Every invention is born from an idea. However, Victor Morrissette knows ideas require significant work, time and resources to have value, especially in the concrete business.

“You can have a great idea, and if nobody acts on it, it’s kind of nothing,” he says.  Morrissette, who is vice president of Palatine, Virginia-based AAA Concrete LLC and Pointe Masonry Inc., filed his first patent in 2018. Over the past five years, Morrissette and his sons, Lee and Patrick Morrissette, invented a new pored-wall foundation and basement system.

They received their patent within 18 months but faced a major obstacle to bringing it to market: They needed trucks. After seeing several volumetric concrete trucks at World of Concrete in January 2022, Morrissette began crunching the numbers. As new volumetric trucks are worth $300,000-400,000, it was clear he had a question to answer. Which comes first: attracting the business or buying the equipment?

“You really can’t sell concrete unless you can make concrete. You can’t make the concrete unless you can get equipment, and you can’t get the equipment without financing,” says Morrissette. “You can’t afford to buy the equipment and have it sit around on a field of dreams.”