We will rock you

As spring arrives and the ground thaws from winter, secondary roads crews in Adair County have been busy putting rock on the 792 miles of granular surfaced roads the county has.

As spring arrives and the ground thaws from winter, secondary roads crews in Adair County have been busy putting rock on the 792 miles of granular surfaced roads the county has.

Chances are, some of that rock comes out of Schildberg Construction Company’s Menlo quarry, located south of Menlo, or any of the company’s other quarries. At a facility like this, a typical day yields between 3,000 and 4,000 tons of material daily.

Schildberg has four crews that strip the earth down to the desired aggregate material, according to Eldon Ray, a territory salesman with the company.

Seven crushing crews then take the material off of trucks, and through a long process, crush large rocks into desired sizes by use of vibrators and conveyor belts haul the rock to a pile where it is stockpiled according to its kind. Schildberg sells a wide array of materials, ranging from agricultural limestone to crushed rock for road maintenance.

“They used to do this with trucks, and they’d have a road going up on top of the pile and they’d dump off the edge, but now they use these belts,” Ray said.

Schildberg covers 29 counties in Iowa and four in Missouri with rock. There are 22 total quarries with 17 active right now.

The company has existed for 85 years now, founded in 1937 by John “E.F.” Schildberg.

“This is the time of year we haul most of our rock, but we haul throughout most of the year,” county engineer Nick Kauffman said. “We’ll haul till it freezes in the fall, then we’ll stockpile some rock.”

The county recently entered into two rock contracts with Schildberg, one for farm to market roads in the southern and western parts of the county, and the other for roads leading up to 11 county parks using American Rescue Plan Act money.

“The price, that’s the rock loaded at the quarry on their trucks. They deliver it and dump it on the road, then we take over from there,” Kauffman said of the recent contracts.

The county’s 10 maintainer operators monitor their district for the need of rock. Residents are also welcome to call the Adair County Engineer’s Office if they think a spot needs more rock.

“The motor grader operators are out there almost every day in their territory,” Kauffman said. “When they’re blading the roads and hauling rock themselves they should have a very good idea of how good the roads are.”

The county rock budget for fiscal year 2022 is $1.32 million.

Right now, rock Adair County is hauling out of the Menlo quarry costs $14.35 per ton.

Trucks typically spread 400 tons of rock per mile on a road, for a cost of $5,740 per mile just in material. Heavier traffic or wider roads require 500 tons of rock per mile.

There’s an additional cost of about $284,000 each year for labor and benefits for truck drivers who haul. The truck, its fuel and other associated maintenance also weighs into that cost.

Adair County Secondary Roads uses about 125,000 gallons of diesel fuel per year. This year’s contracted price is $2.67 per gallon, which is still much lower than the typical price at the pump.

“It looks like we use a lot of fuel but [Schildberg] probably uses that much in a month,” Kauffman said. “The price of rock is very reflective of the price of fuel. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw another increase here soon.”