Iowa City rock business unearths success for 93 years

Nestled just off Interstate 80 on the edges of Iowa City lies the 600-acre Conklin Quarry, where River Products Co. began harvesting limestone and other rock. Decades later the local business continues to weather what has become a changing industry.

The “small, sleepy little local company” was launched in 1920 by Harold “Babe” Hands, the son of Iowa City's Hands Jewelers founder, John Hands, CEO Tom Scott said. In the 1960s, construction of the interstate spurred significant growth for the company.

The company today includes five quarries, two sand and gravel operations, and three stone yards in three counties, all which produce around 1 million tons of crushed stone per year. The company sells its product in seven counties throughout Southeast Iowa.

It's not a colossal operation, said Scott, but he doesn't mind.

“We're considered a medium-sized company by Iowa standards, and we're a small company by national standards,” he said. “And we like it.”

The crushed rock produced by River Products and other Iowa companies is often used by construction workers to build homes and roads, for radon mitigation and erosion control along river banks, and by homeowners in yard landscaping. Farmers use agricultural limestone in their fields to add calcium to the soil.

Scott said his company's crushed stone also was used to help construct some of the University of Iowa buildings.

“Most Iowans probably don't recognize how much limestone they use every year or how its use impacts their lives,” said Rich White, executive director of the Iowa Limestone Producers Association.

Crushed stone is Iowa's leading mineral commodity, according to the Iowa Geological and Water Survey. The United States Geological Survey reported that in 2009, Iowa produced more than 32 million tons of crushed stone.

PRODUCTION

Harvesting the rock is a dirty business and one that's changed significantly in the more than 40 years Scott has been with the company.

After removing dirt covering the rock, quarry workers drill and blast the rock with explosives to break it into chunks. Scott said the maximum depth of the quarry is about 200 feet, with 60 feet of dirt – called overburden – and 140 feet of rock.

During the summer, quarry workers “drill and shoot” about once a day.

The pieces can then be crushed into more than 35 different sizes, from fine materials to pieces half the size of a truck. Once crushed, the rock is stockpiled ready to be sold where it is loaded onto dump trucks, weight and carried off to its destination.

Scott said in the early days, extracting the rock was very labor intensive, and has gone from a wheelbarrow and shovel to 50- and 70-ton trucks.

“It has gotten to the point today that rarely is anyone employed in a capacity other than an equipment operator,” Scott said.

Deb Tisor, executive assistant at River Products, said  she's seen the cost of purchasing a new front-end loader climb from $253,000 to $1.5 million.

"The loader and the big trucks clear down in the pit, you're talking about millions of dollars sitting there," Tisor said of equipment used in the quarry.

CHALLENGES

After 93 years of business, Scott said days of acquiring huge masses of land are now likely in the company's past. River Products recently expanded the 800-acre Kline Quarry in Coralville by more than 100 acres.

“We're not going to do major expansions in the quarry, sand and gravel industry because the opportunities are just not there, unless you leapfrog into another geographical market area,” Scott said. “And I'm not interested in doing that.”

River Products has expanded in the past few years from its limestone roots to accumulating businesses in other industries including petroleum, technology, construction, and a travel plaza center.

White, with the Iowa Limestone Producers Association, said Scott's situation is not uncommon among smaller operations as cities spread out and land becomes harder to obtain.

Of the 24 members of the association, he said more than 50 percent of member companies are family owned, however that has slightly decreased about 2 percent in the past five to ten years as some consolidate to a more corporate structure.

But Scott said his company isn't interested in going that direction, although he has been approached by larger companies.

“I think it's a shared belief with our people that we want to maintain and retain local ownership of our company,” he said.

For Scott, who joined the company as a UI history and education graduate looking for a brief one year job, finds himself more than 40 years ago later still at River Products Company.

“[This industry] has been very good to me personally and I think it's been good to a lot of our people. It has a good group of people and I think you can search the earth over and you won't find any better people than in our industry and the related construction industry.”