In this first episode of Drilling Deeper, Pit & Quarry‘s new podcast for the aggregates industry, editor-in-chief Kevin Yanik and managing editor Jack Kopanski introduce themselves and lay the groundwork for what the podcast will touch on.
Hear how Kevin and Jack got their starts at Pit & Quarry, about their experiences with the magazine, how they acclimated and integrated into the aggregates industry, and what they hope listeners will take away from Drilling Deeper.
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Transcription
KY = Kevin Yanik
JK = Jack Kopanski
KY: Welcome to Drilling Deeper: a Pit & Quarry Podcast. I’m editor-in-chief Kevin Yanik, with me is managing editor Jack Kopanski. We’re with Pit & Quarry magazine, a trade publication, published monthly, serving the construction aggregates industry. Crushed stone, stand and gravel are our forte. Jack, it’s exciting we’ve arrived on this day – we’re recording Episode One of Drilling Deeper!
JK: Yeah, I’m super excited to be here. Y’know, this is something we’ve been working on for a while, and we’ll talk a bit about that once we get going. A lot of work, preparation and planning has been put into this, and it’s exciting that the day is finally here that we’re recording Episode 1.
KY: Traditionally those who get Pit & Quarry consume it as a print magazine. As I mentioned we publish and distribute monthly. We have supplements that go out in tandem with those. That’s the history of Pit & Quarry – I mean we go all the way back to 1916 – there was no digital media [back in 1916] and it’s crazy that since probably 2016 we’ve seen the advent of so much “stuff”. Social media has gotten to different levels…and here we are doing a podcast. It’s not something I necessarily would’ve thought I’d be a part of when I joined P&Q 11 years ago, and maybe even for you two years ago Jack. But it seems like podcasts – if you’re doing media now – you need to be in this space. And that’s the reason why we’re here, is because our readers are consumers of media. They aren’t just readers really anymore; they’re taking in P&Q in their mailbox when they get their print copy, they’re going on our website, they’re consuming our content via social media, our e-newsletters, and now via podcasts. It’s a continuously changing media world and P&Q – we’re always wanting to be on the cutting edge of that.
JK: I really feel like you hit the nail on the head with that Kevin. We do so much different stuff in so many different ways for readers and for those interested in the industry to take in our content. And I think if you look at some of what we do in multimedia already – we have our Road to Prosperity interviews that we’ll record, as well as doing videos from trade show floors, from our booths, from advertisers’ booths – this kind of seemed like the natural next step. To your point earlier, I think you’re right, this wasn’t something that was even a thought of a thought when I started here. So, to see this really develop over the last year or so has been really exciting and I think it’s a new challenge for the both of us. It’s something that neither of us have ever really done before. I think it’s going to be good for us to not only find a new medium to talk about P&Q, to spread the news and what we’ve got going on, but also just another means for people to hear from the authority on aggregates and technology.
KY: When we were discussing this behind the scenes. We have a small team P&Q, and we put our heads together and figured out if we’re going to do a podcast, we don’t want it to just be what you’re seeing in the magazine or what you’re consuming elsewhere. The idea here, and you can kind of see it in our podcast name “Drilling Deeper”, is…y’know, Jack and I, we’re out in the field, we’re talking to people whether it’s aggregate producers, equipment manufacturers and dealers, people with experience and knowledge to impart on our readership. So we’re gathering that, and not everything that we gather necessarily appears on the pages of the magazine or on the website. There’s so much more depth to what it is you [JK] and I capture regularly, and the podcast here is really a format or medium to kind of…go a little bit deeper! To drill a bit deeper into the things that we’re picking up on, share our takes on things, offer a more analysis and a different spin on what you would take in normally.
JK: And obviously this is only episode one, but we’ve got plenty of ideas and different things that we hope to eventually bring our listeners – be it snippets from interviews, interviews directly from different trade shows and different state association shows that we go to. So to Kevin’s point, this is hopefully going to take what we’ve been doing and provide some extra content, some extra value, and extra information for anyone that’s listening. So I think this is going to be the start of what’s hopefully going to be a staple for P&Q moving forward, and a trusted source of information for our listeners and readers.
KY: Now…we have our core audience, our readership, that’s verified when we go through an audit process on the magazine to make sure that we’re sending the magazine to actual crushing, stone, sand and gravel producers. One thing that kind of happened with the advent of digital media is that anybody can access P&Q. You don’t necessarily have to be “qualified”, you can go onto our website, you can go on to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram etc. and consume the things that we’re putting out there as P&Q. I think this is another opportunity for us to reach people who don’t know about aggregates to learn a little bit more about what it is our industry does. We’re going to be getting into that in the episodes, bringing in guests to talk about what our industry does, because people quite frankly the public generally doesn’t know what the aggregates industry is.
Jack, you and I have talked about this offline, too, about when we each started at P&Q. My starting point goes all the way back to 2012, and you’ve been with us for two-plus years. I remember sitting in one of the meeting rooms at our former parent company (that had P&Q under its fold), and I was asked “Do you want to cover the aggregates industry? Do you know what that is?”, and I kind of…BS’d my way through that answer. I didn’t know what aggregates was. I was almost thirty years old, I knew what a “quarry” was, he [the interviewer] explained to me about “sand and gravel”, but the fact that the very name that our industry goes by primarily – “aggregates” – the fact that I didn’t know what that was…maybe I was uneducated, maybe I was stupid, but I think in a way that kind of reflects what the general public knows about our industry. And hopefully our podcast can not only reach those who need information to do their daily jobs in pits and quarries and on the manufacturing and dealer front, but also spread awareness of what our industry does.
JK: I can definitely echo those sentiments. I remember sitting in my interview with you and our publisher, Rob Fulop, who we’ll have on a future episode to introduce himself and talk about his role at the magazine. I remember sitting in my interview with you two and I made a point to say “Hey, this seems like a great place to work! You seem like great guys. I…don’t know anything about ‘pits’ or ‘quarries’. I know about marble quarries, but that’s about it.” Obviously that’s a pretty sharp departure from what we do, But if you’d have told me five years ago, as I’m getting out of college, that I’d be writing about crushers, screeners, excavators, all the different types of equipment and technology that goes into the aggregates industry, much less if you’d have told me I would be writing about aggregates, I would have said you were crazy! Like you said, I had no idea what that entailed, or really the importance that it has our day-to-day lives, so it’s been a very interesting two years for me getting to learn it. Obviously you’ve been here, as you mentioned, for about 11 years, and it’s just a very sharp departure from what we’ve done before, but definitely a very enjoyable and very fruitful spot to be in.
KY: We actually have similar paths into the aggregates industry, into P&Q. When you think about it, when you’re a young kid who gravitates towards the things that you like, towards the things that you see, for Jack and I that obvious thing was sports. Jack and I both have histories with careers that started in sports. Not necessarily in the NFL or MLB or anything, but on the lower end of the totem pole with high school sports. I think we kind of just learned through a little bit of experience in that end of things that it’s not necessarily a sustainable or a long-lasting career that you could have as a sport writer. We discovered business media, we discovered P&Q, and y’know – I haven’t turned back. Thinking back, when I was sitting there with Rob Fulop who was interviewing me eleven-plus years ago and he was asking about aggregates, I think my first thought was “I just need to get a job. I need a better job.” That maybe I’m going to bounce after a year and find something else. But what I’ve learned about our industry is that it has great people, it’s continuously changing, it’s under-appreciated, and P&Q plays a role in making our readers do their jobs better, train their staff more thoroughly, and hopefully work safer. So for you and I – I don’t think when we were young kids, reading the newspaper or watching ESPN, that we thought P&Q was going to be our home someday. But lo and behold, here we are, Jack!
JK: Yeah! And you talk about the education front – about not really knowing much about it as a young kid – I think that’s, as you mentioned, a topic we’ll certainly be getting into in future episodes, and a common theme about this industry we’ll probably be talking about a lot as we move forward with this podcast. I remember at the first Pit & Quarry Roundtable I was a part of back in the summer of 2022, there was a manufacturer, and he was talking about how to get people involved in the industry; how to better educate people, the importance of aggregates, sort of dispel some of the poor reputation that the industry has. He gave an anecdote that I don’t know if I’ll ever forget, because it was so well said and such an accurate metaphor. He said that “To this day, [he] still cuts up the rings from gatorade bottles, from coke cans, because there was a PSA – an ad campaign – when he was a kid, to save the turtles. And that’s all you saw, so it’s now this subconscious thing [he has] that comes from this public message that was put out and reinforced so much when [he was] younger.” And his point was, what if there’s a way that we could do that with the aggregates industry? To show the importance, to show what it really is, to dispel rumors and hopefully get the correct idea out there, especially when people are young and they’re still learning. Hopefully that can spark some long-lasting change within the industry. Because again, I remember I took maybe a geology class or two, but I certainly never learned about mining or crushing rock. It’s an opportunity that is out there that is starting to be taken advantage of if you talk to people within our industry, but certainly something that feels like there’s still a long way to go.
KY: You mentioned our Roundtable – P&Q hosts an event called the Pit & Quarry Roundtable and Conference just about every year, our next one is going to be in February 2024 down in south Florida. Year after year I feel like we’re talking about the challenge of promoting our industry to people. The number one challenge in our industry, I would argue, is hiring people. Maybe even more importantly, keeping people once you get them in the door. If they don’t know much about our industry, they’re not going to come to work for you. We need to promote the many benefits of what our industry does. I think one thing that a younger generation – people in their 20s, like you, Jack – appreciates is they want to know that when they go to work, when they choose a career, that it’s actually making a difference. And that’s certainly something that aggregate producers, within their quarries and communities, are doing. They’re making a difference. Not everybody knows necessarily that there’s a quarry in their back yard. There are quarries just about everywhere in all fifty states, P&Q distributes to all fifty states and Canada. There’s so much more awareness that needs to be put out there to the general public, and hopefully we can do that while, again, also educating our core readership about the things that they need to do to effectively run their quarry businesses.
JK: Right. You mentioned “awareness”, and people not necessarily knowing that quarries are there. One of the eye-opening things for me when I joined was sort of the stigma or the stereotyping around quarries, that there’s such a negative perception. Quarries will go out of their way to put beams up, to build within an area of trees. make any way for it to be essentially cut off as much as possible because they don’t want to deal with the noise complaints, the vibration complaints, they don’t want to have people throwing a fit over a quarry. When, in reality, there are going to be some side-effects, but ultimately what is being done in these facilities and at these locations is laying the groundwork for just about everything that we do in our day-to-day lives. Our roads, our buildings… So I think, again to your point, to bring that awareness out, to bring that education so that people aren’t looking at these operations with such a negative light, is going to be a huge step that this industry I think needs to take. Hopefully we can play something of a role in that.
KY: You’re right, at the end of the day having that local quarry, that neighboring quarry, it might not necessarily be desirable by the neighbors, but having those construction materials – that critical crushed stone, sand and gravel – come out of a more local facility, that’s doing the community better service. Because, as we’ll talk about in a future episode, the cost of material goes up tremendously the farther away pits and quarries are located. It’s getting harder now to locate quarries, to start up a new quarry in neighborhoods, because of NIMBY-ism (“Not In My Back Yard”). Like you said, maybe because of misinformation, or not understanding the nature of the quarries and the critical value that they provide to the communities. But I’m really looking forward to providing a new platform through P&Q here with this podcast to talk about that, and to dive into some other issues too.
Pit & Quarry, we are the authority on equipment and technology. When we redesigned the magazine in 2016 we also identified three core areas that we wanted to cover. Business is one of those [areas], and we tell stories regularly and talk about what’s happening with community relations. We also touch on safety regularly, we have a section dedicated to safety content, on doing things more safely. The core, essentially, of our publication is technology. There’s a lot of technology that encompasses these operations, and it’s pretty exciting when you think about the magnitude; all the way from drilling and blasting a site, down to making sure the materials are getting loaded out properly. There’s a lot of technology and a lot of thought, planning and logistics that goes into effectively getting that rock out the door.
JK: You’re absolutely right. I think one of the more eye-opening experiences for me, maybe three months after I started here…I was lucky enough to get the chance to go to Quarry Academy, which our Producer behind the scenes, Marie Emerick, is going to be going to in November this year. First off, they give you a binder about THIS big of all the different seminars and things they’re going to do. Secondly, as someone who was relatively new to the industry, to see so many people that are so not only passionate but also knowledgeable about this industry, cover everything from the first drill and blast to stockpiling and conveying, getting everything where it needs to go…Just seeing the entire process laid out like that was really eye-opening. I obviously got something of an idea from us working together and reading the magazine, but spending so much time around it and getting to understand the extent to which this goes was really impressive for me.
KY: Yeah, Jack, you had a chance to go earlier this year to ConExpo-ConAgg for the first time. I think I’ve been to four of those. That’s North America’s largest construction trade show. Just massive! It’s where all things aggregates and construction converge. I can’t fully rememeber my first ConExpo because it was a while back, but tell me about that experience – Seeing all the equipment, seeing the vastness of that, and what that kind of told you about the impact our industry has and how much it touches at the end of the day.
JK: So, ConExpo was just this past March, and it was kind of fitting that it was the last of the…I guess you could say “Big Three” in our industry, with MINExpo, AGG1 and then ConExpo. I went to my first show, Mine Expo, in Sep 2021 about a month after I started, which was in Las Vegas. Similar to ConExpo, I was pretty blown away, and then [there was] AGG1 in 2022 in Nashville which was also very impressive. You guys would tell me ConExpo is “a different animal” and I was like “yeah, ok, it’ll be big, y’know, Las Vegas convention center is obviously massive.” I’m like “okay, I kind of got a taste of this with MINExpo”, but you weren’t kidding about ConExpo. It was beyond impressive. Not only the indoor exhibits, but all the space outdoors, I mean, CAT‘s display alone was enough to take my breath away. The entire operator stadium they had, just seeing everything….we were there for a week and it felt like you needed another two weeks to really get everything. It was a lot of running around, like “we gotta go here, then we gotta go here, then we gotta go here…” Definitely a very impressive experience. Looking forward to 2026!
KY: That’s going to be here before we know it. 2023 snuck up on us after 2020, [when] ConExpo was kind of modified by covid. I was just bringing up ConExpo because again it is where all things aggregates converge. This year we saw a lot of equipment there. We heard a lot of talk about electric equipment, we’re still at the front end of the development of that. We’re continuously keeping tabs on the trends in equipment and technology that are taking place within the construction and aggregates industry. It’s always reinvigorating to go to the shows. It’s a marathon – Everyone out there listening who’s been to ConExpo certainly feels that. There’s a feeling of relief getting to your end point, whether that’s Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. For us, we head out of Las Vegas on Saturday traditionally for that show. Seeing everybody in one place, seeing the producers come together with all the manufacturers and their new equipment and wares…It’s one of the more exciting things we get to be a part of. We attend a lot of shows, and that’s part of where we’re going to be pulling material here for our Drilling Deeper podcast. Our ears are always tapped to the information insiders that are out there, and you can look forward to seeing/hearing more of that here in the coming months.
JK: For me personally, as exciting, valuable and rewarding as ConExpo, MINExpo and AGG1 are, I think what I’ve found even more valuable, and even more engaging perhaps, are some of the State Association shows we get to go to. Late last year there was a ten day span where I was bouncing between Missouri and South Carolina doing those State Association shows. Those were incredible experiences. Being able to get down to different states, to see how these microcosms of the industry and the people within them are being affected, how they are working with their state and how the state is working with them, is such a great glimpse of sort of the “health” of the industry. Those, for me, have been an absolute joy to experience. I’ve met a ton of amazing people within the industry and have gotten to tell some awesome stories and hear some great feedback, and just…like I said, get a better understanding of it. We often tend to look at the industry as “nationwide”, maybe even “worldwide” at times, but being able to get down to the state level, the community level, and see how things are working there, how things might not be working, how things can be done better….for me, that’s just a great experience.
KY: Yeah! It’s the people of this industry, of the aggregates industry, that have kind of kept me [here]. I think people keep jobs because…one, I guess their company’s either “good” or “bad”, and if the company is “good” they’re going to stick around. But it’s their boss, the people around them, that either reinforce that it’s a “good” or a “bad” place to work. Obviously you and I work at one company – North Coast Media is the parent company of P&Q magazine, and that has contributed to my stay, my eleven years at P&Q. But, a huge part of it is also the people in our industry. They’re “salt of the earth”, you hear that phrase all the time. They’re some of the kindest, hardest working people in our country. They’re the type of people that ultimately keep our country moving forward, because without them going to work, building, crushing rock, or producing building materials, we’re not going to have the way of life that we do here in the U.S.. I may not have appreciated that when I first set foot to do my job at P&Q eleven-plus years ago, but I certainly understand that now. That, without our readers going out and doing their jobs every day, the United States as it is constructed would not be the “number one” nation. Sure, our infrastructure needs some work. I don’t necessarily know that our readers are “to blame” for that…maybe some [other people] in the nation’s capital that are uh…at odds, there. But our readership’s typical aggregate producer who’s going out there every day, they’re making sure that they’re doing their part to provide the infrastructure needed to move goods, to maintain the healthy economy that we pretty much have year in and year out in this country.
JK: I think one of the things that has stuck with me the most in my two-plus years at P&Q is that every non-ConExpo year we’ll have the Pit & Quarry Hall of Fame, where we accept nominations and then we have our board look at those nominations to decide who gets in and what the class looks like. Our most recent class in 2022 was a combination of 2021 and 2022 because of pandemic-related holdups. I know one of the 2022 inductees, Dave Thomey, he said something that I guess he says at the end of every speech, he said (and I paraphrase), “if you take one thing away from this; every part of your life, you can attribute to aggregates. The building you’re in. The road you drive on. The floors you’re standing on. Our way of life would not be possible without these materials.” And I thought about it at the time, thinking about everything around me, and maybe a touch of hyperbole of course, but to a grander extent I’m looking around and thinking “yup..that needs crushed stone, that needs gravel, that needs crushed stone…” It’s a valid point, and certainly something that is very true.
KY: Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground here on Episode One. Talked about ConExpo, the lack of awareness about our industry, and a variety of other things. You can look forward to more – We’re going to have podcasts coming out bi-weekly. You can, of course, keep tabs on all things Pit & Quarry in your mailbox, in your print edition. The digital edition should be in your email, you can check us out there, as well as in the Pit & Quarry Weekly Report [newsletter], Pit & Quarry Roundtable, and Pit & Quarry Hall of Fame. That’s kind of the crazy thing about P&Q, a hundred years ago it started out as a handbook, then a magazine, and now here we are venturing into this new realm of podcasts. We’re excited to be bringing a variety of content to you; we’ll have guests, hear perspectives from Jack and I, talk about out travels, the things we’re covering, etc. It’s going to be a fun ride here with our podcast for the months and hopefully years to come!
JK: Yeah, yeah exactly. I know we were both a little curious how this first one might go. I think we’ve got the first episode jitters out of the way a little bit, so very excited to start tackling some of the big issues going on in our industry and to let our people know all the good stuff Pit & Quarry has going on!
