Concrete production industry pioneer Frank Principe had a laser-beam focus on quality control and his company supplied concrete to some of New York City's most iconic structures, The Concrete Producer magazine, by Don Talend, brand storytelling, content management, and content strategy expert. Construction industry

1. D
rop in on a family-owned neighborhood delicatessen in Queens and the apron-clad
proprietor approaches you and asks, in passable English, how he can help you. He
sees to it that you don’t leave until you’ve got just the right cut of meat. If this isn’t
the start of a business relationship and he isn’t sure he’ll see you again, he hasn’t done
his job. Do that and you’ll get an idea of how Francis J. Principe—the quintessential
New Yorker, member of the World War II Generation, and American—operated his
ready-mixed concrete business for about 40 years.
Principe, now 91 years young, saw putting the customer first as the only way to sur-
vive as partner in Principe-Danna, founded in a hard-edged industrial area of Queens in
1946. Principe had backed into the concrete business but was determined to make a go
of it. Noting that his company entered the fray against large established companies with
no interest in friendly competition, “Everybody said to me, ‘You’re absolutely crazy.
They’ve got their own tugboats, their own sand pits, their own cement company. How
are you going to compete with them?’” says Principe. “I said, ‘I don’t know, but in this
city the A&P and the other big supermarkets operate, and next door you have the little
delicatessen. He makes a living, so there’s got to be a place for us here. Maybe we can
furnish something that the big guy can’t furnish.’ I wanted to have the reputation for
making the best pound—not just yard—of concrete in New York.”
He had graduated with a degree in civil engineering from Cornell University in 1931
and worked for his father Louis, an Italian immigrant and Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia’s super-
intendent of public buildings. He continued to work for his father, a commercial contractor
who began building single-family homes under the New Deal-spawned Federal Housing
Administration in the Maspeth neighborhood of Queens in 1944. Nine houses the family
had built sat unoccupied because with so many first-time home buyers drafted, mortgage
lenders had pulled back on financing. Principe tried to enlist in the Navy Corps of Engineers
as a lieutenant but was instead offered only a warrant officer’s commission, so he worked a
The Best Pound of
CONCRETEWhen the war was over, the men and women who had been involved, in uniform and in civil -
ian capacities ... immediately began building their lives and the world they wanted. They were
mature beyond their years, tempered by what they had been through. ... They stayed true to
their values of personal responsibility, duty, honor, and faith.
They were a new kind of army now, moving onto the landscapes of industry, science, art,
public policy ... bringing to them the same passions and discipline that had served them so well
during the war.
—Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation
B Y D O N TA L E N D

2. ᮣ Frank Principe used a delicatessen approach to
business and was an early crusader for concrete
quality control among New York City producers
Among his achievements,
91-year-young Frank
Principe supplied con-
crete to New York City’s
World Trade Center.

3. couple of jobs supplying the war effort until
1945, when a government contract ended.
Principe’s outlook was still bright.
The economy was ready to boom as it
shifted from wartime to consumer pro-
duction. “I knew there was going to be a
big expansion of industrial facilities, so I
would find industrial property and a cus-
tomer so I could build a building for
him,” Principe says. “I came across a site
that I really fell in love with.” The site
was close to water, rail, and a bridge con-
necting Queens and Manhattan. Financ-
ing, however, would be a problem.
Principe met up with Jim Delia, a
friend of his late father who also was look-
ing for investment property. Delia con-
vinced Principe to make Delia’s son-in-law,
Frank Danna, a military aviator who was
coming home and looking for a career,
Principe’s partner in owning the property.
Getting what he wished for
At first, Principe planned only to sell
cement to pay the new property’s $65,000
annual taxes until he could find a manu-
facturer for whom to build a facility. But a
potential customer told Principe he would
need to provide ready-mix trucks.
Principe found four circa 1928 Mack
trucks with 3-cubic-yard Jaeger mixers sit-
ting in a New Jersey swamp, the former
property of a New Jersey ready-mix com-
pany that folded when the war started.
“I had no idea what I was getting into.
Money was going out of the checkbook for
everything. I thought, geez, I’m broke.
When you’re in the hole, there’s only one
way out; you gotta go up. I told Danna,
‘We’ve got to work here for nothing. We’ve
got to turn this around or go broke.’”
Top: It would not be an exaggeration to say that Manhattan’s sky-
line owes as much to the tireless concrete quality control efforts
of Frank Principe as anything else. Above: A dog show was the
inspiration for one creative Principe seminar. Here he demon-
strates how various concrete materials and practices must work
together as a team of leashed dogs at a dog show does.
Principe-Danna delivered its first load of concrete in 1946 with
some refurbished 1928 chain-drive Mack trucks that had been
found rusting away in a New Jersey swamp. “I had no idea
what I was getting into,” says Principe.

4. Principe decided to differentiate by
providing concrete that met national
standards, not just those found in the city’s
building code. His competitors were un-
knowingly helpful. “Most of the people
had gotten into the business after being
truck drivers and dock workers. They
weren’t college men; they weren’t trained;
they did things in a manner that was sheer
strength and push and pull. None of them
was a good businessman. That’s who I
found myself surrounded by.”
In fairness,therewasno incentive for pro-
ducers to adhere to ACI recommendations,
Principe notes. “The competition by builders
to bring buildings in cheap was overwhelming.
The engineers were beholden to these builders
who’d say, ‘Never mind about quality; I want
the job cheap.’ A lot of the lousy concrete that
wentintobuildings was allowed.In our original
New York building code, it was 700 psi for arch
concrete. The concrete was so low-stress you
could put anything in there, so why get excited
with quality?”
Principe began attending ACI semi-
nars, spending time in the lab, and reading
about concrete quality control. He incorpo-
rated his newfound knowledge into his day-
to-day operations and enlisted the help of
his second wife, Virginia (his first wife,
Frances, died in 1947, and he remarried in
1950). “She enjoyed the monotony of fig-
ures. I always had test results that needed to
be studied and calibrated, so she got inter-
ested in recording histories on jobs. I’d
show them to the contractor and say, ‘This
The Last Laugh—and a New Association
T
he circumstances leading
up to the formation of
the Association of New
York City Concrete
Producers in 1974 fit into
the it-was-funny-if-it-didn’t-
happen-to-you category.
Frank Principe can look
back and laugh now, and he
got the last laugh then, too.
“Friday in New York is a
big concrete day,” says
Principe. “Everybody works
toward getting the forms set up
and getting concrete delivered
on Friday. The [Teamsters]
union knows that.
“Anyhow, comes this
weekend, and concrete is
wanted everywhere. So we
order all the cement to be
delivered, and we get every-
thing all set up. I get to the
dock at 7 o’clock, and where
are all the drivers? ‘Boss,
didn’t you hear? They called
a strike.’” Owners of city
ready-mix companies met at
a hotel that morning to
assess the situation, and
Principe saw that amid all
the hand-wringing, nothing
would get done.
“So now I get up, and
I’m all excited. ‘Those so-
and-sos! Not a single word
did they give us last night!’
The lawyer says to me, ‘You
can always go to court and
get an injunction.’
“‘Well, fine. Let’s hit
these so-and-sos with every-
thing we can.
“‘Well,’ the lawyer says,
‘you’ve got to hand them the
papers to go to the judge.’”
Word was the union officials
had flown to San Francisco
to hide so they wouldn’t be
served an injunction. “I said,
‘I’ll go to San Francisco—I
know that town—and I’ll
find those so-and-sos! Give
me the papers! Who’ll come
with me?’” Joe Vigliarolo of
Vigliarolo Bros. agreed to go,
and the two just caught the
last plane out of town before
the weekend.
“So we finally get to
San Francisco, and we’ve got
to guess which hotel they’d
stay at. I said, ‘I think there’s
a hotel St. Francis down at
the bottom of the hill there
that I stayed at once—that
would be ideal for them’.”
The two waited outside
of the elevators, holding up
newspapers and peeking to
see who stepped out. “Lo
and behold, after about half
an hour, down comes the
boss man, all decked out.
Joe beats me to it. He rushes
over and says, ‘Hello!’ and
the boss man says, ‘What
are you guys doing here?’
Joe says, ‘We’ve got a little
present for you. Here you
are.’ The boss man looks at
it, and he says, ‘You dirty
so-and-sos! What are you
doing to me?’ We said,
‘You’re the dirty so-and-so
for what you’re doing to us
in New York!’”
Ending the strike
didn’t satisfy Principe for
the long term. “We’re rid-
ing along in the plane and
I’m explaining to Joe what
we could do as an organi-
zation. You’re not just
talking for yourself, you’re
talking for an industry.
With a little help politi-
cally—you can help peo-
ple with their cam-
paigns—you might get
what you want. Joe says,
‘You know, Frank, you’re
right. We’ll do it. We’ll
start the organization.’”
In a letter dated Feb.
12, 1974, Principe invited all
ready-mix producers in the
city to a meeting in order to
form an organization. The
response was overwhelming:
representatives of 34 compa-
nies attended, and the asso-
ciation was born. Vigliarolo
was elected the association’s
first president, and Principe
was elected secretary.
In the midst of a labor dispute, Principe led the effort to unite
New York producers into the Association of New York City
Concrete Producers in 1974. Here, Principe (third from left)
meets with fellow association officers George Negri, Joe
Vigliarolo, and John Quadrozzi.

5. shows what I’m selling you, and if you want,
take it to the engineer and show him how
you’re delivering a good structure.’”
To get a fair shake from testing labs,
Principe became a stickler on handling
testing cylinders. “I would have my own
engineer make test cylinders for compari-
son. When it came to jobs where a com-
petitor was negligent—cylinders would be
left out on the sidewalk all weekend—I
used to take a picture and show the pho-
tographs to my customers. Nobody ever
did anything like this. I was some kind of
a nut.”
Between these practices and his
involvement with the Concrete Industry
Board (CIB) of New York and ACI
Committee 214, “Evaluation of Results of
Tests Used to Determine the Strength of
Concrete,” Principe developed quite a
reputation.
“He and his wife were the first in the
city to promote the statistical evaluation
of his concrete,” says Jim Halpin, former
head of QC with a competitor, Transit-
Mix Concrete Corp., from 1971 to 1985.
“He used it as a sales tool very effectively
because he proved that his product could
do the job. We were forced to also go into
statistical evaluation. Frank and his wife
used to sit at home at night and do it; it
was unbelievable what this man did.”
“He was one of the fellas who ran
around with a white hat, one of the good
guys,” adds Ray Heun, P.E., a fellow CIB
member. “If there were any areas of diffi-
culty, he’d rally right away and correct
them—much more responsive to quality
than the other ready-mix firms.”
“I was a little bee stinging the bigger
guys here and there, taking jobs away from
them,” says Principe, who in 1970 became
the first producer to serve as CIB presi-
dent. Principe-Danna’s reputation got it
involved with several high-profile projects
that defined New York City, including the
World Trade Center, Madison Square
Garden, Roosevelt Island, and JFK Airport.
Contractors knew Principe-Danna was
the delicatessen among ready-mix compa-
nies. “It was my edge. Unless you cheated
on the cement, you couldn’t stay in busi-
ness. I wouldn’t cheat, so my job was diffi-
cult. I had to work all these years with very
little return.”
Elevating an industry
Principe knew, however, that a poor
industry reputation meant that if producers
did not provide a product of acceptable
quality, more and more high-rises in
Manhattan’s sprouting skyline would be
framed in steel. He knew he had to share his
knowledge at ACI seminars for the good of
Principe-Danna and the industry at large.
However, “I thought they were mak-
ing it so complicated that the average man
was at a disadvantage. Finally, I thought,
talk about it in your own language. So I
started out with an easy concept: what is
concrete? Concrete is taking a lot of small
particles and making one big mass.” One
of his unique seminars was born.
“You take a box 3 by 3 by 3 feet—
that’s a cubic yard. Let’s take bowling balls
and get as many in the box as we can.
There are a lot of spaces, so now we put
billiard balls in between the bowling balls.
There are still spaces, so now we put mar-
bles in between the billiard balls. Still
there are spaces, so you get BBs and put
them in between, and now we’re getting
close to a solid mass.” He would let the
sides of the box down, and the contents
would fall out. “I’d say, ‘That’s stupid; we
didn’t make anything. Let’s make some-
thing.’ We’d start all over, get the bowling
balls and paint them with glue. Then we’d
get the marbles and billiard balls and we
put them in and make them stick. Now
take the sides away and you’ve got a mass;
that’s concrete. Let’s say you can’t get all
the bowling balls that you want, so you’re
short one. You fill the space with more
marbles and more billiard balls, but there’s
more surface area. That means you’re
gonna need more glue. Your aggregates
determine the amount of cement.
Everybody understands that.”
A more difficult task would be con-
veying the idea of variation in test results.
Principe thought about family hobby:
showing dogs. One dog show event, in
which a handler made a team of dogs
move in unison, inspired another seminar.
Principe used stuffed dogs to repre-
sent different concrete materials and prac-
tices. “I made it fun; I made it interesting.
I put it on as an ACI seminar, and it was
the talk of the convention.”
Principe’s efforts in quality control
earned him ACI’s Henry L. Kennedy
Award for outstanding technical and
administrative service in 1979. He is also
an ACI Fellow. To give city producers a
united voice in labor and specifications
matters, he helped form the Association of
New York City Concrete Producers in
1974. Though retired, Principe still does
work on behalf of the industry when asked.
Looking back, he can see his impact.
“Now you see the industry working
with 8000, 10,000, 12,000-pound con-
crete. They have learned a lot, stuff that I
have always advocated. They haven’t
come far enough, but they’ve made
changes. The makeup of each company
has to be that I’m gonna get $10, I’m not
gonna get $9.90; let the other guy have
the job. If that starts to happen enough,
you can get the good prices and justify
what’s got to be done for good concrete.
The industry is being pushed that way-it’s
not going on its own accord.”
What’s the key to succeeding in this
business? Says Principe, “It’s all hard work
and dedication. I never went and played
golf, I never went out to lunch; I had things
to do. I ran a delicatessen; I was out selling.
I was out on jobs, seeing that my drivers
were doing the right thing. And that’s what
it takes to be a good ready-mix supplier.”
A contribution from the Hanley-
Wood, LLC VIP donation fund will be
made to Middle Tennessee State Univer-
sity’s General Scholarship Fund at the
request of Frank Principe.
Publication #J01C034
Copyright © 2001 Hanley-Wood, LLC
All rights reserved