{"id":10860,"date":"2011-07-19T04:12:34","date_gmt":"2011-07-19T09:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/?p=10860"},"modified":"2011-07-21T12:52:17","modified_gmt":"2011-07-21T17:52:17","slug":"ice-cream-social-good-way-to-learn-about-local-quarry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2011\/07\/19\/ice-cream-social-good-way-to-learn-about-local-quarry\/","title":{"rendered":"Ice cream, info served up at local quarry"},"content":{"rendered":"

DAVE MOSIER\/<\/strong>independent editor<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Evan and Jackie Sroufe put on kid-sized hard hats during an ice cream social held at Scott Quarry on Monday afternoon. Their mother, Tonya, brought them to the quarry to learn more about the facility's operation. (Dave Mosier\/Van Wert independent)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SCOTT — It was hot \u2026 it was dusty \u2026 but those who came to the Scott Quarry on Richey Road in northwestern Van Wert County got the chance to learn a lot about the company — and down some ice cream to cool off.<\/p>\n

Stoneco and its parent company, The Shelly Company, invited area residents to the quarry as part of a celebration of Ohio Aggregates and Industrial Minerals Awareness Week.<\/p>\n

The event, billed as an \u201cice cream social,\u201d with cake and ice cream and drinks provided, was more like a “show and tell,” allowing local residents to learn about the quarry, with several displays — and even a video showing stone being blasted out of the quarry walls — while company officials were on hand to answer questions.<\/p>\n

\u201cBest thing in the summer is (an) ice cream social, so that\u2019s where that idea came from,\u201d said Robin Kraner, who is involved in quality control at the quarry, but also conducts tours of the facility for area students and others interested in learning about the quarry. \u201cSo we\u2019re just basically celebrating Ohio Aggregates Awareness Week.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201caggregates\u201d part of the week was the focus at Scott Quarry, originally Union Quarry when it was founded around the turn of the 20th century. Aggregates, basically another word for gravel, are the broken bits of stone used in concrete and road construction.<\/p>\n

Road construction is a business the quarry\u2019s current owner knows well, since The Shelly Company is involved in road construction projects all over the state, including many of those in Van Wert County, such as the Shannon Street reconstruction and a paving project on U.S. 30.<\/p>\n

The company also owns nearly 100 facilities around the state, including a number of quarries and asphalt operations that provide raw and finished materials for the company\u2019s projects.<\/p>\n

Road construction is a seasonal job, though, meaning that workers are often laid off during the winter months, and that includes quarry workers as well. However, the past 10 months have been a different story, mostly because of wind turbines being installed as part of the Blue Creek Wind Farm.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis started last fall and they have been going gangbusters for the past 10 months,\u201d said John Dibert, vice president of aggregate operation for The Shelly Company. He added that the Scott Quarry has been on 16-hour and even 24-hour days to keep up with demand created by both road projects and wind turbine construction. The production schedule has also allowed workers to log lots of overtime hours as well \u2013 which has also provided a positive financial wallop for their wallets.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a boom for us, it\u2019s been a good deal for us, a good deal for the workers,\u201d said Dibert, noting that the company even had to bring in portable asphalt and ready-mix plants to the local quarry to keep up with product demand. \u201cIt\u2019s been huge for this quarry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Providing stone for the various projects has been pretty much seamless, though, Dibert said, crediting quarry manager Rick Welch, a 20-year quarry veteran, and Todd Rittenhouse for making sure production needs were met.<\/p>\n

That hasn\u2019t been easy, though, since the quarry needed to produce four times as much stone the past 12 months — from 250,000 tons to an estimated 1 million tons from last September to this September — as is produced in a normal year.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s also led to a big increase in truck traffic to and from the quarry, Welch said, noting that the quarry at times has transported 10,000 tons of products a day in trucks that handle only 16-18 tons per trip.<\/p>\n

Although Stoneco employees will likely miss it, it\u2019s a situation that\u2019s not likely to last long, Dibert said. \u201cIt\u2019s tailing off fast,\u201d he noted, adding that the last wind turbine bases will be poured this week, which would effectively end the ready-mix portion of the project.<\/p>\n

Among those invited to the event was State Representative Lynn Wachtmann, who said he enjoyed learning more about the operation — although he was not as happy about the temperature outside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAVE MOSIER\/independent editor SCOTT — It was hot \u2026 it was dusty \u2026 but those who came to the Scott Quarry on Richey Road in northwestern Van Wert County got the chance to learn a lot about the company — and down some ice cream to cool off. Stoneco and its parent company, The Shelly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-02 00:47:33","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}