The following transcript was edited for brevity and clarity from one of two concurrent Feb. 2 discussions at the 2024 Pit & Quarry Roundtable & Conference. Part 1 of this conversation can be found here.
PIT & QUARRY: For the producers, tell us about your construction materials sales expectations for 2024. Similarly for suppliers, what do you expect in terms of sales related to aggregates? And what are equipment backlogs and lead times looking like at this stage?
DAMIAN MURPHY (PECKHAM INDUSTRIES): We are optimistic for 2024, but I don’t think it’s going to be a big growth jump. When you look at the work that’s coming in our footprints, it’s going to be better.
ZACH SATTERWHITE (CAROLINA SUNROCK): We’re in the aggregate, asphalt and concrete business in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. We are in the same spot as everybody else here: It looks like 2023 was a great year, and we can leave 2024 as flat. I think we can sign up for that right now.
JASON WADDELL (JONES BROS. CONTRACTORS): 2023 was a pretty good year from my aggregate and asphalt perspective. With 2024, I want to echo Zach: We are trying to hold. We expect things to be flat.
Also, with the contractor mentality, you have to hit where the jobs are. You have to hope your locations are there to help support that. The quarry side of it should see some increase, but we expect a small decline in asphalt and because of the nature of contract work in general.
JASON RAWLINGS (AUSTIN POWDER): We had a really good 2023. It was a mixed bag like many people in the room. Residential was down, but our construction is up. So, we’re actually optimistic that 2024 is going to be better. We think residential will start to pick back up a little in the second half of the year.
TONY SPAKE (VOLVO CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT): From the iron side, 2023 was a record year for us. We do expect a little bit of a slowdown for 2024 by the virtue of just catching up from the last two years of supplying the strengths – and understanding that virtually all of our iron goes through distribution.
There’s been incredible supply strengths the last two years, coupled with very high cost increases on equipment. My point is we were able to take our dealers off of allocation on equipment in the third quarter of 2023. It opens things up.
That means the inventory – both new and rental – was just so depleted over the last couple years that the orders started re-inventorying in the second half of last year. The second half of last year and the first half of this year will be a substantial catchup time. We should see a little more ‘normalcy’ in our stock levels, rental rigs and new equipment availability.
SCOTT ALEXANDER (SUMMIT MATERIALS): We have some good backlog in 2024, and we are expecting to see more of a normal weather cycle. I’m optimistic it’s going to be well above 2023 – and 2023 ended up being a very good year.
JAMIE JONES (CAPITAL AGGREGATES): Toward the end of last year, we were starting to get worried a little about what this year was going to present. Going into 2024, we were looking at pretty much staying the same.
One thing we were able to do in 2023 was build up some inventories that we had lost in 2022. We were able to actually gain some ground in 2023, with more inventory back from what we actually sold – even with all the increases.
