December 2005
AggMan of the Year
Steve Hatfield:
A flight plan for success
An ability to adapt to change — and to wear many different hats  — ensures blue skies for Steve Hatfield.

by  Executive Editor

“There was never a time that I thought this was my career,” Hatfield says. “I thought this was just a job to get through college. Whatever needed [to be] done, I’d just do. I was just the one who was always building stuff and tinkering with it.”

Hatfield’s commitment to getting things done, his willingness to take the initiative, and his deep work ethic have served him well. During his 37-year tenure with Wichita, Kansas-based Ritchie Sand, Inc., Hatfield’s role has evolved from night watchman to foreman to plant manager to vice president.

In addition to his ever-growing responsibilities within Ritchie Sand, Hatfield has also been very active in state and national associations and has demonstrated strong leadership in advancing operational concerns at those levels. And, although he’s personally modest about his contributions to the aggregates industry, the staff of Aggregates Manager is pleased to recognize Hatfield as the “AggMan of the Year” for 2005.

“Steve is deserving of this recognition,” says Johnny Green, president of Franklinton, Louisiana-based Standard Gravel Co., Inc., and a friend of Hatfield. “He has a long history of serving the industry in areas that aren’t always glamorous, but are sure useful to the industry and the people in it.”

Taking off

Hatfield joined Ritchie Sand in 1968. During his second year in college, Hatfield was a newlywed looking for a part-time income. After starting at one of the company’s asphalt plants, he decided to go to summer school and switched to a night shift at the company’s Wichita sand plant.

As the type of employee who always gets things done, Hatfield worked with great diversity and autonomy even as a very young, inexperienced employee. “I ran the plant at night. I loaded rail cars. I ran the loader and serviced it,” he says. “They turned me loose, and I learned and didn’t get myself into serious trouble.”

Years later, he asked his former manager how he could have entrusted those responsibilities to a 19-year-old kid. The manager reminded him that he’d succeeded in each task.

In the early days, Hatfield says that he truly considered his employment with Ritchie Sand to be a job rather than a career. “I was almost done with school when the foreman’s job was offered to me,” he recalls. “I told them that I wouldn’t take it unless I could complete my last semester of education.”

At that point, Hatfield was traveling 100 miles every other day to finish his bachelor’s degree in industrial technology and working on days he wasn’t in class. “Looking back, you do all kinds of bizarre things when you’re young and don’t know any better,” he laughs.

Through his career path, he’s worn numerous hats including maintenance foreman, production and maintenance manager, and general manager. “It went from part-time to full-time to becoming foreman in five years and becoming a general manager in another five years,” he says. “That background allowed me to do essentially everything here. Through my career, I’ve run all of the equipment. I have a basic understanding of everything from the dredge to the plant.

“The guys are still amazed when, once in a while, we get into a situation, and I go out to a loader and load trucks for a day,” Hatfield adds. “My job has become administrative now, so I don’t do the hands-on, fun stuff as much as I used to.”

Currently, Hatfield’s role is much more management oriented. He oversees permitting, sales and marketing, and operations at Ritchie’s three sand plants. He also had a chance to put his technical skills to work as he designed the operations, including the entire Wichita plant, which is a 2.0 million-ton-per-year facility.

The constantly evolving nature of the business and his role within it keep Hatfield fully engaged in his work. “There’s no handbook to tell you how to run these businesses,” he says. “There are no two days — rarely two hours — that are the same. If you’re a person who likes to figure things out, though, this is a great business.”

A longtime member of the Ritchie executive committee, he has spent the last six months working through due diligence procedures as Ritchie operations were sold to Lafarge North America’s Aggregates Division last month.

Prior to the acquisition by Lafarge, Hatfield had been through the consolidation process as Ritchie Sand made its own acquisitions. Five years ago, Ritchie Sand acquired the Ark River Sand Plant in Oxford, Kansas. That plant produces up to 1.0 million tons per year and serves as the company’s rail shipping facility. A second acquisition was made about a year and a half ago in Coweta, Oklahoma.

While all three operations are located along the Arkansas River, the Coweta plant — which serves the Tulsa market — is the only one involving excavation in the river itself, rather than in the flood plains.

“We basically bought equipment. The fellow who was down there kind of lost interest. He had the permits and he had the equipment, but wasn’t really doing much,” Hatfield says. “We’re building that business almost as a greenfield.”

Going the distance

Looking back at the first 37 years of his career — Hatfield plans to work for at least another decade — he says that one of the biggest reasons why he has stayed in the industry is the people.

“There are some great people working for me, and they’re the reason why we’re successful,” he says, adding that “the Ritchies have allowed me to get involved in the state and the national level, and that’s added a whole new dimension.”

For more than 20 years, Hatfield has been involved with the Kansas Aggregate Producers Association. During that time, he has served on the state association’s safety and environmental committee, its board of directors, and as its president.

“He’s very committed and always well prepared. There’s not a finer man to work with,” says Edward “Woody” Moses, managing director of KAPA, who worked closely with Hatfield through the association’s aggregate groundwater resources task force. “He’s very deserving of the award — he’s been the AggMan out here for a number of years.”

Hatfield also played a pivotal role in ensuring a smooth melding of the operations committees following the merger of the former National Aggregates Association and National Stone Association in 2001.

Serving as co-chair and then as chair of the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association’s Operations Division, Hatfield helped guide the committee realignment, set committee priorities, and arrange a series of successful plant tours.

“We tried to marry the best of the two programs (NAA and NSA), and we kind of fumbled around with that for the first couple of years until we ended up with the format we use now,” Hatfield says, noting, “I found myself in a position with a lot of stone people, but I think that’s also one of the reasons why they asked me to serve in that capacity.” His knowledge of what comprises a good overview of dredging and plant operations proved invaluable to the newly merged group.

“He’s a consummate professional and a very nice guy,” Green notes. “He’s knowledgeable in all the aspects of dredging and applying those things in practical ways.”

“When I first came on, there were a few members who really taught me how to organize one of these events,” says Steve Lenker, NSSGA vice president of operations. “He was instrumental in teaching us how to do our job. It was like a Supreme Court appointment; we threatened to keep him here for life.”

Adds Joy Wilson, NSSGA president and CEO: “What a superb choice Aggregates Manager has made in naming Steve Hatfield as ‘AggMan of the Year!’ Steve is a leader in every sense of the word. He has helped reinvent and revitalize

NSSGA’s Operations Division as its chairman since the merger, and the association is stronger because of his contributions. NSSGA is fortunate to have Steve’s dynamic and energetic involvement.”

Staying on course

Through his long career, Hatfield has had a front row seat to view many changes, including the merger of the two associations and the acquisition of Ritchie Sand, Inc. But just as he’s enjoyed wearing a wide variety of responsibilities, he sees the positive aspects of those changes.

“Certainly, the thing that most people talk about is the fact that there are larger companies with larger spheres of influence,” he says. “Obviously, we’re going through that here. That’s not a bad thing. It changes the face of the industry, but it brings more resources to companies, so I see it as a plus.”

From an operational standpoint, those resources are particularly valuable to sand and gravel operations that may lag behind their crushed stone counterparts in terms of production strategies such as automation.

“Any new sand producer is going to take a hard look at automation,” Hatfield notes. “We’re using some radio-frequency control and other things that are not on the leading edge, but are a taste of things to come for the sand and gravel industry. The larger the plant is, the more likely it is that they’re going to become involved in the efficiencies that come from automation and monitoring things with PC-based equipment.”

Blue skies ahead

On the personal front, Hatfield has been married since 1968 and has two daughters, one of whom works as an office manager at the Oxford plant. He also has two grandchildren.

While the fairways have no appeal for him, airplanes and motorcycles do intrigue Hatfield. He and his wife spend their free time traveling literally across the United States in his Cessna 182 airplane. An avid pilot, Hatfield has logged 2,300 hours of flight time and has earned FAA certification as an aircraft mechanic. “I had enough interest in aviation that I went to school five nights a week for three years — now not as young, but still foolish,” he says.

When Hatfield and his wife celebrated their 30th anniversary, they traveled on a small Alaskan cruise with about 100 other passengers. By the end of the journey, his shipmates had dubbed him the Sand-Man Pilot, and the moniker is an appropriate one for an individual who has enjoyed such high levels of professional and personal success.

Reprinted from Aggregates Manager Magazine
December 2005