Doug Martin

This is my favorite time of the year. After a long slow winter, the grass gets greener, the trees start budding, and the dump trucks start coming back to the quarries.

In the past few weeks, we’ve experienced steady growth in our daily sales. Although our
D.O.T. work will be down again this year, we will continue to see strong support in the housing market in Cedar Rapids, Marion, Hiawatha, and Robins. City streets, basements, driveways, and sewers all require rock and sand to build. As the neighborhoods are built and families move in, schools need to be expanded or added, and grocery stores and banks go up. The growth we are seeing will remain strong as long as interest rates remain low and the job market is steady.

Another area of growth we’ve seen is with Linn County roads. Last year, the county used a local option sales tax to raise about $4.5 million to be used on roads and bridges in the county. This has resulted in a large increase in the amount of rock the county will buy this fiscal year and next.

All these things, as well as many others, have us THINKING SPRING!!!