Much has changed for The Southern Stone Company over the last four years.
The company, which operates a quarry in Jackson, Missouri, was purchased out of bankruptcy in 2021 by Andre’ Smith, president and CEO of Five-S Group, and a partner. Smith and Five-S bought the company outright in May 2023.
The Jackson operation remains the lone quarry in the Five-S portfolio, with the rest of the company’s business consisting of heavy civil construction and mass material supply (dirt, rock, sand, etc.) operations throughout the Gulf Coast region, as well as a marine subsidiary.
“The thought of having a quarry had always crossed our mind,” Smith says. “So when [Southern Stone] became available, we saw it as a diamond in the rough. It hadn’t been properly operated or maintained to make it a viable quarry. We knew we had to get the right people, the right projects and facilitate the right capital investments to make it happen.”
Putting in the work
Even before Five-S acquired the quarry outright, it was clear the location needed work to maximize its potential.
“When I first went to look at the site in 2017, I saw it and thought: ‘Oh boy. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done,’” says Chase LaPlace, quarry director at Southern Stone. “There were a lot of reserves in the ground and it was good material, but there was a lot of older equipment on its last legs. So then it became a question of: ‘Can we do anything with it now?’ Eventually, we had to bring in other equipment.”
When Five-S took over the quarry, the previous owners were running a jaw and a VSI crusher to produce clean stone. The company sought to prioritize 1.5-in. minus base, so it opted to instead use HSIs.
Currently, Southern Stone’s quarry features four Eagle Crusher HSIs (a 1600, two 1400s and a 1200), two 8-ft. x 20-ft. screens (one Powerscreen and one JCI) and two 6-ft. x 20-ft. screens (one Eagle Crusher and one Deister on a Masaba frame).
The long-term plan, however, is to move away from HSIs due to the abrasiveness of the material being processed.
“We’re doing a deep dive on what we need so we’re not taxing our equipment and our people so much,” LaPlace says. “The good thing about impactors is that they can take large-sized rocks and produce sand. The problem is, as many times as the rock has to stay in that chamber to get the reduction, you’re not getting a lot of volume through there. It’s all a volume game. Your volume is your only outlet in an industry that is extremely capital-intensive.”
Running HSIs hasn’t stopped Southern Stone Quarry from steadily increasing its production totals over the last several years.
Prior to Five-S’s acquisition of the quarry, company officials say the site produced less than 500,000 tpy. Since then, Southern Stone produced 900,000 tons in the second half of 2023 following the acquisition; between 1.8 and 2 million tons in 2024; and between 2.3 and 2.4 million tons in 2025.
The quarry provides material to Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas. Along with trucking out material, Southern Stone’s location on the Mississippi River – a big selling point for Smith – allows the operation to barge material down the river.
“[When Five-S acquired Southern Stone, the barging station] was already on-site, but there wasn’t a fleeting permit,” LaPlace says. “We did an after-the-fact permit for the first loading barge, and we’re rehabbing another loadout barge as a dump dock for riprap products.”
Barging makes up most of the quarry’s shipments, with LaPlace saying the site was on track to barge 2 million tons in 2025.
A fresh face
While LaPlace has overseen Southern Stone’s growth, the men and women in the quarry every day have been instrumental in bringing the company to where it is now.
That group is led by Jerady Sticka, Southern Stone’s quarry manager. Sticka was brought on in March 2025. His was also among the key positions LaPlace aimed to address.
“I told Mickey [Suire, senior vice president of marine at Five-S] I needed a quarry, procurement, safety and a maintenance manager to create a management team,” LaPlace says. “Jerady came on-site, and he told me he liked a challenge. He, like Andre’, saw this quarry as a diamond in the rough. He saw it for what it was, but he’s always looking at how he can make things better.”
By the end of 2025, LaPlace had filled the remaining three managerial roles. Sticka has also been building his own team in the quarry, taking an internal approach.
“Jerady has been able to promote from within, and that’s what Chase and I like,” Suire says. “We hired some extras that we needed, but some of the people in key roles running the quarry have been with us since Jerady got hired.”
It’s been nearly a year since Sticka took his position, arriving from an operation in Wyoming. In that time, both Sticka and Five-S have been thrilled with the partnership.
“I’ve worked for a lot of contractors, and to have the support that I have here from Mickey and Chase, I’ve never quite had that backing,” Sticka says. “The trust, loyalty and integrity between these two guys is phenomenal. That gives me enough security to do my job and say: ‘I’m not scared to go out and try something new. I know it’s the right direction, and I’m not going to get my hand slapped for trying.’”
That trust in Sticka has been a foundational point in their working relationship.
“We wanted to give Jerady that creative freedom to be able to do the job we know we need to do,” LaPlace says. “We want people to be excited to come to work, have a vision and be able to implement that vision.”
This partnership has also been a learning experience for Sticka and Five-S.
“It’s a good team,” Sticka says. “They teach me about [marine operations] and I teach them about crushing. It works both ways. These guys are construction-savvy, which helps. They might not have the extensive crushing background like I do, but they know construction. They’re very knowledgeable about it, and it’s nice to have that on your side.”
High hopes
It’s this partnership that will be the backbone of Southern Stone ’s future growth. Some of that growth is already underway, though, and there are no signs of it slowing down.
“I see expanding the quarry from 2.5 million tpy to 4.5 million tpy within the next two years,” Sticka says. “We’ve already started growing. We have one safety guy [on-site]; eventually we’d like to have two or three. We’d like to produce more material and be more cost-effective. We’re moving in the right direction.”
Currently, Southern Stone maintains significant reserves, according to its estimates. Potential quarry expansions could considerably increase these reserves by enabling the company to dig deeper and wider.
It isn’t just the quarry that could soon see an larger footprint.
“We’re working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to expand our riverfront operations as well,” LaPlace says. “There are improvements we’re going to make that will allow us to load out faster and load more material at once. Right now, we load barges with light tonnage in about an hour; with heavy loads, it’s about an hour and a half.
“We want to improve our conveying and material handling to the barge,” he adds. “We want to start conveying over the railroad tracks and eliminate some of the truck traffic, but there’s a lot that goes into that.”
Of course, these expansions won’t be an overnight process.
“You can’t simply purchase crushers off-the-shelf and have them operational immediately – it’s a lengthy process,” LaPlace says. “We think the next year and a half to two years is when we’ll be to the point where we can start putting in new equipment and start operating. In the meantime, we’re looking at trying to improve the setups we have now.”
Even in the short term, the company is forecasting growth.
“In 2026, [Southern Stone] is probably going to produce close to 3 million tons,” Suire says. “Demand is going to be high this year. POs are coming out, contracts are coming out and investors are a little looser now that they can see their returns coming in through the LNG market, data centers and power.”
On a larger scale, Smith is hopeful the Southern Stone Quarry will be the first of many under the Five-S umbrella.
“Our one quarry can’t facilitate the whole country,” he says. “We do plan to add quarries, ultimately increasing capacity and per annual tonnages and types of materials.”
After the turnaround Five-S helped facilitate at Southern Stone, Smith knows his team is capable of continued success.
“We proved a lot of people wrong [with Southern Stone],” he says. “That speaks to the people who are making it happen. Trusting the people who have done it before and know what they’re doing has really paid off for us.”
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