P&Q Profile: US Aggregates’ Mark Scott

Scott

Mark Scott, plant manager of US Aggregates’ Thorntown and Crawfordsville plants in Indiana, officially retired Nov. 2 after 41 years of service to the company. Scott’s family has a long history in the aggregate industry, with his dad (Cecil) having worked at Martin Marietta and US Aggregates, his mom (Ida) being one of the first women to work at Lone Star Cement (now Buzzi Unicem) in Greencastle, Indiana, his sister (Diana) also working for Lone Star for a period, and his son (Dustin) now working at US Aggregates’ Crawfordsville Plant. P&Q caught up with Scott following his last day at US Aggregates to learn about his decades-long career and how he saw the industry evolve during his time.

What will you miss most about US Aggregates and working in the aggregate industry?

The thing I’ll miss most is the people I’ve worked with over the years. I’ve worked with so many different people.

It was kind of strange: I’m the last guy that I came up with. There are no more of the old US Aggregates people left. I’ve worked with so many different people, and I really have appreciated that. I enjoyed my relationships and the different generations that I’ve worked with.

My dad was the plant operator at the US Aggregates Plainfield (Indiana) Plant. He hired me on as a mud picker. I was working there in 1979. My dad left in 1980, and my whole family moved to Texas – they were tired of Indiana winters. They all moved, and so I went from being a mud picker to a loader operator to basically being the assistant manager to finally a plant manager. I truly came up from the lowest job you could have at the plant and went all the way to managing the plant.

I will also miss the problem solving that I had to do every day – sitting down, looking at things and planning for the future. I’m going to miss that.

My wife (Melony) tells me she doesn’t see me retired very long, so I’m going to try to prove her wrong. I haven’t run a piece of equipment for years, but I told my former assistant who is replacing me that if you need a guy to run a loader to load trucks, I probably could get used to it fairly quickly.

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