Hard cash

Valley businesses mining latter-day gold

August 15, 2006

By Amy Schenck/Frontiersman

Mark Loomis maneuvered the huge front-end loader up against a steep bank. Using the teeth on the loader's bucket, he took an enormous bite of gravel from the bank and dumped it into a nearby hopper.

In a half-minute, the gravel began pouring off a conveyor belt into three separate piles according to size - some stones nearly the consistency of sawdust, some that looked like misshapen tennis balls, and some that would have been perfect for building a fire ring.

When he wasn't screening gravel, Loomis loaded trucks bound for construction sites, or hauled the sorted material to mounds scattered throughout a tidy pit.

&#8220The big boys have a lot nicer stuff, but this gets the job done,” Loomis said.

Loomis operates Central Gravel Products on Bogard Road with the founder, his wife, Nickie Jordan.

Generating about $20 million each year for the local economy, gravel has become the Mat-Su's modern-day gold.

&#8220It's the highest value, nonrenewable natural resource extracted from the borough,” said Ken Hudson, chief of code compliance for the Mat-Su Borough.

Steve Lovs, general manager of Anchorage Sand and Gravel, one of the biggest players, estimates that 6 million tons of gravel is extracted each year from the Valley. That's enough gravel to fill 60,000 train cars.

The Valley's small and medium-sized gravel pits, such as Central and AAA Valley Gravel, tend to support local construction, while the Valley's biggest companies meet the enormous demand from Anchorage by shipping material south on trains.

Best known as a base ingredient in foundations, gravel is also used in septic systems, concrete and asphalt production, landscape designs and even children's sandboxes.

Although the word might imply it, gravel is not just gravel. It's categorized into different types for different purposes.

D-1, for example, is put under major highways, while &#8220pit run” refers to the unprocessed material that comes directly out of the ground.

The price lists at gravel businesses generally list more than 10 different kinds of gravel.

A small gravel pit is just like a convenience store, Jordan said. Customer service, quality and location are everything.

Before Jordan married Loomis, she ran Central Gravel Products by herself, working seven days per week during the summer.

&#8220I've been doing it for 12 years, just me and my loader,” she said, wheeling the giant machine around the pit.

Going into her 13th season in the gravel business, life has changed a bit for Jordan. She now has the company of Loomis, who helps with the daily demands, and Tino Jordan, the son she adopted a year and a half ago.

This means a new loader has been brought onto the grounds - a small, plastic one sized for a 4-year-old.

Another difference this year at Central is the volume of sales. Jordan, like most Valley gravel businesses, reports fewer sales compared with last year.

&#8220Last year was a killer year,” Jordan said.

She attributes the slowing, at least in part, to a drop-off in residential construction.

High gas prices are also taking their toll. On a busy day, Central Gravel can go through 150 gallons of fuel.

At a medium-sized business, such as AAA Valley Gravel, which uses about 500 gallons per day, the effect from high prices is even greater. And at a large pit like Anchorage Sand and Gravel, which employs about 200 people between Anchorage and the Valley, the numbers really add up.

Like many gravel pits in the Valley, the 160 acres Central is leasing will eventually be developed into perhaps a subdivision or a business site.

However, until that time comes, Jordan and Loomis will keep at the daily grind.

Whether it be a wheelbarrow full or truck full, everybody needs gravel, Jordan said.