How many crushed stone operations in the U.S. produce at least 1 million tpy? How about 2 million tpy, or even 5 million tpy?
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently provided some answers to these questions and others with the release of new data that will ultimately be incorporated in its minerals yearbook for 2023.
USGS details how many crushed stone operations are active in the U.S. by size (see table 5A here), breaking sites down into 17 size categories ranging from “less than 25,000” metric tons per year to “5,000,000 and more” metric tons per year. The agency says 3,423 operations produced crushed stone in 2023, and that 397 of them (4.2 percent) had outputs of 1 million metric tons or more.
Eighty-eight operations (2.6 percent) produced between 1.5 million and 1.99 million metric tons of crushed stone in 2023. Thirty-six operations (1.1 percent) produced between 2 million and 2.49 million metric tons, and 60 (or 1.8 percent) finished between 2.5 million and 4.99 million metric tons.
Fifteen crushed stone operations nationwide (0.4 percent) produced at least 5 million tons in 2023. The 15 combined to produce 113 million metric tons, representing 7.3 percent of the nation’s total that year.
Producers of all sizes ultimately contributed to the nation’s total crushed stone output in 2023, which was 1.55 billion metric tons. This includes producers whose annual outputs are less than 200,000 tons.
Nearly half (48.3 percent) of all crushed stone producers fit into this realm, with 13 percent having outputs of 25,000 tpy or less.
Related: USGS ranks the nation’s top 100 crushed stone-producing companies
