Vulcan’s Kennesaw Quarry is well known for the granite aggregate it produces, but is probably best known for its education program.

When Kennesaw Quarry began mining granite in the early 1950s, that area of northwestern Georgia was fairly empty, nothing like the suburban-Atlanta neighborhood that now surrounds the facility. Mining was easier when there was little development and few neighbors. But the area would find itself transformed from agriculture to a bedroom community for growing Atlanta and then a center for commercial, residential, and institutional development. Kennesaw Quarry supplied materials for much of that growth — the portion of Interstate 75 that runs through the area; Cobb County’s general aviation airport that was built in the 1960s on a portion of the property owned by the quarry; and Kennesaw State College (now University), which was founded in 1966; not to mention Town Center Mall, Cobb Place Shopping Mall, and a shopping strip along one of Cobb County’s busiest roadways. Over time, as more people began living and working in the area, Vulcan lost its anonymity. As civilization surrounded Kennesaw Quarry, mining became more complicated, but what might seem like a curse is actually a blessing.

Education is the key

Vulcan knew that the key to addressing concerns from the encroaching community was to educate the public about the operation and the importance of mining. It wasn’t enough for the quarry just to be involved in the community, the community needed to know why the quarry was there and what was going on inside the pit. So Kennesaw began an aggressive community relations program.

“Our community relations program began in the 1980s when Vulcan decided to relocate the county road that ran through the middle of the plant area to the edge of the property,” says Steve Collier, plant manager. “This allowed Kennesaw Quarry to begin work on the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association’s ‘About Face Program,’ which led to the quarry’s designation as Showplace and, ultimately, Quarry of the Year’ in 1997. Once we felt a little better about our appearance and our operation, we began hosting tours of our facility.”

Enter Edith Parivechio, community relations coordinator. When Vulcan built a new employee training facility at the quarry, she recognized a greater potential. “It started out as an employee building, but it evolved,” Parivechio says. “After we built the building, we began putting granite samples in display cases. Granite samples are nice, but I thought it would be even better to display other minerals and objects as well. We have a great collection of fossils and minerals, and exhibits showing the importance of mining to our society.”

The building quickly became a museum and a place to educate school children, the community, and more. “There are three elementary schools nearby, and they did maybe five or six tours a year,” Parivechio says. “If they had a teacher who enjoyed teaching earth science or geology, they’d bring their students over for a tour.”

The new employee training facility quickly became a museum and a classroom for educating school children and the community.

But even with the quarry’s meeting room and museum, there just weren’t that many students coming to the quarry because it wasn’t well known — until the Wienman Museum (now TELLUS Northwest Georgia Science Center) brought some teachers to the quarry as part of a workshop. “The Weinman hosted a week-long workshop for North Georgia earth science teachers, and one full day was spent at Kennesaw Quarry,” Parivechio says. “There were 33 teachers in that group. Those teachers went back to different parts of the state, and people learned about us by word of mouth. The following year, I had 10,000 students visit the quarry. I never had to pick up the phone or advertise.”

When the children from local schools started visiting the museum and attending the education sessions, parents would sometimes come along. Before long, Vulcan was able to get the aggregate story out to just about everyone in the community. But it didn’t stop at the elementary, middle, or high school level. “We’ve always had local college groups come, but last year we had college students and their teachers visit from five states,” Parivechio says, “and we also had industry groups visit from three different countries.”

Parivechio conducts the tours, with logistical help from the plant employees and safety department. Safety is paramount and a safety briefing and review of the rules of conduct while on the property are always the first order of business. “We are advocates for our business and industry, but it is important that we incorporate information from the schools’ earth science curriculum,” Parivechio says. Students are shown different kinds of aggregate and videos depicting the production process and how the products are used.

“We try to keep the message entertaining, as well, by showing them the ‘Rockman’ video,” she adds, referring to the video set to the tune of “YMCA” which describes the production of and uses for aggregate.

“We cover a little bit of everything — just enough to make it exciting,” Parivechio says. “This may be the only time a student comes into a rock quarry, and I want it to be a positive experience. That’s why the teachers keep coming back every year. We give them a little bit of knowledge and a whole lot of fun.”

Vulcan built an overlook area large enough for a class to view the entire pit from ground level. Visitors are able to see the entire pit in action and understand every aspect of the quarry.

This past year, Vulcan put together rock boxes for teachers to take back to their classrooms. The boxes contain 10 rock samples from across the state of Georgia. Each rock is labeled, so that the aggregate learning experience can follow the children back to their schools.

In addition to school children, Kennesaw Quarry’s education program welcomes scout troops, senior citizen groups, church groups, and neighborhood groups. The quarry provides each group with educational materials, study books, worksheets, and Web links to enhance the learning experience.

The new employee training facility quickly became a museum and a classroom for educating school children and the community.

Kennesaw Quarry’s location near the TELLUS Northwest Georgia Science Center, in nearby Cartersville, and the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History, located in the City of Kennesaw, means that many school children will visit the quarry either before or after visiting one of the other museums. “We have very close ties with these museums, and Vulcan is a financial supporter of both,” Parivechio says.

Kennesaw Quarry’s community involvement has not gone unnoticed. “We’ve been nominated for the Kennesaw Business of the Year award,” Collier says, “and we’re working to get the Cobb County Business of the Year award, too.”

Daily operations

Kennesaw Quarry built a new processing plant three years ago at a cost of $28 million. The entire plant is now automated, so one employee in the control tower can operate everything in the processing plant. The new plant has a lot more bells and whistles than the old one and will run more tons per hour, but Collier says the real reason for installing the new plant was to uncover reserves that were located under the old plant. That’s where the mining is being done today.

Material from the pit is dumped into the primary crushing plant where it is reduced to 8 to 10 inches in size by a large Allis Chambers gyratory crusher.

“We have to take off 150 feet of overburden to get down to the good rock,” Collier says. “We’re going to take the level all the way down to 625 feet. We’re uncovering a lot of reserves.” The overburden is then dumped back into the far end of the pit for use in reclamation.

“We shoot, on average, once a week now, due to the downturn in the economy,” Collier says. “At one time, we were shooting every day or every other day.”

After the blast, aggregate is taken to the large, primary, 54-74 gyratory crusher. Large chunks of rock go in, and rock 8 to 10 inches in size comes out. A conveyor carries the crushed rock from the primary crusher to a large surge pile on the opposite side of the pit. From there, the material goes through a secondary cone crusher, and then a tertiary and quaternary crusher, as needed.

“The secondary crusher is a blue 8800 cone crusher — a high-speed crusher,” Collier says. “The one behind that is a 7-foot shorthead crusher. Once material is crushed at the secondary crusher, anything that doesn’t screen out that’s above 2 1/2 inches will go onto the belt and come back to the crusher again to be crushed even smaller.”

Once the material has been processed through the crushers and screens, it is placed in various stockpiles to await loadout. “Concrete companies want 57s and 56s to be clean,” Collier says, “so we wash them. We wash the fines out and pump them down into the bottom of the pit, which acts as our settling pond. The fines settle out on their own, so we don’t have to maintain a settling pond, which requires a couple of operators and extra equipment. We use the clean water for dust suppression in the plant.”

Kennesaw Quarry’s target market is within about 20 miles, so trucking is the transportation of choice. “We have a few customers that travel farther,” Collier says, “but the rule of thumb is we reach about 20 miles out…” Customer loadout is handled in a couple of different ways, however. A large, multi-silo tower allows truckers to drive under the desired feeder and load their trucks by pulling on a rope, but most customers prefer to drive into the plant to be loaded by a wheel loader.

“The loading is a little more accurate with the loader; the trucks don’t get overloaded or underloaded,” Collier says. “We’ve got scales on the loaders, so they can get the exact percentage that they need. We usually run three 980 loaders on the yard to keep our customers loaded. I’d say 90 percent of our customers are repeat customers, so they know right where to go to get their product and how to set up for the loader.”

Rail transport was once used at Kennesaw Quarry, but when the old plant was torn down three years ago, the rail went with it. Collier says there are times when he’d like to have it back.

The quarry’s top selling product is crusher run, which is used in highway construction. It accounts for probably 40 percent of all sales, so it is stockpiled in several locations in the plant for easy access. The second most popular product is 57s used for concrete. Two concrete companies border Kennesaw Quarry, which is very convenient for all concerned parties.

The quality control lab is essential to the operation and is consistently busy. A sample of crusher run must be taken every 1,500 tons to be tested and checked for gradation and quality. It has to meet Georgia Department of Transportation specifications. Concrete stone is sampled more often — every 500 tons. Automatic sweeps make it easier to remove the desired product from the belt for testing in the lab.

“Three years ago, we were producing 4 1/2 million tons per year,” Collier says. “This year, we expect to do a million and a half because of the downturn in the economy.”

The new plant will help Kennesaw Quarry be prepared for the economic upturn and increase in aggregate demand when it comes, which it surely will. Until then, like other aggregate producers, Vulcan will keep hoping for a quick return to better economic times. AM

EQUIPMENT LINEUP

Mobile Equipment

Atlas Copco DM30 blasthole drill

International grease truck

Rocktec Terminator RX 500 impact hammer

Cummins generator

Ford F-700 truck

Ford F-800 truck

International boom truck

Caterpillar 769C water truck

Komatsu 325 dump truck

Sterling SC800 truck

Komatsu PC-400 LC7 excavator

Ford F-750 truck

Genie manlift

Caterpillar 14G motor grader

Komatsu 210 excavator

Caterpillar 777D dump trucks (4)

Komatsu 785 dump trucks (2)

Komatsu 465 dump truck

P&H 75-ton hydraulic crane

Northwest 80D crane crawler/dragline

Caterpillar 980G wheel loaders (4)

Komatsu PC-400 LC6 excavator

Komatsu D-155AX-5 dozer

Caterpillar 992G wheel loaders (2)

Caterpillar 420D backhoe loader

Caterpillar 980H wheel loader

Processing Equipment

Allis Chambers 54-74 gyratory crusher

Sandvik H8800 crusher

Helser 7-foot short head tertiary crusher

5½-foot short head quaternary crusher

Deister 8×20 triple-deck screen

Deister 8×20 double-deck screen

Deister 8×24 triple-deck screens (4)

Deister 8×20 triple-deck wash screen

Deister 8×20 double-deck wash screen

NPK Hammer GH10 rock breaker

FMC Corp. feeders (4)

Linatex feed system

Conveyors (26)

Feeders (11)

Magnets (4)

Metal detectors (4)

Rip-rap sidekick

Flume

Separator

CalPortland’s Washington-based DuPont Pit delivers high-quality gravel to ports as far away as Alaska.

By Kerry Clines, Senior Editor

CalPortland’s DuPont Pit, located near the small town of DuPont, Wash., was ranked number 2 in sand and gravel production in 2009. What makes DuPont Pit successful? Actually, there are several keys to its success, including a unique deposit of material, a great location, and dedicated employees.

The deposit

DuPont Pit sits on top of what CalPortland claims is some of the highest quality gravel in the world. “This is a really unique deposit,” says Jim Tweedy, plant superintendent at DuPont Pit. “The material was deposited here during the last Ice Age, which most geologists say was around 14,000 years ago. This was the recessional outwash — in other words, this material was carved from the mountains by glaciers as they advanced from Canada into the Puget Sound area and was deposited by water flowing from glaciers as they melted. The material, ground and sorted by the glaciers and washed by the glacial melt-water, comprises a world-class deposit of sand and gravel.”

Material 1½ inch and finer goes through the wash plant.

The deposit is split into two veins. DuPont Pit sits atop one vein, and Steilacoom Mine, which was located several miles further north on the coast of Puget Sound until it closed in 2002, sat atop the other. Both mines shared the same basic deposit, but Steilacoom Mine, which had been in operation since the late 1800s, was renowned for its fine sand, while the DuPont material is a coarser deposit.

“Steilacoom was rich with fine, very clean sand, but we have a deficit of fine sand at DuPont,” says Scott Nicholson, director of aggregates, Materials Group, Northwest Division of CalPortland. “At the time we moved from the Steilacoom deposit, we applied for permits to reactivate the existing dock at our mine on Maury Island in Puget Sound. This mine is rich with fine sand and, if made available to the market, would balance the DuPont deposit well. Despite the fact that the Maury Island site is an existing mine and designated under local land use codes as a mineral resource of long-term significance, permit issues have held up construction of the dock and access to the sand for over 12 years.

“During this time, we have looked for alternative sources of sand to balance DuPont, including an extensive study on crushing the DuPont gravel to make sand,” Nicholson adds. “As part of the study, a test was used to compare the crushability of the DuPont material on a crushability index. We sent 50,000 pounds of gravel to Metso’s test center in Milwaukee. They told us if you score in the high teens, you have a very hard gravel. They did 10 tests on our gravel that averaged a score of 30. They said it was the hardest gravel that had ever come through their test center.”

The hardness of the gravel may not allow DuPont Pit to manufacture fine sand, but it does make the gravel highly desirable for projects that require high-strength durable aggregates. For example, in Alaska, where studded tires tear up the roads every winter, they use a test called the Nordic Abrasion Test to determine whether aggregates will resist studded tire wear. There are very few mine sites that can supply material that scores high enough on the test to supply material for surfacing major roadways in Alaska.

The location

DuPont Pit is located on the shore of Puget Sound, which provides a type of transportation that most aggregate plants don’t have — marine transportation. “About 80 percent of our material goes out by barge,” Nicholson says.

About 98 percent of the material produced by the plant is used within the Puget Sound Region including Seattle, Tacoma, and Everett. The remaining 2 percent is used for special projects in other areas like Alaska. “A typical barge transports about as much material as 186 truck and trailer loads, reducing traffic congestion and the overall carbon footprint, and it is safe,” Nicholson says. “Ready-mix and asphalt producers in the greater Puget Sound Region depend on DuPont to supply their aggregates. Of the four ready-mix companies in the Seattle area, including us, only one doesn’t use DuPont aggregate.”

It wasn’t all roses to get DuPont Pit approved, however. The permitting process took 10 years.

“We were very forthcoming about everything with the community — what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it,” Nicholson says. “We have 114 special conditions that were set forth during permitting. One of the requirements is that we can’t disturb the bluffs along Puget Sound. So, from the Sound, the only thing you see is a cut in the bluff. We have a large tube that comes down to the dock with a conveyor in it, but our mining area can’t be seen.”

Another requirement was that DuPont had to have regular biannual monitoring of noise at the loading dock. People living on Anderson Island, just across Puget Sound from the dock, were very concerned about the level of noise that would be generated during the loading of barges. The regulation only allows the noise level on the shores of Anderson Island to be 5 dB above ambient. A third party chooses the time to test the noise levels and doesn’t notify the plant until after the test has been completed. They then ask what the plant was doing at the time of the test.

“Of course, it’s always the same,” Nicholson says. “There’s virtually no impact, no noise from our dock. One day, I got a call from someone who had been one of our biggest opponents during the permitting process. He said, ‘I just want you to know that I was wrong. I can’t hear anything and, in fact, I really enjoy watching the marine traffic.’”

In addition to Mine Safety and Health Administration noise standards, CalPortland has a very strict company hearing-protection policy. “Basically, the rule of thumb is, if you can’t have a normal conversation with someone, you’re required to wear hearing protection,” Nicholson adds. “We’ve got just a couple of places that we don’t require hearing protection, and one of them is the dock. There’s really no noise.”

DuPont Pit has been reaching out to educate the community and to, hopefully, improve people’s opinions of the aggregate business. “Recently, we’ve been doing a lot of field trips with grade schools,” Tweedy says. “They have a required curriculum where they have to study rock and minerals. So, at the end of the terms, the classes come out. We talk about concrete and the different things we make out of our materials, and where they see and use it in their daily lives. It’s a lot of fun.”

Daily operations

“In 1997, when the plant was built, it was probably one of the most automated plants in the country,” Nicholson says. “Of course, it’s not that now, but it’s still pretty impressive.” Many improvements have been made since then.

The first conveyor on the journey to the loading dock on Puget Sound is covered to protect aggregate material from the weather.

The whole system is designed around 2,400-ton-per-hour production out of the mine, while shipping is typically about 2,000 tons per hour. The material is mined in a simple scoop and dump fashion. A dozer maintains a workable slope in the mine to ensure safe working conditions for the loader operators. Two wheel loaders scoop up the sand and gravel and dump it into a feeder over a conveyor system that carries the material up to a fractionated processing plant. No processing is done in the mine itself.

“We bring it in to the primary screening plant and sort it off into three raw surge piles, two different sizes for the crushers and one for the wash plant,” Tweedy says. “We wash everything 1½ inch and finer through the wash plant. Out of the wash plant, we make four different sizes of washed gravel and one size of coarse sand. All the fines are pumped over to our sand house where we have four classifiers that sort off three more sizes of fine sand. On the crushed side, we feed the crushers from the surge piles. The material comes through the crushed/screening house, where we make four sizes of crushed gravel. Out of those 12 basic sizes of materials, there are few limitations on how many different blends we can make.”

The plant is designed with two parallel 1,500-foot-long tunnels running under the stockpiles. The stockpiles on one side are all washed sand and gravel and the other side contains crushed gravel. The processing plant runs right between the two rows of stockpiled materials, which helps contain the noise inside the processing plant. Quality control (QC) monitors material gradations in the stockpiles continuously to ensure consistency.

Two feeders under each product stockpile enable the plant to produce different blends. “When a customer wants a certain product, our QC lab analyzes what the customer wants in their specifications and selects, proportionately, the blend he needs to pull to make those specifications,” Tweedy says. “Then he designates that blend a product number and it goes into the data base. When an order is entered in the system, the product number dictates which feeders are activated to make that blend and ensures they are the only feeders that will open. It’s timed so that, no matter where you’re pulling from, when the material hits the shipping belts, all of it is perfectly blended. We currently run about 350 different blends on our data base.”

While barging is the primary method of transport for DuPont’s material, trucks transport the remaining 20 percent. The plant simply flips a gate to change loading from the shipping dock to the truck lines, and vice versa.

A series of two conveyor belt systems carries material to the loadout dock on Puget Sound. The first conveyor in the journey is covered. “Once the material is on the loadout conveyor belt, the only place for it to go is on the barge,” Nicholson says. “It’s about a 3,100-foot conveyor and is covered for two reasons. The primary reason is that we can’t discharge a drop of anything into Puget Sound. The Sound is downhill, so if it rained on the conveyor, it would discharge material into the water. The other reason is that this is a long, flat conveyor. If the power went out during a storm and the belt sat in the rain with material on it, it would get pretty sloppy.”

The second conveyor goes down the bluff to the dock on Puget Sound at an extreme angle and is completely enclosed in a tube to prevent any spills. This conveyor has a very large drive motor and gear box with a hydraulically controlled clutch and large disk brake, so that if there’s a problem on the barge, the conveyor can stop quickly.

“A 350-horsepower drive keeps the conveyor from overrunning,” Nicholson says. “With all that weight and momentum going down the hill, that conveyor would just take off if you had a small motor. We use about 125 horsepower to start the conveyor, and then it settles back to about 75 horsepower in an empty condition. When the material hits the belt, it actually goes into negative horsepower and regenerates power back into the grid. It’s a pretty unique conveyor system.”

It takes one operator in the tower on the dock and one person handling barge lines to control the loading of the barge. The operator can move the barge wherever he wants it during the loading process with the winch system. The conveyor will luft, extend, retract, and swing to reach all areas on the barge. The tug boats that bring the barge to the dock simply tie up to the barge and wait until loading is complete.

“We do 3 million tons per year, which sounds like a lot, but it’s 50 percent of what we’re used to doing,” Nicholson says. “In 2005, we did 6.2 million. We typically load 24/7, but we’re down to two shifts now, five days a week.”

The employees

Both Nicholson and Tweedy agree that the best part of DuPont Pit is the employees. “We have really high-quality employees here,” Tweedy says. “The current average tenure is 10.4 years for plant employees. They really take a lot of pride in what they do. We do most fabrication in house. We built all our own conveyors, feed distributors, chutes, and structural supports. The employees come up with many of the ideas, and we have our in-house engineer do the design drawings.”

One employee, Randy Davis, does all the programming for the plant’s automation system. “Randy started with us as a plant mechanic at Steilacoom in the mid ’80s,” Nicholson says. “In the ’90s, when we were getting ready for the DuPont Pit, we switched one of the towers at Steilacoom over to PLC control. Randy took an interest and had the knack, so he’s our programmer now.”

The programming is all Web-based. It can be accessed at the office or at home, so if there are any issues, they can be handled quickly, even at night. “The system is really reliable,” Tweedy adds.

As the economy improves, CalPortland plans to have DuPont Pit ready for it. “When we get so busy, as the industry did before 2008, we were able to have additional resources,” Tweedy says. “With this down economy, the real trick is trimming back while maintaining the assets and keeping safety and the environment at the forefront. That’s something that’s a priority here. The plant’s got to be ready to go all the time.” AM

From Aggregate Mine to Public Park

Steilacoom Mine opened in the 1890s and was rich with a deposit of fine, clean sand. “Originally, Steilacoom sluiced material using pumps in Puget Sound,” says Scott Nicholson, director of aggregates, Materials Group, Northwest Division of CalPortland. “They would bring barges in and put them up on the beach. They would, basically, sluice the material and bury the barges with sand and gravel. Then, when the tide came in, they’d tow it up to Seattle and manufacture concrete with unprocessed sand and gravel right off the pit face. At the time of its close, about 90 percent of the Seattle skyline had come from materials mined at our old Steilacoom plant.”

In the early 1990s, the mine entered into negotiations with Pierce County, and the county bought the property. The plant continued to operate, paying royalties to the county, until 2002 when it closed and locked its gates for the last time.

“Extensive construction work began on the Steilacoom plant right away after we left,” Nicholson says. “We had done some reclamation, but Pierce County had a vision of turning it into a huge park. The old mine site is now a park and a world-class golf course.”

The park includes walking trails that weave in and out of parts of the old mine that were left in tact for their historical value. Some of the old concrete stanchions that the plant was built on remain in the park, as well as the pond that supplied wash water for the old plant. The U.S. Amateur Championship was held at the Chambers Bay golf course this year, and the U.S. Open is scheduled to take place there in 2015.

EQUIPMENT LINEUP

Stationary Plant

Svedala 5×12 scalper

Svedala 8×24 double-deck screens (4)

Svedala 8×20 triple-deck screens (4)

McLanahan 12×48 classifiers (4)

McLanahan 66×36 double screws (2)

McLanahan 66×36 single screw

Conn-Weld 6×12 dewatering screens (2)

HP-500 Nordberg standard cone crusher

HP-400 Nordberg cone crusher (2)

ISC-82 vertical impact crusher

Barmac/ISC-82 vertical impact crusher

JCI 6×16 double deck for the standard crusher

8×20 Svedala SH double-deck screens (8)

85-foot High Flo thickener

Phoenix 3-meter belt presses (4)

Mobile Equipment

Caterpillar 992 loaders (2)

Caterpillar 990 loader

Caterpillar 988 loaders (3)

Caterpillar D10 dozers (4)

Caterpillar 40-ton articulated haul trucks (2)

Caterpillar Challenger 45 tractor

Caterpillar D6 dozer

Tiger 690 wheel dozer

To see a short video of CalPortland’s barge loading operation, visit this article in our digital edition at www.aggman.com.

Rather than start all over with a new plant, TXI invested time and money to bring its Bridgeport Stone operation into the new age.

By Kerry Clines, Senior Editor

TXI’s Bridgeport Stone operation is located in North Central Texas on top of a large limestone deposit that has kept the Dallas/Fort Worth area supplied with aggregate since the middle of the last century. “TXI bought the plant in 1953,” says Gary Allen, general operations manager for TXI.

More than 50 years of continuous growth brought 50 years of technology advances, but it also brought 50 years of inefficiencies that needed to be addressed.

“The primary crusher had a separate control building, the sand plant had a separate control building, the concrete products plant had a separate control building, and the asphalt products plant had a separate control building,” says Todd Lacey, plant manager at Bridgeport Stone.

If the plant was to stay productive and competitive, something needed to change.

Automating the plant

“We felt like we were leaving a lot of money on the table with the facility as it was,” Allen says. So, two years ago, rather than tear everything down and start all over with a new plant, the entire operation was automated.

TXI automated its old Bridgeport Stone plant so that the entire operation can be monitored and controlled by two operators in the central control room.

“We turned it on April 26, 2008,” Allen says. “We upgraded and automated the whole thing so we could run the entire plant out of one central location. We targeted the efficiencies and throughputs, and ultimately lowered our energy consumption by 25 percent.”

With all the individual operations running in a coordinated fashion and being controlled from one central location, the company was able to balance and fine tune the entire operation for optimum performance and production.

“The timing actually was great,” Allen says, “because the economy turned about the same time these improvements were completed, enabling us to operate more cost-effectively at a time when it was needed the most. Had the automation not been completed, continuing operational challenges and inefficiency would have made these last two years much more difficult. The results have exceeded our expectations, and, while it has taken us some time to get everything refined, it has really come together well.”

Before the plant was automated, one person was required in each control tower along with two ground hands to run each of the individual operations.

Instead of labor, the plant now has 15 cameras in strategic locations throughout the operation. The cameras are monitored and controlled by two operators in the central control room. “This is the heart of it all,” Lacey says. “We have people on the ground that can check things out, but for the most part, the two people in the control room run it all. One operator monitors the asphalt products plant, concrete products plant, and sand plant. The other operates the primary crushers, scrubbers, split bin, and the road base plant. They can speed the operation up or slow it down to optimize the production flow, and if you want to know what’s going on in the plant, you call them. It’s nice to go to one place and get every answer you need.”

The cameras can even be monitored and controlled from home, Lacey adds with a laugh, “but we try not to do it too often — it can become addictive, and we have to be careful.”

Streamlining operations

In addition to automation, Bridgeport Stone did several other things to streamline its operation and improve its bottom line.

Protective tire chains used on wheel loaders in the pit have saved the plant valuable time and money.

About a year ago, the plant began using tire chains on its wheel loaders. This has not only saved valuable time that might be consumed changing and repairing tires, but has also saved money. “If the tires didn’t have the chains on,” Lacey says, “out of four available tires on a wheel loader, we probably would have replaced two by now. Wheel loader tires are about $100,000 for a set of four, so the numbers speak for themselves.”

Along with this significant change, Bridgeport Stone installed upgrades to the major motors and pumps throughout the operation. The plant was able to reduce energy consumption by installing variable frequency drives on each of its crushers, which are some of the largest electricity-consuming units in the operation.

The facility’s water pumps were automated as well. “Two years ago, we ran five pumps at 350 horsepower each,” Allen says, “now we only run three.” Instead of leaving a 350-horsepower pump running all the time so the water truck can fill up, the company installed an automated, and much smaller, 40-horsepower pump. When the water truck drives under the spout, the pump turns on automatically, the water truck fills its tank, and then the pump turns off. And if the plant isn’t running, everything is turned off. “We only want to use the power that is required at the time,” Allen says.

The company also took advantage of the slowdown in business to improve its quality control. “At our quality control lab, we run an average of 850 samples a year,” Lacey says. “As the economy continued to slow, we looked at how to better utilize TXI’s technical resources at Bridgeport Stone. Enhancing our quality control was an ideal fit.” Samples are pulled from every stockpile and every 10th railcar after being loaded, so the employees know if there’s a problem with the material before the train leaves the plant. This increased sample frequency has allowed Bridgeport Stone to improve the quality of the material it ships while also providing important feedback to the operations to further optimize production.

The production process

Production begins with a bang. The quarry shots are highly coordinated at Bridgeport Stone to ensure maximum yield while effectively controlling any non-productive variability. “The protocol, when you shoot the shot, is absolute,” Lacey says. “We go through a rigorous process. We don’t have any deviation. You can shoot a thousand times and never have a problem, but we don’t take any chances. It just takes that one time.”

As in most operations, digital caps are used so that they can be armed with a computer and patterned to create the exact shot the operation wants. “We keep eight milliseconds of delay between blast holes and utilize seismograph reports to maintain optimum timing between rows,” Lacey says.

The goal of the blast is to get the shot fine enough so that 75 percent of the material passes straight through at the primary crushing plant. The primary is set up with two side-by-side, identical jaw crushers, providing the capacity to accommodate two 100-ton haul trucks dumping simultaneously. Once the material goes through the primary crusher, any oversize material will be retained on the top deck and then be routed to the cone crusher to be crushed again.

“If we choose to do so, there’s a conveyor that kicks out on one side so we can produce 12-inch rip rap product,” Lacey says. “To summarize, the primary crusher process can produce 12-inch rip rap, along with 5-inch by 2-inch material passing straight through, while anything over 5-inch is routed to the cone crusher to get processed one more time.”

Once the material is crushed, it is sized and sent on to the appropriate stockpiles, which are located at the base plant, sand plant, concrete products plant, or the asphalt products plant, where the material is ready for loadout.

“Our road base business had declined until early 2010, but demand has steadily increased over the last six months,” Lacey says. “As the sale of key products slumped during the economic downturn, the plant had more time to improve our road base process. We had some surplus equipment available to dedicate to this line of business, so we modified it and installed an additional stacker to create the automated base plant. Now we have the capacity to meet our business demand. We were less committed from a system standpoint before, and these changes have allowed us to better compete in an important market.”

Finished product is transported by both truck and rail. “Probably 25 percent of what we ship goes out by rail,” Allen says. “We have initiated a program to operate the train locomotives ourselves at the plant site, which has significantly — and safely — improved loadout efficiency. The railroad personnel pull the train in and get off, while we take control of the locomotive and load the train. After loading is complete, we contact them and tell them to come get it. We train our people — all personnel who operate the rail equipment complete a certification program to be qualified to operate the locomotives.” Once the trains are loaded and ready to go, they wait for what is known as the “rock window,” which opens after the Dallas/Fort Worth-area commuter traffic completes operations for the day.

Highway trucks handle all the local shipments. Loading takes place from 4:30 a.m. to midnight, but some trucks arrive at the plant as early as 2 a.m. to be the first in line. “We load trucks 5½ days a week, 20 hours a day,” Lacey says.

When it began operation in the “1950’s,” Bridgeport Stone was capable of producing approximately 300,000 tons per year. Currently, with the automation and other upgrades that TXI has made to optimize the process, the plant can now produce in excess of 8 million tons per year. Not bad for a 50-plus-year-old plant.

Future plans

Bridgeport Stone currently runs two shifts with a third shift reserved for maintenance.

“With the downturn in the economy, employees are currently working 40 hours a week,” Lacey says. “That’s down significantly from what they used to work. You really need four shifts to go 24/7/365. Before, we were doing it with two shifts, which, in retrospect, was not the optimum way to staff this plant. One thing our automation projects have allowed us to do during this downturn is to re-evaluate our staffing, improve our quality, and better plan for the time when higher levels of demand return to this marketplace.”

When business does pick up, as it surely will, Lacey plans to hire more employees as needed, but he has also challenged everyone currently on staff to maximize productivity.

“We currently have reserves capable of supporting this operation for many decades,” Lacey adds. “With these reserves and the level of technology in place today, we can continue to operate this plant for many years to come. But as newer technologies become available and continual optimization of the plant is required, it will likely bring more upgrades to Bridgeport Stone in the near future.” AM

Equipment Line Up

Mobile Equipment

Caterpillar 160M grader

Caterpillar 777F haul trucks (6)

Caterpillar 992G wheel loaders (3)

Caterpillar 988G wheel loader

Caterpillar 988H wheel loader

Caterpillar 980H wheel loaders (5)

Caterpillar 216B skid steers (3)

Caterpillar 914G clean-up loader

Caterpillar 773B 50-ton haul truck

Caterpillar 773B water truck

Caterpillar 320B track hoe

Caterpillar D-9N dozer

Caterpillar 834B rail car mover

Loadout Plant

Conveyors (4)

Loadout bins (3)

Tecweigh vibratory feeders with

Model 20 controls (5)

Tecweigh belt scale

Metso sizing/shaker screen

Asphalt Plant

Conveyors (14)

Fixed stackers (5)

Cemco Model 175 VSI crusher

Cemco Model 96 VSI crusher

Eagle Iron Works log washers (2)

Noble dual-flow vibratory feeders (2)

Tecweigh belt scales (7)

Metso sizing/shaker screens (5)

Concrete Plant

Conveyors (10)

Kohlman telescoping radial stacker

24-inch fixed stacker

Cemco Model 175 VSI crusher

Eagle Iron Works log washers (4)

Noble dual-flow vibratory feeders (2)

Tecweigh belt scales (4)

Metso sizing/shaker screens (4)

Sand Plant

Conveyors (3)

Radial stackers (2)

Eagle Iron Works classifiers (2)

Eagle Iron Works sand screws (2)

Tecweigh belt scales (2)

Metso sizing/shaker screens (2)

Venture into an underground aggregate mine and you might think you’ve entered Moria, the underground dwarf kingdom in J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings.

by Kerry Clines, Senior Editor

An underground aggregate mine is something to behold. It’s not for the claustrophobic, that’s for sure, but it is said to be where aggregate mining is headed in the future. With permitting becoming more difficult and the ever-present NIMBY proponents, it seems to be a logical response to harvesting more aggregate without requiring more surface space.

Underground mining presents a unique set of challenges, and no one knows that better than Sam Van, plant superintendent at Sterling Materials’ underground mine located near the small town of Verona, in northern Kentucky. Van comes from a long line of miners — his father worked at Pitcher Mine, a zinc mine, and his grandfather and great-grandfather were miners — so you might say mining is in his blood.

Digging out the mine

The idea for the Sterling Materials underground quarry started in 1989, but the location was up in the air. For the next eight years, the company went through multiple zoning cases on a couple of different properties, neither of which was successful. The current location was the third attempt and was chosen for its good road access and nearness to the market. “It was about nine years in the making before we put a spade in the ground in 1998, and the rest is history,” says Alex Boone, president of Sterling Materials.

The land was originally a farm. Van spent a month designing the mine, which he insists is still a work in progress. “When you’re underground, you’re always developing,” Boone says. “The mine plan is that you always move in a circle. You keep going around the outside making it bigger. The drill moves either clockwise or counter-clockwise around the mine. Behind the drill comes the powder crew. Behind the powder crew comes the blast. Behind the blast comes the mucking out, then the trimming and bolting, and then back to drilling. It keeps running in that cycle.”

“We follow the contour of the deposits,” Van says. “The drills are constantly drilling in different areas for blasts, and we shoot every day at about 5 o’clock.”

During the drilling and blasting process, 50-foot-diameter pillars are left in place to support the ceiling. If you could look down through the ground at the mine, it would look like a giant three-dimensional checkerboard, with the pillars as white spaces and the open areas as black spaces. A scaler comes along behind the mucking crew to knock loose any jagged rock on the pillars and walls to leave a smoother surface.

Conveyors running along each side of a 50-foot-diameter pillar deliver material to the surface.

The ceiling comes out amazingly straight after a blast because it usually follows the seam of a deposit. “The roof stays basically flat, but some places take a little bit of work,” Van says. That’s where the roof bolter comes into play. He chips away the uneven rock, drills holes into the ceiling, inserts 6-foot-long roof bolts coated with resin into the holes, and holds them in place for 40 seconds, essentially gluing the roof together.

The mine has three levels of operation. The first level is about 400 feet below ground level and produces aggregate for construction purposes. Level two produces a mix of aggregate and chemical lime. The third and lowest level of the mine is about 900 feet below ground level, which is 140 feet below sea level, and produces chemical lime only.

“The first two levels are fairly flat,” Van says, “but on the third level, we have grades of 25 to 30 percent. We’re mining on top of an old eroded surface 450 million years old. We have hills and valleys just like up on the surface. We follow the chemistry stone, so we go up, down, wherever it goes.”

The mined aggregate and chemical lime is hauled directly to underground crushers where the material is crushed to the desired size. From the crusher, it may go through a secondary crusher before being conveyed directly to the surface. The mine can split the material and send it to the lime plant located on the property or to the aggregate processing plant above ground.

“This mine was designed to do 3 ½ million tons plus per year,” Boone says. “We could do that without making any significant changes, but the market hasn’t required us to do that yet.”

The crew

It takes a special person to work underground, especially in wintertime when the days are short. Employees working the regular 10-hour shift go down into the mine before the sun comes up and return to the surface after it has set. “They never see the light of day in the winter,” Boone says. “You can’t take the first man or woman off the street and turn them into a miner. They have to want to do that.”

The “race track” and loadout bins around the stockpiles allow trucks to come in, pull right up, and load themselves.

When aggregate demand is low in the winter, the quarry runs mostly the chemical lime level and employs about 39 people; about 25 of those employees work underground. In the summertime, when demand for aggregate increases, the quarry employs about 50 people and runs both the chemical and aggregate levels of the mine at the same time.

Probably one of the most unusual things about Sterling Materials’ employees is that all the underground truck drivers and most of the underground crusher operators are women. “They keep their equipment clean and in good working order,” Boone says. “They seem to have more pride in what they’re doing than the typical male we’ve had previously.”

“Ten years ago, you’d have never thought it would happen,” Van says. “Back then, if a woman went underground, that mine was jinxed. Women have come a long way.”

Van says that the miners are like family. “They know each other well,” he says. “When the weather’s bad, one person will go around and pick up some of the employees that live further out and bring them in.”

The processing plant

The only part of the operation above ground is the aggregate processing plant. This looks like any other processing plant, but the screens are housed inside buildings to protect them from the elements. After the product is processed through the screens, conveyors run the finished, sorted material out to the various stockpiles to await loadout.

“When we built this, we came out to the hilltop, cut off the top, and set up this processing plant,” Van says. “We’ve got 8s, 57s, DGA, crushed stone base, and 2s in different stockpiles around the rim of the hill.” Tunnels were built underneath the stockpiles with conveyors running product out to the “race track” that was built around the hill. The race track and loadout bins allow trucks to come in, pull right up, and load themselves.

“I’ve got these loadouts set for 10 tons a minute, so if the truck driver wants 25 tons, he runs 2 ½ minutes,” Van says. “The trucks just pull up under whichever type rock they want and load up.”

Underground challenges

Underground mining is highly regulated, like any quarry. “We get four mandatory MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration) visits per year,” Boone says, “but we usually get even more [visits] because we’re in proximity to the Lexington office.”

Air quality is the major issue. “Air regulations are getting more stringent every year, but we meet whatever the next requirements are,” Boone says. “We burn biofuel as much as possible — up to 90 percent — which helps, and we have very good ventilation throughout the mine, especially in work areas.”

Large air tubes run throughout the mine for ventilation and lead to air shafts that go up to the surface. “We pull the good air in and pull the bad air back out through the tubes,” Van says. In an emergency, employees are instructed to follow the tubes to the air shaft and wait for rescue.

“If we hit water down there, there’s usually a lot of it,” Van says. “We have to grout it out to push it out away from us. If we hit water on the third level, it’s high pressure, about 250 pounds per square inch.”

In the winter, the mine is dry and dusty, but during the summer rainy season, water seeps into the mine turning the dirt floors into mud.

Underground mining does have its bright spots, however. One advantage to being underground is that you can mine without changing the surface of the land. The mine is underneath the processing plant and all that shows are several small air shaft openings, which are mostly hidden by the trees and other growth. Wildlife flourishes in the area.

Another advantage to working underground is that the temperature in the mine remains at about 68 degrees all year round. The heat of summer and the cold of winter don’t have any effect on the workers in the mine or the mining equipment.

The bottom line

Despite the differences between surface and underground mines, a goal-oriented focus remains constant.

“Never take your eyes off the ball, it’s a moving target,” Boone says. “You’re always looking for roof issues, whether or not you’re having pressure and what direction the pressure’s going, whether or not you have water issues. It’s like any other business — you pay attention to the details and things take care of themselves, but you never take your eye off the details.” AM

Underground Safety Training

Sterling Materials’ Safety Director Gail Goodnough demonstrates the use of the MSA W-65 Self-Rescuer that everyone must carry with them when they go underground.

The unique conditions found in underground mining require unique safety training. Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) requirements demand that everyone who goes underground, even visitors, receive this training. “We provide this training to each person who goes underground at our mine, and it’s good for one year,” says Gail Goodnough, safety director for Sterling Materials’ underground mine.

“We use the MSA W-65 Self-Rescuer as a part of our personal protective equipment in case of an emergency,” Goodnough adds. The self-rescuer is a breathing apparatus that is rather heavy and awkward to tote around, but everyone is required to carry it on their person or have it within 25 feet of them at all times.

A brass tag system is used to keep track of who is in the mine. Each person going underground is required to sign in and pick up a brass tag before entering the mine and then sign out and return the tag as they leave. This allows the company to know, at all times, who is in the mine. If the mine has to be cleared for any reason, and someone is still tagged in, employees know to look for them.

Equipment Line Up

Mack water trucks (3)

Sam Van, plant superintendent at Sterling Materials, designed and continues to oversee operations at the underground mine.

Ford F-150 pickup

Ford F-150 parts truck

Ford F-250 pickups (2)

Ford F-250 superduty truck

Ford F-250 4×4 powder truck

Ford F-250 4×4 man transport

Ford F-350 pickups (2)

Ford F-350 superduty boom truck

Ford F-350 service trucks (2)

Ford F-350 utility truck

Ford F-450 utility elec.

Ford F-450 superduty truck

Ford ¾-ton truck

Ford F-800 welding truck

Ford F Series fuel truck

Chevy K15 suburban

Peterbilt (ANFO) 6wd

Chevy Silverado 2500 4wd (2)

Caterpillar 74D articulated haul trucks (4)

Midwest Machine Jackleg

Cannon Drill

Cannon Drill DP 12-HD

Cannon Drills DPI-HD (2)

Ingersoll Rand ECM590 rock drill

Ingersoll Rand 1-inch impact wrench

International powder monkey

Process Machinery mine conveyors

Process Machinery plant conveyors

High calcium crushing plant

Grove RT58D crane

Street Master sweeper

Case GXR 686 forklift

Kubota L4300DT 4wd tractor

Symon cone crusher/Metso screen

Deister screen

Portable screen #2

Nordberg 4-¼ crushers (2)

Hazemag impact crusher

Hazemag arm

Pug mill/DGA

Pug mill/CSB

Cedarapids roll crusher

Nordberg screen wash plant – 8’s

Telsmith RB jaw crusher

Telsmith vibrating grizzly feeder

Allied 2215 Power Boom pedal hammer

Crusher belts

Seco screens (5)

Nordberg wash plant – 57’s

Metso screen #1-FS 303

Komatsu WA500 loader

Komatsu WA500-3LK loader

Caterpillar D8K dozer

Volvo L220E loader

Volvo L110E loader

Caterpillar 980H loader (3)

John Deere 770A grader

Snorkel TB60 manlift

Bobcat S150 skid steers (2)

Bobcat S250 skid steer

Caterpillar 330LC track hoe

Caterpillar 330 excavator

Caterpillar 330L excavator

JCB JS330 excavator

Caterpillar 320 CL excavator

Weatherhead hose machine

Leica TCR307 transit

Hotsy 790SS pressure washer

Hotsy 795 pressure washer

Hotsy 1280SSG pressure washer

Hotsy HSS-503089E pressure washer

AQ-3 rock grinder

AQ-4 rock grinder

Miller welder/Dimension NT 450

Diesel air compressor

by Kerry Clines, Senior Editor

Times are tough for aggregate operations these days, but Southwest Rock Products, headquartered in Queen Creek, Ariz., hasn’t changed anything about the way it operates its company. According to Managing Partner Chris Reinesch, Sr., operations have been running cost effectively since the company began.

“Nine years ago, we started this company on a shoestring,” says Reinesch, Sr. “I had a three-month lease on a piece of property.”

Today, the family-owned company has several aggregate plants and several mobile custom-crushing plants that produce just about any type of product that are used for a variety of construction projects ranging from roadwork to airport work to construction of the Arizona/Mexico border fence. How does the company continue to prosper and grow? According to Reinesch, Sr., it’s all about attitude and doing things the right way the first time.

Good product, good people

Probably first and foremost on the list is the quality and dependability of the product produced. “It’s neat to have an operation like Queen Creek where we can actually bring a customer out to see what we’re about,” says Chris Reinesch, Jr., sales and purchasing manager and son of the managing partner. “When they get that product on the job, they’re not worried about it because they know it will meet spec. They gain a lot of that comfort level over time because they can come out here to see how we run our operation. They know we’re not going to shortcut things.”

Making and keeping a good reputation with customers is extremely important in these poor economic times. “It’s a testament not only to our business, but also to the people working for us,” Reinesch, Jr. adds. “We have guys who come in half an hour early just to sit around and talk before they actually start working. It creates a family-type culture — everybody cares about what’s going on. They take a lot of pride in the business’ success.”

That attitude shows in the cleanliness of the plant. There are no parts or damaged pieces of equipment lying around, and the concrete slabs beneath the crushers and screens are clean. Even the warehouse is neat and orderly with everything in its place. “I have not seen another operation as clean and well maintained,” says Steven Hood, co-owner of the company and nephew of Reinesch, Sr., “and it’s like that 365 days a year.”

One of the ideas embraced by Southwest Rock Products is that the company operates Queen Creek plant with only 15 employees. “We’ve never had an extra body, that’s the way we operate,” Reinesch, Sr. says. He believes he has the best employees in the industry, but he also expects them to be able to do any job. “All the plant foremen I have work and are as dirty at the end of the day as the lowest guy on the totem pole.”

“We all work, and we all do everything,” Hood adds. “We built the office, warehouse, and shop ourselves. We don’t hire somebody else to come out and build something for us when we can do it ourselves, and everybody pitches in for the common goal. Our guys are willing to do anything at any time, and not just do it, but take pride in doing it. We have worked hard to get good people.”

Well-maintained equipment

Most of the plant’s mobile equipment is manufactured by Caterpillar. “I’ve always been a Cat individual,” Reinesch, Sr. says. “They make a wonderful piece of equipment, and when you have a dealership like Empire, you have support when you have a problem.” The company meets with representatives from the dealership on a weekly basis to discuss any problems, handle invoices, and stay up-to-date on any new equipment developments.

“Empire does rebuilds on our major components,” Hood says. “Any other maintenance, we do ourselves.”

The company is known for getting more hours out of its equipment than expected. “We have units out there that have 35,000 to 36,000 hours on them right now,” Hood says, “and we don’t anticipate getting rid of them. They’re still good machines.”

Reinesch, Sr. attributes the plant’s well-maintained equipment to his employees and the business’ family-type culture. He expects his employees to do what’s right and take care of the equipment, and they do.

Digging deeper for profits

When Southwest Rock Products leased the Queen Creek plant property, it was on the heels of another aggregate operation that believed the area was practically mined out and had only a couple of years worth of aggregate left, but Reinesch, Sr. had other ideas. “We’re doing things here that nobody in this area has done,” he says. “Typically, everybody has taken 30 or 40 feet off the top and that’s it. Right now, our deepest pit is 180 feet. I probably have 20 years of remaining reserves.”

Reinesch, Sr. considers the plant’s trommel to be the most important piece of equipment they have. “It allows us to mine the high clay-content material,” he says. “It’s made by Fisher Industries and is a remarkable piece of equipment. This entire plant is built by Fisher Industries. We tell them what we want, and they make it for us.”

In addition to providing aggregate for contractors in the asphalt and construction industries, the Queen Creek plant hosts three ready-mix producers on site. “We give the ready-mix companies limited space,” Reinesch, Sr. says. “We try not to allow bigger areas because it consumes too much surface, which obviously takes up pit area. Our job is to produce their aggregate, sell it to them, and deliver it to their site efficiently.”

The company uses bottom-dump trucks, which dump the aggregate through a bridge directly over the ready-mix plants’ stockpiles. “This is a very cost-effective way of delivery which is passed on to our in-house customers,” Reinesch, Sr. says. “It’s just that simple.”

Dealing with regulations

Like all aggregates operations, Southwest Rock Products deals with the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Reinesch, Jr., who handles all company dealings with MSHA, says that things have changed with MSHA the last couple of years. The standards of enforcement are becoming stricter and each inspector sees things a bit differently, making it difficult to stay ahead of the curve.

“However, we have an exemplary record when it comes to,” he adds. “We take pride in what we do here, and the last thing we want is for these guys to come in here and find something we missed. We’re doing what we absolutely need to do to make sure we provide a safe work environment.”

The company works with its neighbors and other agencies to meet all required standards. “We, as an industry, need to be better stewards about longevity and how people respect us,” Reinesch, Sr. says.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards are extremely strict in Maricopa County, where another of the company’s plants is located. So, the company has adopted the stricter EPA standards and tries to implement them in all of its plants, knowing that those standards will soon encompass the entire state.

As for noise, almost everything is below ground level at Queen Creek, so most of the noise goes up instead of out. “The nearby homeowners love us,” Reinesch, Sr. says. “They understand industry, they understand they need us, they understand we’re going to dig holes, but they also understand we are a company that cares. They can drive by and see that we take care of our plants.”

“They had the opportunity to see the people who had the property before we had it,” Hood adds. “We cleaned it up. It’s amazing how the property changed.”

Southwest Rock Products even has a plan for leftover concrete from the ready-mix companies. “These retaining walls are made from leftover concrete,” Reinesch, Sr. says. “It’s an unbelievable way to go, and it doesn’t really cost anything. The ready-mix companies buy the forms and the molds. Then all we do is set them up and tear them down.”

When leftover concrete can’t be used for the retaining wall or comes in late in the day, it is simply run back through the crusher.

Doing things the right way

Reinesch, Sr., boils the success of his company down to one thing . . . doing things the right way. “If you ask your people to follow and support your culture, you can expect to enjoy a very successful business,” he says. “It will give you good maintenance, quality production, cleanliness of the plant, and ultimately, an impeccable safety record. That’s the best success story.”

Queen Creek Equipment List

• Custom built structures with Svedala VGF (2)
• Overland conveyor (1,600 feet by 42 inches)
• H4000 Svedala cone
• E1Jay 54-inch rollercone 2
• H4000 Svedala Cone
• 26 x 36 Svedala jaw
• 26 x 50 Pioneer track jaw
• Pioneer 6 x 20 screens (3)
• Pioneer 6 x 16 screen
• Lime silos (2)
• 36-inch twin screws (4)
• 30-inch single screws (2)
• Fisher 36” log washers (2)
• Fisher trommels (2)
• 36-inch x 18-foot coarse material washers (4)
• 4 x 8 buzzer screen
• Westec 35-foot thickener
• AzFab 40-foot thickener
• AzFab durability cell (2)
• Krebs cyclone (2)
• Caterpillar generators (3)
• Caterpillar 988H loaders (2)
• Caterpillar 988F loaders (2)
• Caterpillar 980H loaders (2)
• Caterpillar 140G motor grader
• Grove 50-ton rough terrain crane
• Caterpillar 943 forklift
• Caterpillar 420E backhoe
• Caterpillar D8T dozer
• Caterpillar D9T dozer
• Custom-built bridges for aggregate delivery to batch plants (4)
• Fisher Industries conveyors

by Kerry Clines, Senior Editor

Granite Construction, Inc. has focused its eyes on the horizon, and on the prize, by preparing for the sure-to-come economic recovery that we all hope is in the near future. The company recently built and opened its new Vernalis facility, a combination of construction aggregates and hot-mix asphalt (HMA) plants, to replace its Tracy facility in California.

A plan takes shape

The plan for the new plant began to take shape long before the economic turmoil hit. “We started planning this plant at least 15 years ago when we knew our aggregate resources would be depleted at the existing Tracy location,” says Randy Kremer, vice president-manager of construction materials. “We attempt to look well ahead in our strategic planning. We look at what type of market we are in and what facilities are required for a long-term investment in aggregate resources and plants to process and manufacture those products. So, we acquired the property and began preparations to construct the new facility.”

The property was chosen for its aggregate resource quantities and qualities and its proximity to existing markets and growth areas. The property is located near several major highways — Highway 132, Highway 580, and Interstate 5 — which provide quick and easy transport of materials to highly populated areas in the state such as Stockton, Modesto, and the East Bay area.

Plant design and concepts followed a few years later. “We encourage our local management teams to look at their needs from the market perspective,” Kremer says. “What do we know we can produce and sell, what will be the demand for those products, and what would be the highest value return to the company and our customers? Based on those parameters, we utilize a process of collaboration for designing the plant itself.”

The project started out as a collaborative effort and remained that way throughout the entire construction process. The whole facilities team was involved in the design, as well as outside consultants and technical experts.

Making adjustments

When the economy went south last year, Granite was very close to depletion of its resources at the existing Tracy facility, so the decision was made to continue the Vernalis project. The larger issue that faced the company was whether it would continue the plans for the ultimate build-out design that had been planned or make considerations to adjust the project and construct a facility capable of expansion in the future, yet sized right for the present economic downturn.

Bruce Bunting, plant construction manager for the project, pulled information from geology and talent and expertise from construction. He combined them with market and sales information and then rolled everything into a design that the company determined met the feasibility model of investment and return on investment. That meant making use of both used and new equipment in the facilities without sacrificing performance and quality production of materials.

“This project would not have been successful if not for a massive effort on the part of a whole lot of people,” Bunting says. “We did an immense amount of work internally that we don’t normally do. We did probably 200 to 300 percent more work with internal resources than we have on any other new plant previously built.”

The construction materials group worked side by side with the construction group. This provided everyone with a greater appreciation for the differences that exist with personnel in a vertically integrated company. The construction group now understands what goes into processing and the making of quality construction materials products, and the materials group appreciates what is required to manage and construct a major project such as the aggregates and asphalt plants.

The finished project

“We started moving dirt in March 2008 and were substantially completed with the construction, less the shakedown and turning of some of the motors, by mid-August 2009,” Kremer says.

The plant was designed to produce 1,200 tons of material per hour — 2.5 to 3 million tons per year.

“We use 637 push-pull scrapers to feed the plant,” says Don Claunch, plants superintendent. “Material is dumped into a grizzly feeder and then run up a conveyor to the processing plant.”

The sand processing station of the plant was constructed to make three products simultaneously — ASTM C-33 sand, Caltrans PCC sand, and specialty sands for masonry, plaster, or golf courses.

The telescoping, kneeling-designed radial stacker at the 1-inch by #4 surge pile has a level detector run by a computer that ensures the stockpile is kept at the proper height. It senses if the stockpile gets too high and moves the stacker to the side or extends it out to distribute the material, which helps with uniformity in the materials, prevents segregation, and maximizes space planning of the stockpile.

A 750-foot-long tunnel runs beneath the sand stockpiles. The tunnel houses two conveyors, yet is still wide enough for a Bobcat or small front-end loader to drive through. This makes cleanup easier after a belt break or material spill inside the tunnel and helps to reduce material contamination and downtime.

“This is the first tunnel of such width that we’ve put in a plant,” Kremer says. “It’s probably 4 feet wider than the largest tunnel in our other facilities.”

One of the tunnel’s conveyors feeds the HMA plant. The very first job for the finished asphalt plant was to repave the roads leading from the plant to the nearby highways.

To keep particulate emissions under control, the company built containment boxes at all the transfer points in the plant to allow the particulates to settle. A combination of high-pressure, low-volume water sprays and vacuum collectors enables the plant to be very clean and to exceed compliance regulations.

Power is typically a big concern with aggregates operations, but it is not an issue at the Vernalis facility. The plant has 120,000 volts of available electrical power and has its own power substation where the electricity is stepped down to 12,000 volts. Since the electric company doesn’t have to do the step down, the plant gets a cheaper rate for its electricity.

“Everything on the property is tied together with a fiber optic backbone system,” Claunch says. “This allows the control room operator to monitor everything throughout the plant.”

Rave reviews

Once the plant was finished, Granite began bringing in existing as well as future customers to view the new facility and products being made. “They’re very excited about how we process and are all encouraged by what we’ve done this far,” Bunting says.

“In this particular project, we constructed the entire facility, which includes the egress and ingress and all the site work and paving,” Kremer says. “I’m extremely pleased that we came in under budget. And with the amount of people that were involved in the construction process, there were 0 reportable injuries and 0 reportable incidents.” That’s a track record that anyone would be proud of.

“Survival for Granite is not a question,” Bunting says, “the question is how do we want to come out of this [economic downturn]? We’ve downsized and made ourselves more efficient with the work we do.”

When the economy finally turns around and the market improves, Granite will be poised to claim its share of materials and asphalt sales, thanks to its new Vernalis facility.

Randy Kremer — the Man Behind the Screens

In 1973, Randy Kremer began working for Granite Construction, Inc. while going to school. What began as a part-time job became a long-term career highlighted with great accomplishments, benefiting both Granite and the aggregates industry as a whole.

At a time when Granite was only supplying materials for its own construction projects, Kremer helped the company realize that it had the potential and capacity to supply materials for other building contractors as well, thereby increasing profits.

“Since we provide for ourselves, we know the product quality needed by other contractors,” says Kremer, currently vice president-manager of construction materials at Granite. “That sets us apart from someone that isn’t vertically integrated.”

Kremer also spearheaded the drive to get mining and engineering schools across the nation involved in the aggregates industry. In the early 1980s, he visited the South Dakota School of Mines and spoke with a professor. As a result of this visit, and visits to other campuses, Kremer helped the schools develop aggregates curriculum to better prepare students for a career in the aggregates industry.

In addition, through the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration (SME) and the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association (NSSGA), Kremer was able to develop the student design competition. “Each year, we put out a design project that is suggested by an NSSGA member company,” Kremer says.

The design competition is done during the course of the school semester and comprises teams of six members. Within a certain period of time on campus, the teams must complete 50 percent of the problem, which is then judged. The top six teams continue on to make presentations at the SME annual meeting and again to a board of directors comprised of several leaders in the aggregates industry. The groups are judged on their problem solution, their communication skills, and their knowledge of the economics involved.

“That has been one of the great joys in my life — seeing the competition finally come to fruition,” Kremer says. “Seventeen mining schools are now embracing the program by competing in the student design and are very interested in how aggregates companies can help them with their curriculum to develop career paths for their graduates. It has come a long way since its inception.”

Kremer was honored at AGG 1 this year for his many accomplishments and contributions to the aggregates industry. He was presented with the NSSGA’s Barry K. Wendt Award.

Processing Plant Equipment

McLanahan rotary scrubber

Deister triple-deck inclined wash screens (4)

Deister double-deck horizontal wash screen

Deister single-deck horizontal wash screen

Deister single-deck scalping screens (2)

Deister triple-deck inclined (fully enclosed) dry screen

Deister triple-deck inclined (fully enclosed) dry screens (2)

Deister single-deck horizontal dewatering screens (3)

McLanahan log washers (2)

Greystone coarse material washer

Greystone sand classifier

Greystone twin sand screw

McLanahan twin sand screw

Greystone single sand screws (2)

Krebs cyclones (6)

Superior telestackers (2)

Superior belt feeders (21)

Telsmith cone crusher

Remco Model 200 Sand Max VSI

Barmac Mark III VSI with Remco Top Hat assembly

Phoenix HiFlo Thickener Model HF-85

Phoenix clean water tank

Siemens switchgear

Mobile Equipment

Cat 988G loader

Cat 980G loader

Cat 637G scrapers

Cat 14H road graders

Cat D8T dozer

John Deere 710E backhoes

John Deere 210LE skip loader

International 3,600-gallon water truck

Bobcat 268B skid steer

Terex RT780 crane

60- and 80-foot manlifts (rented, usually JLG)

8,000-pound Telehandler forklift

Ford F-450 super-duty service trucks (3)

International 2.5-ton service truck

by Kerry Clines, Senior Editor

A recent executive brief released by the The Saint Index listed aggregates quarries as the third least popular business among not-in-my-back-yard (NIMBY) activists. Only landfills and casinos enjoy a higher level of opposition. However, that is not the way the city of Fort Payne feels about its local quarry . . . at least not now.

Fort Payne Quarry has been in operation for almost 20 years just across the tracks from the city of Fort Payne, Ala. As time passed, the quarry received less attention and investment from its out-of-state owner and fell into a state of disrepair.

The plant’s employees were really downhearted. The lack of involvement from the owner showed not only in the condition of the plant, but also in the attitudes of the employees. “What was there to be proud of at a rundown plant? Why should the employees care?” says George Grguric, Fort Payne Quarry plant manager.

New owners

In May 2007, Birmingham, Ala.-based Vulcan Materials Co. entered the picture. The company bought the struggling quarry operation and immediately set out to revitalize the quarry and change the community’s mindset.

Vulcan’s reputation for being a community-minded, environmentally concerned company preceded it, so the community welcomed the new owners. “We knew that Vulcan was coming in to improve the situation,” says Carol Beddingfield, executive director, Fort Payne Chamber of Commerce, “not just to drain the land of material, but to be a community-involved company as well.”

Since Vulcan came onboard, the plant employees’ attitudes have changed. They take pride in their plant and their work, and it shows. “Now, they want to do it right,” Grguric says. “We continue to improve in production, and they’re proud of that. They’re proud of the city. The people in the city wave, they’re happy to see us. We don’t shake the city anymore when we put shots off. You used to be able to find the quarry just by following the dust, now you can’t. My guys are proud of that.”

Fort Payne Quarry quickly became a leading corporate citizen in the area. It also became the kind of neighbor everyone would like to have by always trying to keep community concerns in mind.

In one case, the quarry worked with the city to develop a land-use plan involving set backs and vegetated, sloped embankments that bordered an old historic town cemetery. When stripping began near the area, the quarry employees made sure to leave plenty of space so the activity could not be seen from the cemetery. Little things like that make a huge difference to the community.

“That’s just an example of their community involvement,” Beddingfield says. “They have also supported downtown revitalization in Fort Payne. Usually, a quarry company wouldn’t even consider a thing like that — pleasing the citizens.”

The city of Fort Payne honored the quarry by presenting it with the city’s 2008 Large Manufacturer of the Year award for its improvements to the quarry and its commitment to the community. The accolades didn’t stop there, however. The Fort Payne Chamber of Commerce nominated the quarry for the 2009 Small Alabama Manufacturer of the Year award. This award is presented annually to a manufacturing company that employs up to 99 people and demonstrates superior performance in the area of customer focus, employee commitment, operational excellence, continuous improvement, profitable growth, and investment in training and retraining. Fort Payne Quarry won the award, an engraved piece of glass in the shape of Alabama, which was presented to Vulcan and Fort Payne Quarry representatives by the governor of Alabama, Bob Riley, during an awards ceremony in June.

“The company (Vulcan) is second-to-none in the industry with respect to safety, health, environmental stewardship, and community relations,” Beddingfield says. “They are all so community minded. If there’s any way, they will perform their jobs and provide the services yet keep the environment and community in mind. I think they do an excellent job of that.”

Operations, maintenance

Fort Payne Quarry is considered a small quarry by Vulcan standards; it produces 300,000 to 350,000 tons of rock per year. It’s not one of Vulcan’s automated, high-tech heritage plants either. The plant is an older one, relatively speaking, with some older equipment and machines that have to be operated manually.

“Everything we do, we have to do by hand,” Grguric says. “We can’t throw a gate to change our stone sizes. We have to go out and change the screens. We run one mode, go up and change the screens, and then run something else.”

The older plant and equipment can be quite a challenge when it comes to maintenance, but the quarry developed a daily maintenance routine that helps the employees stay on top of any potential problems.

“Many parts of this plant are still original,” Grguric says, “and they don’t last if you don’t take care of them. Maintenance is important.”

Daily maintenance begins with a pre-shift checklist. “We made up a checklist for everybody to use in each one of the areas,” Grguric says. “The checklist is specific to this plant. They go over this everyday.”

Each area is checked by those who work in that area and any problems are reported immediately. “I do the pit,” says Jeffrey (Bodean) Dean, pit excavator and loader operator. “Rex does the processing plant, and the yard loader operator will do the stockpile and roads. The guy at the primary will check that off. Then I check the shop and, if we have a driller, he’ll check that [the drill]. The stripping crew will check the berms and make sure the roads haven’t washed away before we start.”

Every day after operations shut down, the employees check their areas once again. “You’ve pretty much got to walk the whole plant,” says Rex Lowe, finish plant operator and head of plant maintenance. “I check my belts. I walk up there [by the conveyor] to see if there are rips or anything wearing. I check the bearings. I look at the crusher feed belts and the motor for the feed belts. I check the springs to see if one of them is busted. There’s a lot to it. If you catch a problem ahead of time, it can save you a lot of downtime and, possibly, equipment.”

Plant operating hours are from 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., which allows time for employees to performa maintenance in the afternoons and take care of whatever problems arise. “When something tears up, we fix it,” says Roger Barron, plant lead man. Whether it’s something as simple as changing out a filter or as difficult as replacing a conveyor belt, the plant employees work together to accomplish the task.

The quarry has had some help getting up to speed with maintenance. “Fort Payne Quarry, being relatively new to us [Vulcan], has had a lot of outside influence from central services in Birmingham,” says Alan Gulledge, area operations manager for Vulcan. “We’ve had groups from other quarries come up and work with the guys as far as maintenance practices. We’ve still got a ways to go to really get it [the quarry] up to par, but the guys have responded very well and they’re eager to learn. George and his guys have done a good job here.”

Surviving tough times

Vulcan Materials hasn’t been immune to the economic tough times that everyone has been facing, but Fort Payne Quarry has been successful in exceeding its prior year’s sales. Despite being an older quarry, the operation supplies all the crushed stone needs of the area and produces quality products that meet Alabama Department of Transportation specifications.

Part of the quarry’s successful sales can be attributed to the engineering and production of two new products at the request of its customers. The specialized stones and sizes have helped keep some of the quarry’s customers and are expected to increase future sales and revenues.

The quarry shares employees and equipment with two other Vulcan quarries in the area to help keep overall expenses down. The stripping equipment and operators float from one quarry to another as they are needed.

Vulcan has taken advantage of slow times at the quarry to tackle a few projects. One such project was the construction of the tunnel that runs beneath the surge pile. With the help of Vulcan engineers, plant employees helped install the tunnel. Not only did this provide a much-needed addition to the plant, it gave the employees a sense of accomplishment and pride in its completion, and a feeling of ownership in the plant.

“The Fort Payne area is a small market, and it’s difficult times right now, so everybody’s struggling,” Gulledge says. “I think we’ve done really well. During difficult times, sharing resources and making things work — making all the ends fit together — pays off for Vulcan.”

Grguric says he is extremely proud of his employees and what they’ve accomplished in the two years since Vulcan acquired Fort Payne Quarry, and he plans to continue that trend.

Equipment Line Up

Mobile Equipment

On site 100 percent of the time:

Cat 345B excavator

Cat 988F loader

Cat 770 haul trucks (2)

Cat 769C haul truck

Komatsu WA500 loader

Komatsu WA450 loader

Cat D7H dozer

Cat 226 skid-steer loader

Ford F800 boom truck

Kenworth T300 water truck

International S1900 tool truck

On site 50 percent of the time or less:

Komatsu PC750 excavator

Cat 771D haul trucks (2)

Stationary Process Equipment

Primary:

Svedala/Universal 3254 jaw crusher

Class #1 rip rap screen

Tramac pedestal-mounted breaker

Secondary:

Jeffrey Rader electromagnetic surge feeder

Diester two-deck scalping screen

Hazemag 1620 impact crusher

Diester twin three-deck finish screens

Tertiary:

Hazemag 1320 impact crusher

Simplicity wash screen

Ortner sand cyclone

by Kerry Clines, Senior Editor

The east coast of Florida isn’t exactly the kind of place someone would expect to find a rock quarry, but that’s exactly where you’ll find Rock Solid Rock LLC. The quarry mines a unique material — coquina — in the form of rock, shell, and sand. The operation is located in Titusville, a small coastal city where townspeople can look right across the Indian River at Cape Canaveral. The town’s seawall and the edge of the bridge leading to the cape are lined with coquina rock that came from the quarry.

Humble beginnings

Rock Solid Rock opened in October 2002. The owner of the operation, Robi Roberts, is a long-time resident of Titusville who owned both a construction business, which was sold in 2005, and a stormwater utility business, which she still owns, prior to opening the quarry. Roberts bought the mineral rights to a piece of property owned by a friend for a period of 20 years and set up shop.

The operation started out very small — producing 30,000 tons the first year — but by 2006, it was producing 66,000 tons per year.

“For a three-man band, that wasn’t bad,” says Nicolle Lochary, facility manager. “We had an operator, a scalehouse operator, and me. That was it, till we got this sand job. Now we’ve got about 10 people. We took a couple of guys from the stormwater end, trained them, and moved them over to the mine. We’re shipping out about 10,000 tons a week now.”

The sand job is a beach re-nourishment project coordinated by Brevard County and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Beach sand is being replaced in several areas along the coast where hurricanes have washed it away over the years.

The coquina shell sand works well on the beach because it is a shell material that came from the sea in the first place. But it also addresses one of the major environmental concerns surrounding the beach re-nourishment project — sea turtles. The turtles need to be able to dig through whatever sand is placed on the beach in order to lay their eggs. Coquina sand is loose and doesn’t compact easily, making it a good choice.

“There are quarries located all up and down the East Coast along the railroad that was built back in the 1800s,” Lochary says, “but we’re the only licensed pit left that produces coquina shell sand. The people placing the sand on the beach didn’t know anything about us, though. They learned about us through Mike McGarry of Brevard County Natural Resources.”

Simple operation

“This is a simple operation,” says Rick Cleveland, production manager, “small, and not much to it. The track hoe is the beginning of the operation for this sand. We dig the sand out of [the pond] and load it in the dump truck. The truck then places it in a stockpile. We stockpile the wet stuff separate from the dry, so it can sit overnight and drain.”

The next morning, the material is dry enough to run through a screen to separate the bigger rocks from the sand. “We just have one screen right now,” Cleveland says. “We have two grates inside the Powerscreen. The different sizes of rock come off different belts into separate piles.” The sand for the beach re-nourishment project is deposited into another pile.

Wheel loaders scoop up each of the piles and move them to the appropriate place in the pit to await loadout. The sand for the beach job is hauled up to the top of a long sand pile and dumped at the very end. From there, the trucks are loaded.

“We load a truck in about a minute and a half,” Cleveland says, “so they don’t spend much time waiting. Right now, a truck’s cycle time — to get loaded, go [to the beach], dump, and get back here — is  about 2 hours and 30 minutes. We’re having a hard time keeping truckers here because they only get about three loads a day like that. At the next beach site, which is closer, they should be able to get six or seven loads a day. We’ll have a million trucks out here then.”

“We’ve been able to get the material almost perfected through the screen machines, so we can pass the sieve test,” Lochary says. “We can figure out the consistency without having to mix it with any other material, so we don’t have to buy any material to mix with it to get the sand that they want for the beach job.”

Staying afloat

The sour economy has had an effect on just about everyone, including Rock Solid Rock. Prior to mining sand for the beach re-nourishment job, the quarry had been mining the highly sought-after coquina shell. This shell, because of its unique colors and texture, is very popular with golf courses across the state. The flat shape of the shell makes it lie flatter on the cart paths, and it drains better than sand in the bunkers. Golf courses, however, are not immune to the effects of the poor economy. Not as many people are playing golf now, so that business has fallen off.

“We were working on a big order to be shipped to the Bahamas for a golf course they were building on the Turks & Caicos Islands,” Lochary says. “The company that was building it went belly up when the economy slumped, so that job went south.”

Most of the coquina rock has already been mined out of the quarry, which leaves only sand and shell. “We don’t have much rock left,” Cleveland says. “If I had a mountain of rock out here, I could sell every rock I had, especially with it being the beginning of storm season. There’s a 200-foot area we can still mine — I still have rock over there — but we’ve got to move the overburden. It’s so slow right now.”

The beach re-nourishment project has picked things back up a bit for the quarry, but the high tides that occur a couple times a year have been a problem. The dump truck drivers hauling the sand to the beach don’t want to waste half a day waiting for the tide to go out. The fewer loads they transport, the less money they make.

Lochary thinks the stimulus bill will have a positive effect on the business. “It may take a while to trickle down to us, though,” she adds. “By the time the jobs get designed or the Department of Transportation lets them out to bid, we might not see the work for six to seven months.”

Sharing people and equipment with the stormwater utility business has helped both companies stay afloat and meet their payrolls without having to lay off any employees. When business is slow on the utility side, workers and equipment can be shifted to the quarry to help out, as they are now with the beach re-nourishment job. When the utility business picks up, hopefully this year, employees can be shifted back as they are needed.

“When the quarry began, it was along the same line as our construction business as far as equipment needs,” says Del Kelley, chief financial officer and son of owner Robi Roberts. “It was a simple way to diversify. It didn’t require a whole new business plan and personnel and equipment. We were able to share. This economy has certainly made people be creative,” he adds, “it’s an interesting time.”

In the meantime, Roberts and Kelley are taking advantage of the lull to turn over command of the business. Roberts retired and left oversight of the business to her son, and the still waters have allowed him to pursue some of his own interests. “Del’s outlook hasn’t changed,” Lochary says. “He’s taking advantage of the freed-up time to do things he wants to do. He knows it won’t be like this forever. Eventually, we’ll go back to working 60 to 70 hours a week rather than 24.”

 What is coquina?

Coquina, which means tiny shell, is the native stone of Florida. It was formed a long time ago when shell and sediment settled to the bottom of what was then the sea and became compacted over time. Some of the shell settled and formed rock around palm trees that later died and rotted, leaving large fossilized holes in the rock.

When first mined, the coquina rock is extremely soft, but the longer it is left out in the air to dry, the harder it gets. The density can vary, however, and so can the color — veins can range from tan to light peach to bright orange. 

On-site equipment

Case 621 D wheel loader

Powerscreen Turbo Chieftain 1200

Volvo EC700B excavator

Volvo L120E wheel loader

Komatsu WA250 wheel loader

by Kerry Clines, Senior Editor

In southern Oklahoma, just a bit off the beaten path, is a brand new sand plant owned by the largest glass producer in North America and, probably, the second largest in the world. However, the glass company has never been in the aggregates industry before – at least not until last year. The sand plant, FG Minerals LLC, is a division of Cardinal Glass Industries and is the glass company’s first venture into the aggregates business. But if all goes well, it may not be the last.

Getting started

The idea for the sand plant started back in 2004 when Cardinal Glass Industries built a float glass factory in Durant, Okla., says John Van Der Wal, sand plant manager. When the glass factory, Cardinal FG Co., first opened, it bought its sand in Arkansas and shipped it in by rail, which was expensive and, at times, unpredictable. The sand didn’t always make it to the plant. Sometimes, it ended up in another state or the train derailed on the way, which caused supply problems at the glass factory.

McCabe Industrial Minerals, Inc., a consulting company located in Tulsa, Okla., approached Cardinal with information about a piece of land about 14 miles north of Durant. It was available, and the consulting company suggested that the glass company could open up its own source for sand on that site, rather than purchase it from a sand plant in Arkansas.

Testing was done on the property to make sure the sand met the quality and composition criteria necessary for making glass. Permitting soon followed. “It was an old cow pasture,” Van Der Wal says. “We dug a hole with an excavator, made a pond, and put a dredge in.” But that was the easy part. A processing plant also needed to be built.

Numerous manufacturers and service providers helped build the wet and dry plants. “Krebs provided the dredge pump, slurry pumps, and all the cyclones and whirlsizers for the wet plant,” Van Der Wal says. “Everything else (for the wet plant) was provided by GreyStone.”

In terms of the dry plant, B.W. Sinclair provided bucket elevators and conveyors, while silo tanks were built by Tank Connection. Carrier built the fluid bed dryer, and Rotex provided the screens.

Structural fabrication and general construction of the plant was spearheaded by Texoma Millwright and Welding. When it came time for electrical controls, Van Der Wal turned to Millenium – the same company Cardinal used for the glass factory. In-house expertise, in the form of Cardinal Electrical Engineer Ted Cole, handled the installation of controls for the entire plant.

The wet plant began producing sand in July 2008 and the dry plant went online in September. “From August 2007 to now, we’ve changed that property from a cow pasture to a sand mine with a dredge operation, a wet plant, and a dry plant for drying the sand,” Van Der Wal says.

Daily operations

There are two ponds – one is for the dredge and the other supplies clean water to wash the material in the wet plant. From the dredge pond, sand and water is pumped up to the wet plant through a pipeline. It is then processed through a couple of cyclones and scrubbers. A dewatering screen helps to remove some of the water. Then, the sand is placed in a stockpile where it continues to drain for a couple of days. From there, it is loaded into hoppers that feed the sand onto a conveyor that, in turn, feeds it into the dryer, which is fueled by an 18,000-gallon propane tank.

Once the sand has gone through the dryer, it travels through a screen where the coarse sand particles are removed and placed in a separate pile. The remaining sand then proceeds to one of the plant’s two large silos for storage until it can be shipped to the glass plant.

When a truck arrives to pick up a load of sand, it proceeds to the scale house where it is weighed empty. The truck then drives beneath the silo’s loadout hopper to get its load of sand. An 11-foot downspout drops down from the loadout hopper to keep the sand from blowing around during the loading process. The truck moves forward slowly as it is being filled, which helps distribute the load and the weight evenly over the truck’s axles. A scale ensures that 27 tons of sand is loaded onto each truck. Then the truck returns to the scale house for its final weigh out and to receive a ticket. Each truck cycle takes about 20 minutes.

Overcoming challenges

All new plants encounter challenges when they open, and FG Minerals is no exception. “One of the problems we’ve got here is that the sand is so hard you can’t dig it with the dredge,” Van Der Wal says. “Silica sand is so close together, and the sand has been in the ground for so many years, that it has cemented itself together. It’s hard, just like concrete. That’s why I’ve got an excavator to dig it out. The excavator gets out in front of the dredge, reaches out in the water, breaks the sand loose, and throws it back in the water so the dredge can pick it up.”

Finding experienced workers in the area has been a challenge, also. “The only guy I’ve got here who’s had any experience is the guy on the dredge,” Van Der Wal says. “The others have never done anything like this before, and they don’t understand it,” he adds. “I’m trying to teach them.”

Another challenge is maintaining the quality of the sand, which has to be impeccable. Constant testing is done to ensure the utmost quality. “The white sand is the better sand,” Van Der Wal says. The darker the sand is in color, the more iron there is imbedded in the sand particles.

“It’s critical that the sand meet composition and chemical specs that are set down by the glass industry,” Van Der Wal adds. “We have an X-ray machine so we can check the chemicals in the sand. If something gets off in the sand, it can cause imperfections in the glass. Then you have a lot of glass to break up, cull, and run back through at the factory. It’s very costly.”

Testing is performed by Dave Scorgie, the plant’s quality control technician. “We take a sample of sand from different places in the process,” Scorgie says. “We take 10 grams of sand, grind it up, and put it under 30 tons of pressure to make it into a pellet. We call it a cookie. Then we put it in the X-ray fluorescence instrument. It’s calibrated for us to use for our sand; it tells us the chemistry we’re looking for.”

The sand then goes through a machine resembling a microwave oven. The machine has a tomb that generates increased air pressure. It takes about 15 minutes to perform its test. “If you’ve got one little particle of sand that’s got some iron stuck on it, the test will come out bad,” Van Der Wal says. “That’s all it takes, one little particle. It drives you nuts just trying to keep up with it.”

Future plans

The sand plant currently has 12 employees and runs only one shift, but once the production of sand for the glass factory is running smoothly, the company plans to start producing fractionated sand and foundry sand. “We’ll probably run two shifts here when we start doing frac sand, because we won’t be able to keep up with it,” Van Der Wal says. “Right now, Cardinal is just using 140,000 tons a year. Working five days a week, 10 hours a day, we can make, probably, 240,000 tons. But to make it pay good, we need to get up around 300,000 to 400,000. The only way you can do that is to run two shifts.”

In the meantime, the company will continue to do what it was set up to do – produce fine, white, silica sand for the Cardinal glass factory in Durant. “The other stuff that we would do, like the foundry sand and frac sand, is just an extra deal to help pay for the cost of the plant,” Van Der Wal says.

by Kerry Clines, Senior Editor

For those who don’t know, the Texas Two-Step is a country western dance in which two dancers move together across the dance floor in perfect unison. Each dancer depends on the other to move in the same direction at the same time, sometimes forward and sometimes backward, and to keep in step along the way. It takes cooperation.

That’s the kind of cooperation that can be found at Marble Falls Quarry, an operation that sprawls across the central-Texas hill country just north of the small town of Marble Falls. The quarry is run by Capitol Aggregates, a Texas-based company owned by Zachry Corp.

At first glance, Marble Falls Quarry appears to be a typical crushed stone operation – rock trucks come and go, rail cars are loaded with crushed rock, conveyors run here and there looking like a roller coaster ride at an amusement park – but upon closer inspection, there is something a bit different about the operation. Just inside the entrance to the plant, right across the driveway from the plant office, looms a huge Chemical Lime kiln.

How it all began

Chemical Lime actually owns the reserves at Marble Falls Quarry and has been mining chemical-grade dolomite (Zone 1) for years. The ore that the company needs for its kiln is on top of the ground in the south section of the quarry, so it can be mined easily. However, in the north section of the quarry, it’s a different story. The desirable chemical-grade dolomite is covered by a dolomite the company doesn’t want. As a result, the company realized there were only 15 to 20 years of exposed ore left. Something needed to be done to ensure that the buried ore could be mined into the future.

So Chemical Lime contracted with Capitol Aggregates to remove the overburden of unwanted dolomite layered on top of the Zone 1 ore. “They hired us to come in here and take what they call Zone 2 ore off the top of their Zone 1,” says Brett Ballard, plant manager for Capitol Aggregates. “So when they mine out of what’s exposed to the south, we’ve exposed another 30 years of ore for them. That’s the purpose of us being here.”

As it turned out, the overburden was very desirable to the aggregates company, making the contract a win-win situation for both Chemical Lime and Capitol Aggregates. “It just so happens that the rock they want removed is an excellent quality for the aggregate business,” Ballard says. “It’s a high-quality and dense rock with low silica that’s great for ready-mix and the hot-mix industry.”

Building the plant

Once an agreement was reached for Capitol Aggregates to start removing the overburden rock for Chemical Lime, a new, modernized plant had to be designed and constructed that would increase the capacity of the operation. About three years of discussion went into the planning and design of the new plant, which needed to be able to process material for both Capitol Aggregates and Chemical Lime. Reversible conveyors and chute work had to be incorporated into the design. Crisp Industries worked with the companies, completed the final design, and then built and set up the new plant.

“We started construction on this plant in April 2006,” Ballard says, “and we kept our old plant running while we were building it.” The aggregates company continued to supply its customers with aggregate throughout every phase of the new plant’s construction.

The new primary plant was completed in June 2007 and was set to start running on June 29. But as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once wrote, “Into each life a little rain must fall.” And it fell on the new plant on the night of June 28. The Marble Falls area received 19 inches of rain that night.

“We showed up the next morning to turn the plant on, and it was flooded,” Ballard says. “Nobody had any idea, because it happened through the night. I had berms, but I didn’t have berms to protect against 19 inches. That water just cut the berms out and came right into the pits.”

In the secondary, where construction was still ongoing, the damage was very bad. Construction equipment was still in use there and most of it was under water. A crane that was being used in the tunnel running beneath the surge piles was completely submerged; only the tip of the boom could be seen sticking out of the flood water. The crane was just one of many pieces of equipment lost to the flood that day.

“The whole town of Marble Falls, where the creeks and rivers run through it, was devastated,” Ballard adds. “There were boats in the streets and cars wrapped around poles and houses were destroyed. We had people who lived in those areas. We were in the process of trying to get pumps to clear the quarry, but we had people who had lost their homes and needed places to stay.”

Trying to take care of the quarry and help employees at the same time was quite a challenge, but everyone pulled together – employees and management alike – and help came from everywhere. The parent company, Zachry Corp., sent people from the corporate office in San Antonio to help clear the quarry and sent money, clothing, food, and water to aid employees who had lost everything in the flood. The company even moved one displaced employee and his family into an empty house on company property for a period of nearly five months until they could be relocated to another home. The company took care of its people, and the employees banded together to help each other and repair the plant.

“I got eight pumps in here from Houston and borrowed pumps from a company in San Antonio,” Ballard says. “I had about 16 pumps pumping water out of here. In three days, we had it pumped out, but what it left us with was an MCC [motor control center] house that was suspect now, and we had to go through it. All the idlers, and everything that was under water, had to be replaced. We expedited everything that we could and had everything going within three weeks.”

When the primary finally started up three weeks after the flood, the secondary still wasn’t finished, so the rock had to be hauled from the surge pile in the new primary plant to the old secondary plant in order to keep production going. The operation ran that way for five months until the secondary was completed in November 2007.

Once the secondary was up and running, the loadout was the next key item on the agenda. The contractor building the loadout brought in extra crews from Oklahoma and other places to expedite the construction. Finally, on Dec. 29, shortly after Christmas, Capitol Aggregates loaded its first train.

“I wouldn’t say everything was perfect,” Ballard says, “just ready to go. But we met a deadline. We made everything happen on time. Then there was a lot of tweaking – no plant that starts up is without its problems. There’s always some work to do yet, but we met our milestones.”

Daily operations

The company uses three 70-ton haul trucks and a large 15-1/2-yard front shovel to run the crushing operation in the primary pit. The shovel can load each haul truck in about 48 seconds – with just three scoops – which helps to speed the operation along.

When processing for itself, Capitol Aggregates sends the crushed Zone 2 ore on conveyors to the secondary plant. When processing for Chemical Lime, the belts are reversed so that the crushed Zone 1 ore is deposited into a pile for transport to the kiln.

“We mine the ore for Chemical Lime and put it in their stockpile,” Ballard says. “After we’re completed with their ore, we swap gates, change the plant, and start crushing overburden for us. So there’s two to three hours a day of crushing for Chemical Lime and the rest of it we’re crushing the overburden off the top. That’s where we get our product.”

Chemical Lime’s Zone 1 ore is brought up from the primary plant and placed in a surge pile located next to the plant office near the entrance. When the ore is needed, it is loaded onto a conveyor belt that carries it up and over the driveway to the vertical kiln on the other side.

Meanwhile, back in the secondary plant, the Zone 2 ore is being processed for aggregate use. “The secondary is down in a 40-foot hole for less of a visual impact,” Ballard says, “and that’s where we have our process plant feeding fractionated rock over a tunnel. That tunnel makes a blend of whatever product you want out of those piles. Then we send it up to a transfer station where we can put it on the ground or take it straight to the rail loadout system.”

The rail loadout system has a 250-ton storage silo fed by a conveyor at a rate of about 2,000 tons of rock per hour. Another conveyor then carries the aggregate from the silo to the railcars where it is loaded at a rate of about 2,700 tons per hour. “What we’re shooting for is loading 20 cars an hour,” Ballard says.

Everything is automated so that the gates open automatically and the conveyor loads the required tonnage into each car. Belt speed is adjustable and the direction is reversible so material can be fed out the back side, if desired. Bills are printed up and given to the customer from the rail loadout office, which sits high enough above the railcars to offer a bird’s-eye view to employees running the operation, allowing them to look down into each railcar as it is loaded.

Although most of the aggregate the company produces goes into asphalt and concrete, the new fractionated plant has opened up other markets for Capitol Aggregates. The company has more than doubled production since the new operation was built and can now make materials it wasn’t able to make before.

“We have six different sizes of rock out there that we can blend together,” Ballard says. “We can take somebody’s specs and fine-tune our rocks to meet that spec because we have all the different sizes to make it from. We can make anything from railroad ballast, which is big rock, to the finest of the hot-mix aggregates, and everything in between.”

Most of Capitol Aggregates’ rock goes to places in eastern and southern Texas that don’t have rock available. The Houston area gets rock from the company, as well as from many other sources. “You’ve got all the big players – the Martin Mariettas, the Vulcans – feeding that market,” Ballard says, “but we’ve cut our own niche into that market with some of their help. We’ve kind of partnered with Hanson Materials to sell them our rock because they couldn’t supply enough of their own. Houston needed more rock than was being supplied and we fit into that market.”

A bit of history

It all began with H.B. Zachry Co., a privately owned construction company that was founded by H.B. “Pat” Zachry in Laredo, Texas, on Aug. 23, 1924. The company got its start in highway construction. During World War II, it took on military construction projects such as runways, airports, and bases.

In 1957, the company began work on the runways at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin. In order to keep up with the demand for a large, steady supply of aggregates, Zachry decided to start his own aggregates company, so he formed Capitol Aggregates as an affiliate of H.B. Zachry Co.

“It started with one little operation – sand and gravel, ready-mix – and grew from there over the last 50 years,” says Capitol Aggregates Director of Technical Services Steve Eckert, P.E.

Capitol Aggregates now has eight different operations, one of which is a cement plant. Three operations are within an hour’s drive of Marble Falls – one a couple miles down the highway, one in Georgetown, and one located in Austin.

In the late 1990s, H.B. Zachry Co. became Zachry Construction Corp., which continued to perform heavy highway construction, commercial building projects, industrial process construction (including power plants), and industrial maintenance, as its predecessor did. And when logistically possible, the construction company purchased its supply of aggregates from Capitol Aggregates, its sister company.

“Zachry remains a customer, but is not a very big customer of ours, so to speak,” Eckert says. “But depending on where their jobs are, if we can get to them, we’ll try to sell them rock.”

There have been many changes for Capitol Aggregates in the last several years. The company sold the hot-mix asphalt business and a ready-mix business so that it could focus on aggregates and cement. Also, Capitol Aggregates’ parent company was reorganized into two corporations run by Pat Zachry’s grandsons. Capitol Aggregates – along with heavy and commercial building contractor Zachry Construction – is now part of Zachry Corp., under the leadership of David Zachry. But through all the changes, the dedication of the employees to each other and to the company has remained constant. Capitol Aggregates celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2007, but it doesn’t attribute that to trying to be like the big players. It succeeds by doing what it does best – breaking rock and taking care of its people.

Help for a Hometown Hero

Employees who work in aggregate quarries may be considered insignificant to some, but not to Capitol Aggregates and its parent company, Zachry Corp. When a plant employee’s son qualified to go to the 2008 Olympics last summer, the company, and the entire town of Marble Falls, rallied around the employee and his family.

Jesus Manzano has been an employee of Capitol Aggregates for nearly 20 years. He works at the Delta Quarry located just a couple miles down the highway from Marble Falls Quarry. His son, Leonel “Leo” Manzano grew up in Marble Falls, where he ran on the high school track team.

After graduating from high school, Leo went on to attend the University of Texas in Austin, where he runs on the college track team. The citizens of Marble Falls have followed Leo’s accomplishments since high school, as has his father’s company. So when Leo became the first University of Texas 1,500-meter runner to make an Olympic team, it made headline news. A large banner went up across F.M. 1431 near the Highway 281 intersection that read, “Welcome to Marble Falls, home of Leonel Manzano.” Signs of support hung from shops and buildings, and billboards wished him luck.

When supervisors at his father’s plant heard the news, they sent the information up the company chain where it finally made its way to David Zachry, the owner and president of Zachry Corp. Zachry felt that, if Jesus Manzano’s son was good enough to make the Olympic Team, the family should go watch him compete. So the corporation went to work to make that happen for the Manzano family.

Zachry Corp. bought round-trip airline tickets to Beijing, China, for the entire family. Then, the company provided the family with a nice place to stay by offering them the use of corporate housing it owned in Beijing. The corporation also assisted the family with obtaining all the necessary documentation such as passports – all at company expense.

The Marble Falls community held fundraising events and presented the family with $10,000 to help pay for meals and other travel expenses while in China. The Manzano family said that whatever money was leftover when they returned would be donated to the Highland Lakes Track and Field Club. Before Leo left for Beijing, the town held a festival in his honor as a send off.

Leo made it through the first heat in Beijing, and qualified to move on to the second, but, unfortunately, didn’t make it past the second heat to the finals. He did, however, represent his country very well, and made his hometown, Capitol Aggregates, and Zachry Corp. very proud.