Aggregates Manager Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/85644
People — and their creative solutions — are the driver behind Gulf Coast Limestone's success. by Bobby Walker SUCCEED? Why Do We Why are we one of the industry's largest unloaders of open-top rail cars? W About 25 years ago, I was a young supervisor, new to the position and with a lot to learn about the aggre- gates business. We had a rubber-tired excavator, which we drove from yard to yard and job to job. We had it all figured out. After all, with a machine which was also a truck and an operator who was also the driver, well, what could be better than that? Donald Broussard (left) and Primo Araujo (right) have been with Gulf Coast Limestone for more than 25 years and pioneered some of the company's innovative practices. hy is Gulf Coast Lime- stone able to unload over 80,000 rail cars per year? Primo Araujo was the operator who was also the driver. He could drive from Seabrook, Texas, where our home office was, to Dickinson, Texas (about 10 miles away), unload five cars for the county, and drive back to Seabrook in one day. We were the experts. We had three yards of our own where we railed in limestone base from Texas Crushed Stone, unload- ed it onto the ground, and sold it by the truck load. One of our yards was in Baytown, Texas, which was on the other side of the Houston Ship Channel from our home office. At that time, the road to Bay- town went through a tunnel under the ship channel. It was one lane each way and quite narrow. Primo, our very brave and highly skilled opera- tor, would drive the excavator through the tunnel. The machine did okay on the downhill portion of the tunnel, but when coming up the other side, it slowed to a snail's pace, stacking up traffic and irritating motorists unlucky enough to get stuck be- hind the excavator. Primo was accustomed to vari- 37A AGGREGATES MANAGER April 2012 In Gulf Coast Limestone's early days, a rubber-tired excavator was driven from job to job to unload cars. ous hand gestures, such as the "California Howdy" of Beverly Hillbillies fame. As our business grew, we added another rubber- tired excavator, and we drove them all over, to unload a few cars here and a few cars there. One of our yards was on Old Galveston Road in Webster, Texas, and was called the Fondren Yard. It was a rail siding which had previously been a public team track, and the rail ran very close to the road. It could hold 12 cars.