Who ships aggregates, and when do they book?

Commodity playbook

Who ships aggregates

Head offices of four large producers. Each operates hundreds of quarries and pits, and the quarry dispatcher is the person who actually hires trucks.

Ask for the dispatcher at the quarry, not the corporate office. Aggregate hauling is arranged site by site and often day by day, against a jobsite schedule that changes with the weather. Many producers run their own trucks for the base load and bring in outside capacity for peaks, which is precisely the gap worth filling.

Where it hauls

Everywhere there is rock, which is nearly everywhere. Aggregate is so heavy relative to its value that hauling it far destroys the economics, so quarries and pits sit close to the metros they serve and the typical haul is measured in tens of miles. That means the freight is dense, local and repetitive rather than long and lane-shaped. The largest producers run hundreds of sites each. The companies to know:

How to open

The question that shows you know the business is about the jobsite: "How much notice do you get when a pour moves?" Aggregate demand swings with a schedule nobody controls, and flexible capacity is what they are actually buying.

Qualifying questions

• End dump, belly dump or live floor? The receiving site decides. Belly dumps windrow material along a road; end dumps need overhead clearance and firm ground to raise safely. Confirm what the site takes before you send anything.
• What is the material and the target weight? Crushed stone, washed sand, base rock and rip rap all load differently and weigh differently. Aggregate loads run to legal weight every time, so the scale ticket is the whole transaction.
• Is the site firm enough to dump? Raising a loaded end dump on soft or uneven ground rolls trucks. It is the single biggest safety issue in this freight. Ask about ground conditions and whether a spotter is provided.
• What are the quarry and jobsite hours? Both ends run tight hours and the jobsite may close when the crew leaves. Get the scale house hours and the site cutoff, because a load that arrives late has nowhere to go.
• How much notice do you get when a pour moves? Jobsite schedules move with weather and inspections. This question tells you how much flexibility they need from a carrier, which is the actual product you are selling here.

When to call

February and March, before the construction season opens. From March to November the pits run hard and capacity is spoken for. Winter is genuinely slow in the north and that is when arrangements get made. In the Sun Belt the season is longer and the conversation is less seasonal.