October 3, 2014 – Kudos to Dennis Slater, president of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), who issued this statement following the House’s vote on Wednesday to pass a short-term continuing resolution (C.R.) to fund the government through early December, and extend authorization of the Export-Import Bank for six months: “While we are glad that the government won’t face a yet…
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Bridging the Funding Gap
Sept. 23, 2014 – Big cheer for Pennsylvania for innovative infrastructure financing. More than 500 of Pennsylvania’s worst bridges will be replaced under a program that uses a private consortium to finance, design and build the bridges and then maintain them for 25 years. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation released the final list of 558 state bridges in the Rapid…
Read MoreDealer Days
Sept. 17, 2014 – I am blogging live this week from Denver, where KPI-JCI and Astec Mobile Screens are holding their annual National Dealer Conference. The companies will be debuting four new pieces of equipment, including three new additions to its Global Track product line – a track-mounted GT440 horizontal shaft impact crushing plant, a track-mounted GT200 cone crushing plant and…
Read MoreAstounding Quarry Find
Sept. 9, 2014 – In September 1899, the Ohio-based Akron White Sand & Stone Co., managed by Champ N. Belden, assigned a small crew of men to work in the company’s quarry off Portage Path near the Northern Ohio Railroad tracks. Incorporated in 1891, the business only recently had resumed operations after suffering a devastating fire in 1893 and falling…
Read MoreFatality #18
September 3, 2014 – MSHA is reporting that on August 25, 2014, a 54-year-old truck driver with one year of experience was killed at a limestone mine. The victim went to a storage building to get some wooden planks. He climbed a stack of loaded pallets to get to the planks that were near the rafters and fell approximately 8 ft.…
Read MoreSME Warns Feds to Bolster Minerals Supply Chain
August 27, 2014 – We need more mining engineers! The Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration Inc. (SME) has submitted comments to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy regarding its request for information about critical and strategic materials supply chains and their importance to American prosperity and national security. SME’s comments focused on the role of maintaining…
Read MoreMcLanahan Welcomes Pennsylvania Governor
On Thursday, Aug. 21, Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania toured McLanahan Corp’s corporate headquarters in Hollidaysburg, Pa., and discussed how pro-growth policies and energy development are spurring the growth of Pennsylvania manufacturers. As part of his visit, Corbett toured the facility with George Sidney, president and COO, and Michael McLanahan, chairman. Following his tour, he spoke with the facility’s employees…
Read MoreNonmetallic Minerals Index Rises
August 22, 2014 – Good big-picture news on the production front. According to USGS, the nonmetallic mineral products leading index increased 1.2 percent to 241.6 in July from a revised 238.8 in June, and its six-month smoothed growth rate increased to 7.4 percent from a revised 5.9 percent in June. The six-month smoothed growth rate is a compound annual rate…
Read MoreNonresidential Construction Index Dips
August 20, 2014 – The failure of Congress to act on a highway bill is weighing heavily on the construction industry. FMI, a leading provider of management consulting and investment banking to the engineering and construction industry, released its 2014 Third Quarter Nonresidential Construction Index report. The NRCI shows a decrease of 3.3 points from Q2, but is still above the…
Read MoreSold!
August 18, 2014 – Martin Marietta Materials has now sold what needed to be sold. The company completed the divestitures required pursuant to a consent decree that was a condition of the Department of Justice’s clearance of Martin Marietta’s acquisition of Texas Industries Inc., which closed on July 1, 2014. Martin Marietta sold to Vulcan Materials one quarry in Oklahoma and…
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