotter, said it could push the goop 500 feet, which totally puts a Super Soaker in the shade, even assuming you could fill the thing with liquid concrete.

Oh yeah, Slotter enthuses, it can go 200 feet vertically and 300 feet horizontally.

Really? Sweet. Wait, what do you mean?

You know, he says. In the hose.

What? But how far does it spray?

More like three or four feet, he tells me.

Suddenly, a $65,000 shotcrete sprayer didn't sound like a good investment.

But a $67,900 mobile rock conveyer truck does.

Conveyor Applications Systems' 26,345-pound behemoth not only hauls loads of gravel, it dispenses it. The conveyor-belt arm not only conveys rocks, but will go fast enough to hurl the gravel 100 feet and is controlled by a two-joystick remote control. This is the kind of feature that should make changing lanes a snap, even against Escalades.

I wonder if you can get one with an iPod-ready stereo?

Mold your own garden gnome

Say you have talent for sculpture, a dab hand at casting a sublime form in living rock, done so skillfully that you make high art the masses can appreciate. Say you make garden gnomes.

But how do you make enough of them for the masses?

Polytek Development Corp., maker of rubber and silicone molding kits for all occasions, can help you. The materials for a 1-foot-high gnome mold would probably cost you less than $100, salesman Stan Chickey says. And the company can cater to your larger, nongnome needs, too.

Says Chickey, "We have a complete range of rubbers for all kinds of applications."

Tax dollars at work. Really.

Way in the back of the second floor of the South Hall, the nether reaches of the concrete expo, sits Alex Davis. He's got a small table, a laptop computer, a display monitor for the laptop and a handful of pamphlets. Oh, and free pencils, too. People like the pencils.

He's here to tell you about the U.S. Census.

"It's not just population statistics, you know," he says.

No, indeed. There's business statistics, employment statistics, housing statistics - oh, just lots of statistics.

Being a census analyst is Davis' first job out of college.

"I've been working for the Census for four months. Two months in, they said, 'You want to go to Vegas?' " Davis shrugs in happy bewilderment. " 'Uh, sure,' I said."

The government put him up in the Luxor. But despite the fact that he's stuck in the back of the hall and no one would know if he wasn't there for nine hours every day, he shows up. Only the stubble on his face suggests that he's having any fun at all.

"Since I'm from Maine, this is just way too much for me," Davis says. "I could use a nap."

From the Unfortunate Names Department

Putzmeister, manufacturer of concrete boom-pump trucks.

"It's pronounced 'Pootz-meister,' " a salesman insists.

But their wonderful promotional bags are not helping matters, bearing as they do the motto "Putzmeister: More Than Equipment."

Overheard

"See? And here we were looking at all the other concrete."

- One of the rare female conventioneers to another as they pause in front of a decorative concrete booth