March 22, 2019 – The numbers are official. A few weeks ago I reported preliminary 2018 aggregates production, courtesy of USGS’s 2019 Mineral Commodity Summaries. Those numbers have been confirmed by USGS Crushed Stone Commodity Specialist Jason Willett. The estimated annual output of construction aggregates produced for consumption in 2018 was 2.37 billion metric tons, an increase of 5 percent compared with that of 2017.
The estimated total annual production for consumption of construction aggregates in 2018 increased, compared with that in 2017, in 34 of the 50 states for which estimates were made. The five leading states were, in descending order of total annual output for 2018, Texas, California, Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Their combined total annual output was 716 Mt, an increase of 7 percent when compared with that of 2017.
The fourth quarter of 2018 mimicked the total numbers. An estimated 359 million metric tons of crushed stone was produced and shipped for consumption in the fourth quarter of 2018, an increase of 5 percent compared with that of the same period of 2017.