One Wisconsin resident has a pretty reliable way of judging how the economy in his neck of the woods is doing. Watching mixer trucks roll by. "From the mid-1990s through 2008 concrete trucks from Lycon, PAC, Churchill and Beloit Redi-Mix were as common on the road as late-model Cavaliers. They were everywhere!," writes Steve Knox on a blog called Gen-X in J-Ville (that's Janesville, WI, for the rest of us). And after more than a couple of bleak years, he now sees a steady stream of front discharge mixers. "Sure a sight for sore eyes" as he put it. We couldn't have said it better ourselves.