Celebrating industry leaders of the past and present

By Kevin Yanik| March 6, 2024

Kevin Yanik

This time of year – midway through the first quarter – is always one of the more exciting stretches of the calendar at Pit & Quarry.

In a ConExpo-Con/Agg year, the magazine typically hosts the Pit & Quarry Roundtable & Conference in mid to late January before venturing to Las Vegas for North America’s largest construction trade show.

In an AGG1 year like 2024, the magazine still hosts its annual Roundtable in the first quarter, but it also brings the industry together at the Pit & Quarry Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. As we put the final touches on this month’s edition, we’re transitioning from a well-attended Roundtable at PGA National Resort in South Florida to our black-tie Hall of Fame induction ceremony, which takes place March 24 at the Omni Nashville Hotel in Nashville.

Initial coverage of the 2024 Roundtable is presented in this month’s edition of the magazine. We’ll have much more Roundtable content for you in April, when the magazine publishes a pullout supplement fully dedicated to the event.

Our P&Q Hall of Fame coverage, meanwhile, ramps up this month, with an induction ceremony preview and inductee profiles among our offerings to come.

Celebrating Louis Johnson

Part of the exercise with our Hall of Fame involves P&Q editors telling each inductee’s story.

Everyone enshrined in the Pit & Quarry Hall of Fame, for example, has a video tribute produced about their life and career. The tributes for our 2024 class, which consists of Tom Hill, Neil Hise, Louis Johnson and Charlie Luck IV, will be online following the March 24 inductions.

In addition to video tributes, the magazine publishes written profiles about inductees, detailing what makes those enshrined Hall of Famers. Our editors dive into the factors that drove them, what they were like to work for, and who they were outside the confines of the industry.

These stories aren’t always easy to capture, especially when time passes a Hall of Famer by. Such was the case this year with Johnson, the founder of El-Jay Manufacturing who died in 2007. Johnson sold his company nearly a half-century ago, and much of his legacy in crushing and screening was parceled out to various companies thereafter.

The Pit & Quarry Hall of Fame, however, provides a platform to resurrect stories like Johnson’s that fell by the wayside. In the case of Johnson’s story, Kimball Equipment Co.’s Cade Seeley deserves some credit. Seeley not only nominated Johnson for the Hall of Fame, but he tracked down his last living child, who relayed a series of scintillating stories about her father by phone that gave me new appreciation for the man and his life’s work.

Congratulations to all four inductees in this year’s Hall of Fame class. We hope you’ll celebrate them along with us.