On the final 2023 episode of Drilling Deeper, Kevin and Jack look back on their fourth-quarter travels and what’s ahead in the first quarter of 2024. Additionally, the two discuss the developments that emerged as their aggregate industry stories of the year for 2023.
Transcription
Kevin Yanik: Hey everybody, Kevin Yanik, editor-in-chief of Pit & Quarry magazine, back with you once again here on Drilling Deeper: A Pit & Quarry Podcast. This show is brought to you by Sykes Supply. With 80 plus years of truly personalized customer service, Sykes Supply offers competitive pricing on top power transmission, conveyor and power tool brands. And with leadership that solves problems for customer partners, Sykes Supply is a difference maker. Visit sykessupply.com/podcast and experience the Sykes difference today. With me today, once again, is my fearless partner Jack Kopanski. Jack, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays. How you doing these days?
Jack Kopanski: Kevin, I’m as festive as can be. I am in the holiday spirit. I’m ready to go. I’m loving the hat. Looking good.
KY: It’s the new era brand.
JK: Yeah.
KY: Looking pretty good. 7 and 5/8ths size.
JK: Yeah, perfect. I used to be 7 and 5/ths and I’m up to 7 and 3/4. My brain’s getting too big.
KY: Getting a big head in here, huh Jack?
JK: Listen, I’ve had one, it’s just getting bigger now at this point.
KY: Yeah. What’s Santa bringing for you this year?
JK: I don’t know if I’ve been that good this year. I don’t know what I can expect, but a Browns win ahead of Christmas would be nice. But you know, that might be asking too much at this point. So, I don’t know. We’ll see. What about you? What are you hoping for under the tree?
KY: A Browns win sounds nice. I’m sure the Browns season is probably not going to go the way we want, so I should ask Santa for a Super Bowl. What are we at? Super Bowl like 57 or 58 at this point?
JK: God, I’ve lost count. You know, the Super Bowl logos used to be so creative and you knew which Super Bowl it was because, you know, the Roman numerals you could kind of make sense out of it. Now every logo just looks the same and it all just blends together.
KY: Yeah. What do I want from Santa? I don’t know. I think I’m gonna defer to my kids. I’ll give them an extra Santa wish. I know my daughter, a four year old, she wants everything Barbie. It seems like she is already flipping through the catalog and my one year old, I don’t know. But maybe he can ask for a Browns Super Bowl win, too. You never know.
JK: She wants Barbie, he wants all the Oppenheimer stuff. He wants to be the next man in charge.
KY: That’s right. I got Oppenheimer. I don’t think I have Barbie in my arsenal this year, though.
JK: I think you could pull it off. I think you can make it happen. Got a dream house vibe to you. I could see it.
KY: Year’s not done yet, so we can get that thing done I think.
JK: That’s awesome.
KY: Yeah, speaking of the year coming to an end, we’re at a good point to kind of reflect on 2023 today, and we’ll look ahead to 2024 a bit, as it’s been an exciting one. I’m thinking 2024 will be very much some of the same as we experienced here in 2023 for our aggregate industry. But we’ve been busy lately. It doesn’t seem like in past years we’ve been on the road as much as we have in November and December, but here we are. I feel like we’re the the traveling band between you, me, producer Marie and our sales crew. We’ve been probably, it seems like, to 10 or 12 states in the month of November and December. I know Marie attended Quarry Academy on behalf of Pit & Quarry, and Jack I think you were in Tucson for Komatsu’s Quarry Days. Some state association shows, seems like those things kind of pile up at the end between Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina. So we had representatives at some of those. Just been a busy time here and it’s kind of coming to an end. We’re gonna enjoy the holidays, but busy stretch to finish 2023 For Pit & Quarry as a staff.
JK: It’s crazy to think we’re already at the end of the year here and, you know, like you said, wrapping it up with a lot of travel as … It’s never bad getting out of Cleveland once it starts getting a little colder. Getting out to Tucson was definitely nice. And again, Marie was able to get down to San Antonio where it was a little warmer – my home away from home, if you will. Love that city. I’ve been there like … I’ve been there once not for work, and then a couple of times with work, and anytime anything’s going on in San Antonio I’m the first to raise my hand. But whether it’s getting away from the Ohio weather or just getting down there to get down there, it’s a great time. But, yeah no, like you said, been definitely busy this last quarter and never a bad thing to be busy.
KY: Just glancing ahead at where we’re gonna be in the first quarter. I mentioned fourth quarter seemed a little busier here in ’23 than maybe past years. Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not, I don’t know. But the first quarter, that’s always busy for Pit & Quarry. It seems like some of the big shows take place. It’s an AGG1 year, so we’ll be at AGG1 again in Nashville once again. That’s always a fun spot. We’ve got our Pit & Quarry Roundtable and Conference coming up February 1st and 2nd at PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
I think we’ve had our roundtable in Florida probably seven or eight years in a row. So, while you’re making your second home in San Antonio, our roundtable’s committed to Florida, South Florida, year over year, and we’re looking pretty good here in terms of attendance. That’s grown really nicely year over year for several years. We have them at these really pristine venues, and that’s been a driver of a lot of our attendance. Our producer numbers are healthy this year, and looking forward to having some conversations down there at PGA National Resort. There’s still time, too, you can apply to attend. Again, I think we’re probably a month and change away from from that event. But if you’re interested, check out our website, pitandquarryroundtable.com, for more information.
We’ve got a lot of events and a lot of cities and states on the 2024 calendar for the first quarter. Looks like OSSGA, ISEE, C&D World, you name it. It’s piling up here in the months to come – January, February, March – Jack.
JK: I’ve got March 6-9 circled on my calendar as I’m slated to go back to San Antonio.
KY: I wonder how you worked that one out, huh?
JK: You know, listen, you got to do what you got to do. So yeah, everything else before that’s great, you know? Our roundtable? Awesome. I’m just … I got my eyes on San Antonio.
KY: The National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association’s Young Leaders annual meeting is … Where are they again this year, Jack?
JK: I believe it’s … How do you pronounce it? I believe it’s San Antonio-
KY: San Anton.
JK: … Is where that’ll be. San Anton.
KY: Yeah. Well, I think we’ll probably be back down there again. I think you’ll be down there. I’m getting a little bit old though. I always forget what the rule is for for aging out of the NSSGA Young Leaders. I think it’s 40 or 41, and I shouldn’t show my cards to our audience, but I’m getting close. This might be my last one. I might have one beyond it. I’m not sure, based on my April birthday. But we’ll see. You got a few.
JK: I got another dozen or so left in me. Anyone listening that saw me at the first Young Leaders outside of the alumni years, you’re not getting rid of me that easy. I’ll be back.
KY: It’s always a fun time.
Well, again, we’re here at the end of 2023. Really saw it as an opportunity to kind of look back on the year that was for the aggregate industry. Wanted to share some of the things that I thought were the stories of the year at Pit & Quarry. As I was kind of poring over our website and flipping through pages of the magazine about what stood out in terms of, you know, maybe it was the number one story or not, but I have to go all the way back to January when I was out in Las Vegas for CES. It’s not really a traditional Pit & Quarry show, not something we would attend, but Caterpillar and Luck Stone, which is a private producer, family owned and operated producer out of Virginia. They were out at CES at the Las Vegas Convention Center to talk about a pretty cool venture that they’re working on, something that’s been underway for 10 years, I think, in terms of conversations. That’s this concept that they’re trying to bring to fruition with autonomous haul trucks. So they had a massive hauler out there on the show floor in Las Vegas. And I had the opportunity to sit down with Caterpillar execs and and leaders from Luck Stone to talk about what they’re trying to do with autonomous hauling technology.
Traditionally, Jack, we see at pits and quarries – largely quarries – crushed stone sites that are putting out big rock, you know, they’re hauling upwards of 100 tons in some of these haulers at their sites, and they’re operated, obviously, by manpower. Someone’s driving those trucks. But we’re getting to a point here where we may soon see these trucks driving themselves autonomously. Something we’ve seen in mining for a while here, thinking back on what Caterpillar kind of shared with me 11, 12 months ago. It seemed like there were 500 mining trucks that had been converted to autonomous hauling technology over the years with Caterpillar, at least. And I think there’s some other players out there who have autonomous haulers in commercialized applications. But things traditionally start in mining, I guess, some of the big technology. But now, we see this opportunity to scale things downward through Luck Stone and Caterpillar into aggregates.
JK: Yeah. And I remember when you were first kind of telling me about the opportunity you had with Cat and Luck Stone and talking about autonomous hauling and how it was, like you mentioned, more of a mining-centric kind of thing, and that it hadn’t really worked its way into aggregates yet. My initial thought right off the bat is: If it can haul in one case, what’s the difference and trying to use it for aggregates? And when I kind of understood that the difference was … Downsizing or upsizing the technology for aggregates that’s sort of the problem?
KY: Downsizing so much.
JK: Downsizing.
KY: Yeah, they just haven’t really gone through the trial and error on that, to take what they’ve done on these giant multi-100 ton haul trucks and scaled it down to these 100 ton models. But they’re gonna try to figure out the logistics of that. You’d almost think it would be easy to do that. I mean, you’re just taking the technology in these massive trucks and putting it in smaller ones. But, there’s a little bit more to it than that, apparently.
JK: Yeah. And speaking of autonomous hauling, you know, you mentioned what Cat is doing with Luck Stone. And if you haven’t checked out the several articles Kevin’s done about that, be sure to hop over to pitandquarry.com or go back through the deep, deep archives of magazines I know you all have, and be sure to check out what he’s written about that because there’s a lot of good information. I think one of the overwhelming themes is how Luck Stone really continues to be a company that isn’t afraid to take risks and is happy to be on the cutting-edge of a lot of this stuff.
But you know, in my own experience, I’ve been lucky enough to talk with another company that specializes in autonomous hauling stuff, and that’s Pronto AI. I had a story back on them earlier this year, and we’ll have another story that they’re involved in coming out in January. That was sort of my initial foray into autonomous hauling and getting to really understand what it’s all about “seeing it in action”, but learning about it and … With all this push toward AI recently, and I know AI is a little different from autonomy, but just sort of understanding how you can take a truck, drive a route one time, and you essentially program it in and then it becomes … You push a button, it takes the route, it adjusts itself how it needs to to get loaded, takes that same route back and then dumps it is astounding to me.
And just to kind of plug my story a little bit as well, the way they described it was a dog bone where on each side you got a little bit of variation, but that route in the middle stays the same every time. So, it’s an incredibly fascinating … I would argue probably the technological trend we heard, saw and probably wrote the most about just because it’s such a, kind of groundbreaking thing, again, for our industry that, you know, isn’t necessarily totally here yet, but is working to get here. So, very exciting developments on that front.
KY: Some of the hardware, traditionally, you know, a crusher from 1890 to 2023 here, I mean, a lot of those look and kind of feel the same. They do the same stuff in terms of performance, but the technology that’s being incorporated onto some of these things, or into some of these things, is really what’s changing the game. If you could take the man out of the truck, take the person out of the truck and go autonomous with your operation, in some ways, or maybe even beyond the trucks. I mean, I think there’s probably going to be exploration in the coming years on excavators and loaders and other mobile equipment.
We’ve already seen plants that are going to automation to eliminate some of the people. We’ve talked about the workforce on past episodes here of Drilling Deeper, Jack, and thinking back, just what I know about the industry, if you go back 40-50 years, some of these operations probably had hundreds of people in them. You know, 50-100 people for some of these sites, and you know, now, some of them could do it with six or eight. Maybe some of them that are a little bit smaller in size and scale can do it with, you know, with one or two if they’re using a portable crusher and they’re just doing things in little doses. But the technology is really where the industry is changing. The equipment may look the same. The truck kind of looks the same, right? You know, these 777G’s that Caterpillar Luck Stone are gonna be putting out in 2024 at their site in Virginia … I mean, the trucks all looks the same, but really it’s just the bugs that are being put onto these things that are allowing it to do things different than we’ve ever seen.
JK: Yeah, and I think one of the things that sticks out a lot to me with all this automation that is being brought into the industry, and in some of the conversations I’ve had, where I’ll ask some of these manufacturers or some of these technology companies, “How does this affect safety? You know, is this is this gonna be less safe? Is it gonna be more safe?” And the overwhelming response is that it’s going to increase safety, because you’re taking people out of some of these hazardous situations where it’s not eliminating, but decreasing the risk of rollovers and being around these massive haul trucks that if it’s sitting on a grade the wrong way, or if it’s loaded the wrong way, scary, scary, bad stuff can happen. So, that’s something that stuck out.
And, I think, maybe as enticing as it might be to some – the idea of sort of removing as many people as possible from an operation and just sort of having a be push button – at least to myself, a positive aspect is that the overwhelming response I’ve heard as well is that you’re never going to get people entirely out of aggregates. There’s going to have to be someone – one, someone to push the button – but, you’re probably not going to be able to get autonomous ways to clear blinding and pegging in screens. You’re not going to have someone be able to autonomously clear a crusher, you know? There’s always going to be people involved, which I think is, you know, super important, because it’s a people industry, and the people in it are just so great. So, yeah, certainly a lot of exciting stuff. But at the end of the day it always always comes back to people.
KY: No, you’re right. One of the things I recall in visiting with Charlie Luck of Luck Stone during the CES show was the idea that, what’s gonna happen with jobs? You’re taking the person out of the truck, you’re eliminating jobs. Well, Charlie, I thought, had a really thoughtful response to that. He talked about well, the jobs are just going to change. We’ve evolved and we’ve adapted our operations and our equipment over the years, you know, over the last 50 years. They don’t look the same as they did half a century ago, but the jobs are just going to change. They’re gonna be more sophisticated, they’re gonna be technology-oriented, we’re gonna need some smart people in this industry.
And we’re already kind of venturing down this road – this technology road – not just with autonomy, but with other things that are being incorporated into and onto equipment. I think, while some jobs may go away, and they’re probably the jobs that we are struggling to find people to come into our industry for anyway, we’re gonna have a different kind of workforce come in here that is going to probably promote the industry in a more effective light that’s going to make coming to work in our industry a lot more exciting.
JK: Yeah, and you hit on a point that I had honestly kind of forgotten about, but I’m glad you mentioned it, is that the idea of some of the jobs that are going to be replaced by autonomy are some of the ones that are hard to fill anyways. And that was something that I heard in my conversations with Pronto, where they mentioned sort of the monotony or the repetitiveness of driving a haul truck is what makes that such a prime candidate for automation, because it’s something that is just a constant back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Alright, well, you got to do a new route, then that’s back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
So it again goes back to, like you said with Charlie Luck, the jobs are gonna be there, they’re just changing, which I think is important. Which again, you know, in an industry that’s already hard enough to find people, can’t really afford to be losing any more than you already are through retirement or through, you know, career changes or whatever. So yeah, it’s certainly an interesting dynamic to follow with how autonomy is being incorporated more and more in the industry.
KY: Another story of the year, story of 2023 that kind of stood out for me, you could frame it one of two ways, I suppose. But, but ConExpo-Con/Agg obviously happened back in March of this year. In hand with that, we saw the trends that emerged in terms of technology. We saw electrification of equipment, or concepts in real world equipment; hybrids, in some cases, for crushing and other means come forward at the show. Sustainability continues to drive innovation for equipment manufacturers of our industry. And digitalization, again, the whole idea of the crusher may look and feel the same as it did 100 years ago, but we’re getting more intelligence out of crushing equipment and other essential equipment used within aggregate operations. We’re understanding how it performs, we’re getting in front of maintenance by putting sensors and just being proactive with our equipment in different ways. And we’re putting, in some ways, the answers to how our equipment is performing in our pocket.
I mean, we see a lot more technology, a lot more apps coming out from manufacturers who have their own wares, and they’re trying to promote the technology side of their crusher or their screen. That’s sort of been underway, but we saw a little bit of acceleration on those trends; electrification, sustainability and digitalization at ConExpo this year. So, I would think we would see more of that in the coming year in the years to come, too, Jack.
JK: Yeah, I’m looking forward especially to what to what AGG1 has to bring us this year in March, and seeing how they build on those trends. But you’re absolutely right, and having been through one of each of sort of the big three, if you will –AGG1, MINExpo and ConExpo – I think that’s been one of the things that has been incredibly impressive to me about the industry, is the way that people aren’t afraid to try new things or to take technological leaps. Again, with the desire for as much data as possible, getting it on your phone or being able to control something on your phone, getting instantaneous, if not near instantaneous, feedback is so impressive to see how quickly companies have adapted to that and seen this is what our employees want. This is what our customers want. And they are going full regalia into making that happen. It shows not only the willingness to adapt and evolve, but it just shows the care that the industry has for making sure that customers and people that are using their technology are getting what they need.
I know one of the common questions that at least I asked, and I’m sure you’ve seen it as well, or sort of had this thought as well, but the idea of, “Alright, this is all great, but at what point does it become too much? Is there too much information? Is there too much data? Is there sort of an overload?” And I’ve been equally impressed that that’s something that is already on the forefront of a lot of people’s minds, that they’re cognizant of that, that they’re taking approaches and steps to make sure that they don’t get overly inundated with data. So, it’s been a very exciting couple of years and seeing some of these technological developments, and I think it’s only gonna go up from here.
KY: That’s a really good point, Jack, about the data overload. Because I think the last ConExpo here in ’23, that was an inflection point in terms of tightening things up a little bit, in terms of the data that users or producers are going to need. I think you go back three years or six years ago to the prior ConExpos, we were seeing things come out because manufacturers could bring out these technological advances. They could launch an app, they could capture all this data, but who was assessing all of it?
I mean, if you’re looking at a loader and you’ve got technology related to this loader that’s telling you how it’s performing, there’s so many little data points that could come out of that. I think it was a matter of taking the hundreds or probably thousands, or maybe even tens of thousands of data points and scaling that down to the 5-10 that the producer at the end of the day, or the user of that equipment needs to know. I think that’s the case for probably every industry, or anybody looking at data. I mean, sure you could have data of all kinds.
I’m a huge baseball fan, and some of the data that they put out in these metrics about statistics in Major League Baseball right now blows my mind, but at the end of the day, I kind of want to know the finer points about what a baseball player is able to do. And if I’ve got a fleet of equipment, I need to know the essentials to make sure that equipment is going to get out there every day and how to keep it out there every day from the maintenance side. So, that was probably, again, an inflection point in terms of maybe doing a bit better job with the technology and making it more usable for aggregate producers this year.
JK: Yeah, and it’s interesting you bring up baseball, because that’s one of those spots where I feel like they’re kind of getting to that oversaturation of stats, where you know, for a while there was kind of the … Alright, well, you know, you got someone’s average, you got homers, RBIs, all that fun stuff. And then you introduce WAR. And then you’ve got former major league pitcher Trevor Bauer talking about stuff like BABIP. And it’s like, we’re really looking at batting average on balls in play? We’re getting that granular about it? And obviously, you know, there’s a purpose and a reason for all of it.
But I think, again, talking about that inflection point with the industry, I think that again kind of goes to show that while it’s always going to kind of be fluid, and I think the line is always going to kind of change, I think the industry as a whole has done a good job of sort of finding, at least on a company by company basis, okay, here’s kind of where is the sweet spot. We don’t need a whole lot more than this. We don’t wanna give anyone less than this, but here’s kind of the sweet spot of the data pie, if you will.
KY: Yeah, it takes listening. And I think a lot of the people – manufacturers or the technology providers – they pause and they listen to what their customers needed. And like you said, give me the essentials. The other stuff can be there, I guess, but make readily available the essential stuff I need to get my job done, make sure my operation’s performing at its best every day.
JK: Yeah, so with with all that being said, I’m just curious if there’s anything you’re particularly looking forward to, as far as some of the shows we have coming up in ’24? Both an AGG1 and a MINExpo year. I know MINExpo may be not as applicable as an AGG1 or a ConExpo, but obviously something we still regularly go to. Is there anything you’re particularly keeping your eye on? Are you looking for more technological or perhaps autonomous stuff at some of these shows this year?
KY: I don’t know if we’ll see autonomous technology. I mean, there may be an area of a booth for Caterpillar that touches on. That would be interesting. And that’s something I definitely want us to do in 2024 is keep up and get down to Virginia if we can and and see what’s happening with Luck Stone in Chantilly, Virginia, I believe is where they’re working on those autonomous haulers.
JK: Yeah, I think it’s the Bull Run plant.
KY: Yeah, I believe you’re right. I think AGG1 in recent years has actually brought a lot more technology of late than what we saw in the original years of that show. It goes back, gosh, it must be 10 plus years by now maybe even 15 or more. But ConExpo is traditionally where you see the big splash. A lot of the manufacturers and the marketers behind that, they’re bringing out their best stuff every three years. But AGG1, I think, has been a place where we’ve seen more technology or more relevant rollouts come out in the last couple of years than we did in past shows.
JK: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think it’s definitely a unique situation with AGG1 being co located with World of Asphalt every year. So there’s sort of a … You get to see kind of a broader spectrum of different equipment and different technologies. So, like you said, certainly probably not as big as ConExpo, but sort of the benefit, I guess, is getting to do it every two years, then taking a year off. And this is one of those years where they’ve had, you know, that extra year in between to … Where companies have had that extra year to maybe prep or decide what type of tech they want to, you know, come out with or show at the show. So, I’m excited. I think it’s gonna be a great opportunity, and knowing some of the companies in our industry as they are, I’m sure they’re gonna take full advantage of that.
KY: The other storyline I wanted to put out there, and this kind of dovetails maybe with our next segment and wanting to talk about the state of the industry, Jack. But one other 2023 storyline that stood out to me was what happened with aggregate production with volumes and with pricing. And, you know, while the story there wasn’t exactly a super sexy one – aggregates were down a little bit or aggregate production was down in 2023 – It’s still in a historically healthy position. We’re still waiting on the final numbers. I tend to look at the US Geological Survey, or USGS as short, because they’re serving aggregate producers across the country. The first few quarters they’re telling us that the numbers are down. Through our conversations and discussions, through the public producer of financial reports, we see that those volumes or shipments or however they characterize their aggregate sales, you know, they’re down. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Because on the flip side of the coin, we’re seeing that aggregate pricing has been up remarkably this year.
I think that started to tick upward in 2022 and the continuation here happened in 2023. We’re seeing pretty sizable price increases for aggregates. I was out at a site early in the fourth quarter and was talking about what was happening with aggregate pricing, and it was one of the public producers who even shared that the industry as a whole didn’t really do much with price for a number of years. We kind of devalued our prices, they kind of just sat where they were. Maybe we did low to middle single digit price increases year over year, but the last couple of years, and I think as we were looking at maybe the third quarter reports, because those are the most recent ones available for the public producers, that we saw that and they were still able to find more wiggle room on price even though their volumes were down. And that resulted in these really record, you could say in some cases, revenues, profits. Really good story for the industry, for the crushed stone, sand and gravel industry. It just seems like more of the same year to year.
You know, if you look at our December 2023 cover, the headline is Still Going Strong. I think back, I guess going back to 2020 because that’s the COVID year, and it was kind of an impetus or a crossroads for where we could have gone. I think that my first thought, you know in April or May of that year, was that, “Oh boy, this is gonna be a potentially bad couple of years in ’20 and ’21 for our industry.” But it’s not to say that we haven’t had our fair share of challenges, because we have with supply chain, with people. But we, again, forge our way ahead and we’ve had relatively healthy years.
Jack, I don’t know what you hear when you talk to people or when you’re reading reports, but it seems like we just keep going along and getting things done. Again, those production volumes, those aggregate volumes are down, but I don’t really talk to anybody these days, or this year, rather, who says that they’ve had a bad year. At the very least, it seems like the sentiment is that this is a good year. In a lot of cases, we hear, “Man, this is a great year. We’re doing really great. We’re investing in our business, investing in our operation.” But I don’t hear anybody saying that they’re really scaling back or that they’re struggling, that their production is just at a grinding halt. I think that storyline describes 2023, and it’s kind of been the case, again, the last few years going back to 2020.
JK: I think you hit the nail on the head, and you obviously covered a lot of ground there. I’m with you, I’ll echo those sentiments, I’ve been hearing a lot of the same things where I think we mentioned this in the first or second episode that I was talking with a manufacturer recently kind of getting his thoughts on, you know, what’s been going on with supply chain, sort of how the year has been and he mentioned they’re they’re booked through ’24 into ’25. It was a pretty much a sentiment of if you’re not doing well, right now, there’s something wrong. So, I’ve been hearing a lot of the same and even reaching out to more manufacturers as part of the Portable Plants state of the industry report. I think, like you said, it’s the overall sentiment has been the expectation for 2024 is much of the same as 2023 was. Now, having said that, sort of the overwhelming response I was hearing from some of the manufacturers I spoke with is, you know, 2023 was a good year, had its share of challenges. Obviously interest rates were sort of a big bugaboo this year, inflation was up. So you know, it had its share of challenges. But you know, 2023 for a lot of people was still a very good year. And sort of some of those same concerns are gonna linger a little bit, as we kind of mentioned in last episode with some interest rate increases possible coming in 2024 after a bit of a slow down here.
But yeah, for the most part I’ve heard, really since I have joined Pit & Quarry in August of 2021, about a year and a half after the pandemic started, I have heard almost nothing but success stories. And I think that speaks to the resiliency of this industry. It speaks to the importance of this industry, that even from from the starting point of the pandemic being labeled essential, you know, and obviously being still able to continue what they’re doing, and seeing businesses shut their doors and businesses lay people off while the aggregates and construction industry is booming, because there’s fewer people on roads, but you still need roads. There’s fewer people in the buildings, but you still need buildings. So, it is honestly just incredible the rate to which the industry, it seems no matter what is put in its way, they’re going to find ways to thrive, and that’s just an amazing thing.
KY: Looking ahead to 2024, I wouldn’t expect anything, really, to be all that different. I know that a presidential election year, it’s an election year. So, that changes the trajectory of some things. But if you think back to 2020, we had some vastly different candidates running for president and our industry has done pretty well to date. We’re looking into 2024 and I’ve started to hear from some people that they are concerned, it’s an election year. And I think that you start to hear that sentiment quite a bit at the turn of a calendar year. But, at the end of the day I wouldn’t expect anything different.
I mean, you had mentioned, you know, maybe some global event. I mean, we’re seeing some unfortunate things in the news these days. And I suppose that our supply chain or some things could be tied to those, you know? Let’s hope that things start to get better before they get any worse, but I would anticipate, again, the narrative here in ’23 to be the same one to occur and ’24, because that’s the run we’ve been on.
And Jack, I think earlier you mentioned recession, or maybe it was the last episode that was rewatching here recently. It seemed like if we’re in a recession, we’re still going strong as an industry. I get kind of made fun of here internally, because I’ve used the phrase in the past, you know, aggregates is ‘recession-proof’. And that’s not necessarily, but it does help when you have a lot of public dollars, you know, in the form of IIJA or other historic infrastructure bills, propping you up a little bit when private enterprise is going on the downward. So, let’s hope for the best obviously, but we’re a resilient industry and infrastructure should probably prop us up again in ’24, and I’ll be curious to see what happens on the private side and non residential and residential.
JK: Yeah, and I think even as resilient as the industry obviously is, and as successful as it’s been the last couple of years, it feels like going into 2022, going into 2023, really throughout both of those years and hearing a lot of the same now going into 2024. I feel like we’ve been able to sum up the last couple years in two words: cautious optimism. That seems to just sort of be the recurring thing, is that even as strong as things have been, no one is taking it for granted, which is you know, incredibly fair given how volatile things have been not only worldwide, but also obviously nationwide here the last couple of years. I had a few people mention the presidential election to me in some of their things that they’re keeping an eye on in 2024. But from what I’ve seen and heard, I have zero reason to think 2024 is going to be anything but another strong year, barring some incredibly terrible unforeseen thing, knock on wood. But yeah, it’s just astounding how it seems year in and year out, this industry just finds a way.
KY: You took the words right out of my mouth. You’re right, it does find a way and it does year after year. And you know, that’s a good thing for our industry. Jack, anything else Portable Plants related? I know, as I mentioned, we had our December year-end issue here. If you haven’t gotten it in your mailbox, you should have by now. Get on pitandquarry.com and check out our digital edition and some of the content tied to that. But, any other takeaways from putting our sister publications state of the industry report here at year end?
JK: Yeah no, it’s been pretty much the same as what I think you’ve been hearing over on Pit & Quarry. Again, just a lot of optimism heading into next year, while people are still sort of keeping their eye on some issues. Again, the ones that I think everyone is kind of hearing about; workforce, supply chain, again, the presidential election, interest rates, I feel like with any year that you come into, there’s going to be a share of things that could go wrong. But at the end of the day, you know, this is such a crucial industry with so many great people in it that is so resilient, so willing to adapt however it needs to that I think this optimism, in my mind, is warranted, personally. Even as many factors as there could be, it’s just kind of going back to the saying, they find a way.
Yeah, I have no reason, again, to believe that 2024 is going to be anything but a smash hit. And maybe I’m taking a overly optimistic view as opposed to what, you know, some of the people I’ve spoken with have said, but I’m just going off of what I’ve seen the last couple of years and that is an industry that has no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
KY: Well, if you’re worried about it out there, there’s still time to write your letter to Santa and maybe you wish for a better 2024 than what you’re expecting, but I think we’ll leave it at that, Jack. I hope you have a Merry Christmas and happy holiday season and yeah. I want to, of course, thank our show sponsor, Sykes Supply. Be sure to visit them on the web at sykessupply.com/podcast for your power transmission, conveying equipment, power tool needs and much more. Jack, looking forward to seeing you again in the new year. Happy Holidays and take care buddy.
JK: Happy Holidays, Kevin.
