Pit & Quarry, April 2017

EVENT ROUNDTABLE CONFERENCE administration should be more favorable for the industry Everybody in our industry has their eyes pointed to whos going to be the next assistant secretary that will run MSHA We learned earlier that the new MSHA candidate could come from the industry which is good news The industry would prefer to work with people who are competent The worst thing is to work with people who are incompetent and who are not even from the industry That makes it impossible because you are talking two different languages So hopefully the fact that we should have an MSHA candidate coming from the industry with experience is definitely favorable to our industry Another big thing is the demand for concrete Its very positive Concrete is experiencing a 4 percent growth in the past few years Its going to continue to grow And then of course we have that big project on the border right The Mexican border A lot of people are making a big deal of it and it is a big deal It is allegedly a 25 billion infrastructure project However in itself the wall alone is not as big as the proposed infrastructure plan In fact the wall alone covers less than 2 percent or even less than 1 percent of the projected demand for concrete if the highway infrastructure plan moves forward GOETHEL Were going to migrate from an administration that focused on social issues to one thats probably going to focus more on jobs I absolutely believe they are going to invest in infrastructure It could be quite significant In certain areas where we operate we have seen a significant increase in volume but following this election everybody has got a little spring in their step HEFFLEY Following with what Dan Goethel is saying I think right now everybody uses the term the Trump effect and theres a lot of positivity around it After the first 100 days or so well get a chance to see how we actually get there I like Dan agree that this is a great opportunity to see a lot of infrastructure spending How Trump and the Republican Congress come together to find mechanisms to fund that is going to be interesting One of the takeaways from George Reddins talk is when he pointed out that we have some catching up to do in P3 opportunities Id certainly like to see that expanded upon as well I think theres probably going to be more responsibility put on the states to come to the table It will just be a matter of getting the funding behind it but were very positive about it and expect a lot of good things ALEXANDER I have not come across anybody who isnt bullish about the new election the new president coming in Whether they like him or not I know our investors werent particularly happy Were a 22 billion company based out of Miami and the Miami people Alexander were not happy with Trump getting elected That being said theyre also financially oriented and very very excited about whats going to happen within the industry over the next few years We think that a lot of barriers are going to be broken down and I think hes dead serious about creating more jobs Everybody knows the best way to do that is through construction projects and infrastructure building So if you are reading the tea leaves theres nothing really in there that appears to be negative other than hes unproven and you have to see what Goethel 16 PIT QUARRY April 2017 pitandquarry com