Assessing all things aggregates

The following transcript was edited from a concurrent Pit & Quarry Roundtable & Conference discussion.

KAREN HUBACZ (BOND CONSTRUCTION CORP.): We’re exceptionally busy. The demand is very high from all markets. Federal, state, local, residential, homeowners – everybody wants aggregates right now. There are issues, obviously, with pricing. We’re at a point where we’re concerned with increasing our prices as substantially as we have. When is that not going to be sustained by the end consumers? I think this year is going to stay high. After that, I think there’s a longevity question.

JOHN GARRISON (SUPERIOR INDUSTRIES): 2022’s been good, I think, for everybody. If you’re in the industry and you’re not doing well, then you probably shouldn’t be in the industry at this point. 2022 is pretty much [one] for the books. The long-term planning is impressive. We have longer-term, larger projects that we’re planning out into 2023. There are people already planning out into 2024 because there’s federal money in the pipeline now and they need the capital for crude oil and things like that. I think business is there as long we don’t have something else that is unforeseen like we’ve had.

EJ BURKE III (QUICK SUPPLY CO.): We’ve had challenges. So far business is good and it’s forecasted to remain so. We’re having a hard time finding good people – operators and trucks drivers, particularly. We’re waiting on trucks, so we’re having a real challenge meeting the demand. The shortage of people and the shortage of supplies leads to new problems. It’s a different kind of problem. It’s one we’re concerned about. We certainly didn’t plan for this.

GARRISON: With the long-term planning, we’re having to work a lot closer with our dealers to understand what their needs are going to be for stocking equipment. We’re looking at a 12- to 18-month outlook with our dealers on newer projects and stock orders, where it used to be six months out. We want to be recession proof. I don’t know if anybody’s actually recession proof, but I think we’re in a better spot than other industries would be.

MARK STRADER (BRAMCO-MPS): We still feel pretty confident in terms of what this market is going to serve to us for the next year, possibly two. Getting the right equipment, getting it delivered and managing that inventory level to a realistic expectation is important. You don’t want to end up with entirely too much inventory if the market were to go in a different direction. It’s challenging.

PATRICK WEAVER (L&H INDUSTRIAL): The days of just-in-time manufacturing went out the window with COVID because you can’t run your schedules that tight. We have a very low-cost ERP (enterprise resource planning) system, so we’re doing the best we can with it. But it’s forcing us to carry inventory that we normally would not carry. You cannot carry enough parts. We’re working hand-in-hand with our customer base trying to come up with a plan that reaches out six, eight, 10, 12 months so you can build around that versus trying to be reactionary.

JOHN SCEPANIAK (WM. D. SCEPANIAK): We have a lot of carryover demand from 2021 in custom contract processing. Weather was favorable last year, so it allowed us to work with a larger workload than typical. This spring, we had some weather delays with rain, and we’re actually just finishing up with the 2021 projects. But as far as Q3 and Q4, it’s interesting. It’s a bit uncertain, so we’re trying to figure out what we’re going to do.

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