Pit & Quarry, February 2013

RoundTable ConfeRenCe THOMPSON You certainly cant be selling just a product You have to be selling so a producers cost per ton is down or that at the end of the day you can bring efficiencies whether it be in providing maintenance services training people or in making screens last longer HEINEMANN Weve put quite a bit of extra resources in the service and support side The other thing we find as a state of the times is were spending more time with producers on training They have to get more life out of a product than before Think about the day when you just had to get every rock to the scale house because it would go immediately on a truck and out the front door Those times are gone so we have to get more life out of the product HAWKRIDGE We are trying to do more with less Its one thing for someone to sell us a taillight warranty and then we never see him or her again We want those manufacturers to come back and help us find and work through our problems Those are the vendors we will continue to work with as the economy recovers because we want to continue to get better we dont want to just try Theres so much capacity in the market right now that you just dont hear about too many greenfield sites being developed Chris Upp to survive through this mode and return to our old ways YANIK Moving onto a new topic MSHA Have you seen improvements under Assistant Secretary of Labor Joe Main Whats your impression of him and what specifically could he and MSHA do better PRATT I struggle with understanding the value MSHA brings to the miners I dont believe theyre making strides in making mines safer I think we are but I dont believe that MSHA is Even our employees are questioning whether theyre doing a job for them and protecting their interests on a day to day basis METZGAR A bit of the good thats in MSHA is the agency capitalizing on what the old Bureau of Mines did In my opinion the stuff coming out of NIOSH which is where the Bureau of Mines research went is still not up to the level of what the old bureau did The research that the bureau did is what helped the industry succeed and at the same time take care of the miners WHITE One of the issues we see is the misdiagnosis of tire damage About four years ago we had inspector trainers come to our tire service class Now we actually work with MSHA in their inspector training Were trying to get them to recognize tire damage YANIK Is there a solution that can result in a new or improved MSHA or is this going to be a yearly conversation we have about overcoming hurdles UPP I think theres a solution but its White a legislative solution that separates our industry away from coal and other hard rock mining I think our industry is fairly consistent in its operations from the East Coast to the West Coast Were buying the same equipment from the same manufacturers We need legislation crafted that would take us away from coal When you look at the history of legislation the aggregates industry gets lumped in because of the way we process materials We deal with the same penalty structure that coal mining does There are avenues out there that will most likely never happen but there are avenues out there for things to change METZGAR Neither the agency nor the media have any interest in telling the truth about our business because bad news keeps the agency in business and bad news sells newspapers Do you know if you look at the injury records for everything that MSHA regulates we are better we are safer we have fewer injuries than even general industry The only people that are better than us are finance insurance and a couple of others Our mining gets lumped into oil and gas in the Bureau of Labor statistics Those injuries and fatalities are absolutely gargantuan So we have a public that doesnt even know that except for a couple of instances that our mines dont have lids on them And bad outweighs good every time The only chance we Metzgar have is if you are successful in separating metal nonmetal from coal YANIK Lets switch gears to the highway bill Is it an industry victory or are we selling ourselves short when we should be pursuing a five or six year bill CISZCZON It seems like since they came up with the twoyear bill there was no momentum Im really surprised I 40 PIT QUARRY February 2013 www pitandquarry com