Concrete Contractor connected with Britney Goodreau, rotary hammer and concrete tools product manager at Milwaukee Tool, during World of Concrete 2026.
Goodreau shared their insight into what has been ailing concrete contractors, what manufacturers are doing to ease those challenges, their outlook for the year, and more.
Q. In your opinion, what has been the biggest challenge for concrete contractors in 2025? How do you think OEMs are going to address that problem in 2026?
Britney GoodreauMilwaukee Tool
We’re at this unique time where people own both they're struggling to understand where to place each of them and still be productive on the site ports and generators running. It takes time to set all that up. If you're with a battery solution, it's super quick. You just grab and go. However, within the concrete space, we know that we're still facing the runtime challenges across the board, no matter what brand it is. Something that we're really trying to address and overcome is, how can we push runtime further? How can we really push the system, whether that's MX, M18, or M12, how can we push it further to start meeting those needs so that they stay productive and they stay safe.
Q. How are you driving that message forward? There is a mentality that if a battery only lasts for "this" amount of time, meanwhile the gas tank can refueled in five minutes. How can you drive that message?
I'm not going to lie, it's difficult. It's change, and change is always hard to adapt. The biggest thing that really sticks with users when they see it is two things, one, speaking in terms of “this is going to be able to accomplish this certain job,” “to give you the ability to do this amount of material,” “you get this many minutes,” or “this many holes,” try and frame it up to them in terms of, “this is the amount of job that you can complete with a battery.”
The other aspect of that is that we've been really focused on getting good demos with the customers. Once they feel it, once they try it on-site, then they're much more willing to adapt. It's easier for them to believe because they see how much they can get done. Our sales team and our product team, we've been really, really focused on making sure the customer is having a good experience when they demo the product, so that it really hits that message home.
Q. How do you think 2026 is going to turn out economically? Are you optimistic for the year?
I definitely am. I'm positive for what this will bring. One in terms of just innovation that not only our brand, but other brands are launching this year. The new products that are launching will help them with that productivity.
In terms of overall construction uptick and construction jobs, I still see there's going to be jobs that have to be done. Things within civil infrastructure, government, data centers, jobs that just have to be done. We do see potential. We do see things looking up this year in terms of where we can really penetrate with users with our Milwaukee system.
Q. Is there an innovation or feature that you're most excited about?
Within the concrete world and within Milwaukee Tool, I'm honestly super excited about performance. Advancing performance within this space has been one a huge hurdle, but such a huge benefit to the users and our brand overall. Being able to show that we can not only compete with corded, but be better than corded. Giving [contractors] that confidence in cordless — that cordless is capable to do the job — is something that I find super exciting. It gets users really excited, too.
One thing that I really like to keep pushing on is our vibration. We're starting to see more interest and more care about the levels of vibration felt by the user, not just here in the US, but globally. Vibration is becoming a bigger and bigger topic. All of our rotary hammers and demo hammers have what we call ABS, or anti vibration system to reduce that. I'm super excited to see where that goes in the future, to really push that down as far as we can.
The message of getting more battery powered tools and light equipment onto the jobsite or is still a message that's happening. We're still driving those productivity benefits and all the things that a contractor can do, but it's been a few years since they really started getting going.
Q. What is the biggest difference between those batteries from five years ago and what we have in 2026?
If you look at our MX system, for example, that light equipment space has completely transitioned to our batteries in the past year. We launched MX with two batteries, our CP3.0 and 6.0 battery. Within the last 5 years, we've been able to completely update those batteries to our new Forge technology with tablet cells, to have more power, run cooler, last longer, and charge faster.
One advantage we have with launching our MX system five, six years ago is that we've already been able to bring a next generation on the system. Advancing it forward is super exciting to provide that better experience and better runtime.
Q. Is there something that's not yet cordless that you want to be? What's on your wish list?
It would be something that could help automate drilling for those really big civil sites and data centers where they're drilling hundreds and hundreds of holes a day. It would take off the fatigue from the user. Imagine running that rotary hammer over 100 times a day, so being able to automate that in some way and have move along with the user is something exciting.
