Committed to Customers

Quality Products for Every Project

Quality products drive quality projects.

And it’s quality work – managed through a highly detailed quality control (QC) process – that has been Vulcan’s hallmark for decades.

“QC is making sure that we are providing good quality products to our customers,” said David Ruedi, Technical Services Supervisor in Vulcan’s Western Division. “Making sure that it’s something that’s going to last and they’re going to be happy with.” 

According to Ruedi, creating a quality aggregate product is similar to baking a good cake. 

“You have to get all of the right ingredients in the right amounts to make sure it’s good,” said Ruedi, who has been “baking” for Vulcan for more than 13 years.

But where does all this quality product go? One of the latest projects with Vulcan products is 

The Kings Canyon Expressway project in Sanger, California where an existing rural state highway was recently transformed into an expressway, requiring more than one million tons of aggregate.

“Vulcan is supplying 100 percent of the aggregates on this project,” said Area Sales Manager Jeff Guinn. “Being the chosen supplier, we do everything we can for our customer to make it easy as possible for them to deal with Vulcan Materials.”

Left: A conveyor carries product from Vulcan’s Sanger facility to the Highway 180 project site. Right: James Menefee, Project Superintendent, Security Paving Company, Inc. and Vulcan  Area Sales Manager Jeff Guinn.

But what makes this project unique is that it’s right across from Vulcan’s Sanger facility. Instead of taking truckload after truckload across the street from the facility to the project site, Vulcan worked with Security Paving Company, Inc. to build an OSHA approved conveyor to go over Highway 180 to reduce truck traffic and emissions by eliminating 135,000 truck miles with 48,000 loads

“That way we can run at our hours and obviously with the heavy traffic flows out here it benefitted us with trucks not being so stuck at the plant for very long,” said James Menefee, Project Superintendent, Security Paving Company, Inc.

Another project that required intense quality control involved the construction of vertical takeoff and landing pads for U.S. F-35 fighter jets stationed in Iwakuni, Japan, which called for a high-temperature specialty concrete. 

“We did some testing and did some trial mixes and found out that some of the aggregate here at Chula Vista does meet the high temp requirements,” said Area Manager John Atkins. 

The aggregate was loaded by truck to the coast and then onto cargo ships to Japan. It took six months of planning before taking about a month to load all 40 ship containers, resulting in the logistically challenging task that the Chula Vista team ever faced. 

“This was by far the farthest we’ve shipped aggregates out of Chula Vista,” said Atkins, noting it was all worth it. “Vulcan is proud to support our military.”