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The South Carolina Aggregates Association (SCAA) hosted its fourth annual Workshop & Exhibition at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center in Columbia, South Carolina.
The show has grown considerably since its inception in 2021, with more than 350 people attending this month. Fifty-four companies exhibited at the event, and seven pieces of equipment were on display.
Attendees also heard from a four-person panel that explored industry equipment and technology trends, as well as best approaches to successfully adopt. The panel included Joel Reynolds, general sales manager at Blanchard Caterpillar; David Boardman, founder and CEO of Stockpile Reports; Eric Gamble, vice president of operations services at Martin Marietta; and Trevor McLouth, vice president of Luck Companies’ South Carolina operations.
Panel insights
As Gamble describes, it’s essential today to get employee buy-in when making an operational change. It’s also important that the buy-in permeates throughout an organization.
“We’ll find guys that are interested in making it work and say: ‘Can we try this at your operation? If it works here, we can scale it and make it work at other operations,’” Gamble says. “We also make sure we explain the ‘why’ for the ‘what’ all the way down. ‘This is why we’re going about this. There is going to be a little bit of pain along the way, but the end result we’re looking for is that extra ‘why.’’”
As older employees continue to retire, getting younger members of the workforce up to speed is a challenge.
“Kids today are starting to make career-path decisions in middle school,” Reynolds says. “You hear that and start thinking: ‘How do you get to the middle school level and start making an impact on what their options are?’ There are 18-wheelers going to middle schools and high schools throughout South Carolina, and they have different kinds of simulators in them. It’s setting the foundation that there are other options out there.”
These days, data is a hot commodity among producers. Knowing precisely what’s going on with a plant or a piece of equipment – and being able to make decisions based on data – is valuable.
There is such a thing as too much data, though, according to Boardman.
“People are already overwhelmed with data because there is not enough staff, people and experience,” he says. “I think, in the next two years, what’s happening in AI is going to make its way into the aggregate industry, and then we’ll be able to suggest all this data without having to build big stacks of people. You’re going to be able to leverage those insights.”
During the panel, McLouth provided an update on the project Luck Stone embarked on with Caterpillar two years ago to outfit 777 haulers at the Bull Run Plant in Chantilly, Virginia. The trucks feature Cat Mine Star Command for hauling. “We’ve had two years of investing in infrastructure – both digital and physical – and training opportunities so all teams know what the risk factors are and how to operate these trucks,” McLouth says. “Just a couple of weeks ago, we got to what they call ‘blue lights on,’ and we have four 777 trucks running up in northern Virginia unmanned, going back and forth from the pit loader to the quarry. It’s been unbelievable.”
Related: Sights from the 2024 SCAA Workshop & Exhibition