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Featured Contractor
Red Flint Sand & Gravel
By Dan Sobotta
Business Agent
EAU CLAIRE – Red Flint Sand & Gravel LLC started out as Eau Claire Sand & Gravel in 1917. In the 1920s, Albert Owen Ayres became president.
Since other stockholders were bought out, the company has been a family-owned organization. In the early 1960s, A.O. Ayres turned over the operation to his son, Fred Ayres.
In 1996, Paul Ayres, the grandson of A.O. Ayres, purchased the company. He since has led the organization that employs approximately 20 employees year-round, seven of whom are members of Operating Engineers Local 139. Red Flint Sand & Gravel has had a labor agreement with Local 139 since 2005. But the company’s predecessor organizations are believed to have been signed with the Operators going back into the 1970s.
In its early years, the company focused on producing sand and gravel products with much of the tonnage delivered via railway from its Eau Claire facility. During this time, the company produced concrete aggregate, mortar and plastering sand, filter sand and gravel, core sand for foundries, abrasive sand, roofing gravel, railroad traction sand, and also manufactured bricks.
Eau Claire Sand & Gravel eventually outgrew its first plant on the south side of Eau Claire. In the late 1920s, the company purchased another site with rail access in Chippewa Falls. From this facility, the company reported its daily capacity at 150 rail cars in the early 1920s.
WPA boosts business
Gravel for highway concrete pavement projects mainly was shipped from this facility.
During the Great Depression, the company added batch mixing for blacktop paving when the federal government’s Works Progress Administration program was started to stimulate the economy and concrete and blacktop were being used for road construction projects. (Sounds a lot like the current American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus projects.)
Eau Claire Sand & Gravel expanded into providing ready-mix concrete in the Chippewa Valley, Menomonie, and La Crosse areas in the early 1940s, including operating a concrete plant near Fort McCoy. Initially, delivery was made in one-cubic-yard mixer trucks. Later in the decade, the capacity had increased to four cubic yards and today front discharge trucks can deliver 10 cubic yards.
During the late 1950s and 1960s, the company supplied much of the concrete used in building Interstate 94 in western Wisconsin.
Nationwide shipping
In 1972, the name Eau Claire Sand & Gravel was changed to American Materials Corporation to emphasize that the company was shipping products across the nation. By continually expanding its aggregate and ready-mix concrete divisions, the organization soon had eight ready-mix plants (two of which were portable) in six locations throughout western Wisconsin and more than 40 mining sites. AMC added a construction division in the mid-1970s. This division focused on site work, municipal street projects, and later moved into highway projects.
At one point, AMC had more than 80 dump- and ready-mix trucks in its fleet. It was a leading ready-mix concrete producer in the state and employed in excess of 200 people.
In 1982, the company constructed one of the first automated batching plants in the area. In 1997, the construction division was eliminated and a portion of their equipment was sold to McCabe Construction of Eau Claire. McCabe Construction also hired many of the construction division employees to finish remaining projects and McCabe Construction remains a solid union contractor today.
Company reorganizes
In fall 2004, AMC sold its ready-mix and aggregate division to Mathy Construction. Mathy Construction kept the AMC name and has retained many of its employees. AMC retained its industrial division and its name was changed to Red Flint Sand & Gravel.
Red Flint was an original trade name used in the 1920s and the company continues to use the red arrowhead symbol in marketing its industrial sand and gravel products. Red Flint has focused on supplying filtration sand and gravel around the world and expanding its line of decorative landscape products.
The company has supplied the filter media for major cities, such as Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Oklahoma City, and Denver. Also noteworthy, the company supplied the under-drain gravel for the playing field during the renovation of Lambeau Field in Green Bay.
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