The Parsons Quarry is proving viable, though, and Jones Bros leaders are rewarding it with investments to expedite the operation’s growth.
“We received enough capex to get two brand-new pieces of equipment,” Waddell says. “One is a brand-new 988 pit loader. We have a brand-new 4,000-gallon water truck coming, as well.”
Developments like these are welcome sights given where the Parsons Quarry was just a couple of years ago.
“Trucks are coming in and out,” Waddell says. “There were months when we first started that if we weren’t buying our own material, there were no trucks coming.”
Those were perhaps the hardest times for the operation. Fortunately, the earliest growing pains are gone.
Plenty of customer trucks now regularly make their way to the Parsons Quarry, allowing Jones Bros to open up its pit further and think about a new phase of projects.
“Right now, we run 100 percent diesel because that’s what we can get,” Waddell says. “But we pay monthly for our transformer. We need to find tech companies that have invested in technology that have portable equipment – either a hybrid option or a full-electric option.”
Similarly, operation leaders have discussed moving away from the dozer-excavator combination currently utilized on the feed end of their plant and toward a setup where haulers dump directly into the hopper.
That the operation has arrived at such discussions shows how far the Parsons Quarry has come. To Waddell, the growth achieved there is highly rewarding.
“I would be foolish to tell you there wasn’t some doubt that we could get this thing off the ground,” he says. “I’d be lying to you, and the owners know it because I’ve been candid with them. But it’s rewarding because it’s on the cusp of being its own ‘thing.’
“This right here is its own business,” Waddell adds. “It’s a goods producer that’s independent of the rest of the company. It’s getting to the point where it doesn’t need the company to support it, and that to me is rewarding.”
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