Industry leaders in Missouri talk business (Part 2)

The other piece that I think we sometimes forget is our more seasoned employees – the ones who have five years’ experience. Sometimes, they have a tendency to get complacent and maybe lose that awareness. I think we have to energize them, as well, but also really focus on the new hires. That would be my recommendation.

NYE: The new hires are where the greatest peril is. If you’re a new miner, you’re going to have one hard hat color. If you’re a safety mentor, another one. If you’ve been there after a new-year policy or a time period, yet another. So, you can identify people who are new visually and very quickly. You can also identify the people who can help guide you through something, if you need to be guided very, very quickly.

It’s important to see where the fatalities have occurred. If we step back and assess it, what you’re going to find is most of it is tied somehow to powered haulage. So, when you start thinking about the training, it’s not just the new hires, but the new hires who are going to be where? Are they in a haul truck? Are they in a loader? What age is the loader? What type of fire suppression is on the piece of equipment? There is a series of questions you need to be asking as you go through that process. If ever there was an area in which process matters, it really is safety.

FARMER: When you have a good clean site, it just correlates to the whole operation working better. There’s less of everything that goes wrong when you have a nice, tidy site. I think that’s where it starts. Get a plant manager who really buys into that, and you’re going to have a good, safe operation, too.

P&Q: What differences have you seen in enforcement by the Mine Safety & Health Administration since Chris Williamson stepped in as assistant secretary?

NYE: I haven’t seen that big of a change. Since he’s gone in as administrator, the biggest change I saw was when we started having more coal inspectors coming through aggregate operations – because they’re actually very different businesses. I think it took a while for coal inspectors and aggregate businesses – and vice versa – to get to know each other and understand what to expect. The fact is, the Mine Act is the Mine Act. What I don’t want to do is put ourselves in a position where we enable them to write good paper.

FARMER: From what I hear, [there] is a subjectivity that still exists within the ticket-writing from one organization to the next, from site to site or from inspector to inspector. A coal inspector comes in [and] they’re looking for something entirely different than the last inspector. It would be nice to have a little bit more consistency within the agency so we know what exactly it is that we need to be doing – instead of writing a ticket for a bunch of nonsense.

ANDERSON: I haven’t really seen an uptick in intensity. I think it kind of comes and goes in cycles. One thing I do notice, though, is my managers who have that tone where they’re really wanting to better their site. I feel like the inspector picks up on that. It creates some leniency when they see that you’re trying to make an effort to make your site safer.

P&Q: What is your outlook for 2023?

ANDERSON: I’m pretty excited about the opportunity that lies ahead. Our pricing principles are really taking effect, and we have momentum on that side. Inflation was kind of beating us out of the gate, and we were playing catchup. I feel like we’re catching up and we are going to see the benefits of that momentum into 2023.

NYE: I’m optimistic about the coming year, and I think with good reason. We have a highway bill like we’ve never had before, [and] we have a country that is shockingly under built. If we’re sitting here thinking about what our problems are, we’ve got pretty high-class problems as problems go. Our biggest issues are needing to find more people to come to the workforce, and we’re going to need to find ways that we can get product to market. There are a lot of people who would love to have the issues that we’re confronted with right now.

This is a great industry filled with great people who are working hard every day to be self-improving. If we think how far this industry has come over the course of five years, 10 years, 20 years, 25 years – it really is striking. I truly believe this industry’s best days are ahead of it.

FARMER: I think the near term could be a little bumpy. I think everybody feels that way. But the long-term fundamentals are great, and this is a great industry to be in. I think more and more people are starting to realize that. Overall, we should beat inflation, but it’s a difficult thing to gauge. We just have to focus on doing the best job we can and operational excellence, and we’re going to be alright.

« Prev Page 1 2 Next Page »