101 years of asphalt: Cape Girardeau company gears up for paving season

Asphalt season is coming up, and Delta Companies Inc. is getting ready.

The company has existed since 1923. A collaboration between the Regenhardt and Harrison families of Cape Girardeau, their first job was paving the streets of Poplar Bluff.

Originally, the company worked in the concrete business, but in the 1960s started using asphalt, and that became their primary paving material

"We pave in the communities we live in. We want to make sure we're putting a good product out there because we're the ones using the product as well," regional manager Steve Peterson said.

The prime paving season lasts from March to November. The ingredients to make asphalt don't stick together if temperatures are too low.

"We get real busy this time of year getting ready to pave," safety specialist Jordan Janet said. "It almost feels better when we do start paving."

Workers excavate limestone and fill up haul trucks at Delta Companies' quarry Wednesday, Feb. 28, in Cape Girardeau. The company sold more than 1 million tons of limestone out of this quarry alone in 2023.Christopher Borro

Assembling asphalt

Delta Companies employs some 350 people at the peak of the asphalt season between Missouri and Arkansas. It operates numerous quarries in both states and has a sand dredge in Dexter.

The limestone quarry in Cape Girardeau is 400 feet deep. The pit actually started in one location, but 60 years of blasting and digging have migrated it to the east.

Workers drill a hole then blast it open with blasting agent. A breaker, such as a giant excavator, breaks the resulting debris into manageable pieces. Other excavators then load them onto hauling trucks.

At the Cape Girardeau quarry, workers blast two or three times a week to get limestone. At the peak of the season, more than 200 trucks can travel through the facility.

Delta sold more than 1 million tons of limestone out of that quarry alone.

A single hauling truck can carry up to 40 tons of limestone.

The limestone is crushed in two separate crushers, grinding massive boulders into pebbles the size of a fingernail.

The rocks are sent to screen towers that shake them rapidly over differently-sized metal screens. The smallest pebbles fall through while the larger ones are sorted into stockpiles around the quarry. Here, customers can bring their own trucks and fill them up with the stones they need.

The rocks are mixed with sand, then a drying drum uses fire to dry the aggregate. Hot liquid asphalt is added afterward and the resulting mix is stored in a silo.

The resulting concoction is bituminous concrete, also known as blacktop or simply asphalt.

Every aspect of the asphalt creation process has its own specific location in the quarry.

Kevin Cross drives a steer loader during prep work before asphalt season. Delta Companies employs around 350 people in a variety of mechanical, quality control, accounting, excavation and dispatch roles.Christopher Borro

Workers of every stripe

Around 80% of Delta's revenue comes from projects requested by the Department of Transportation. They usually complete a dozen or so of these in any given season.

They can also do 50 to 60 smaller jobs, be they for counties, cities or even businesses and individuals looking to get parking lots or driveways paved.

Different preparation and paving teams in Arkansas and Missouri work under contract guidelines to get their jobs done.

However, it can be hazardous work.

"We control a lot, but we don't control the traveling public," Peterson said. He mentioned how a competitor in the asphalt business had some employees hit in the St. Louis area by distracted drivers.

"They lived, thank goodness, but they went through extensive surgery. It's scary. When you're working on an interstate, you're standing 2 feet from live traffic," he said.

That's why Delta's safety protocols include facing toward traffic, being aware of one's surroundings and having plans to escape potentially dangerous situations.

Any worker can bring a job to a halt if they feel it is becoming unsafe.

Not all the company's workers pave roads or mine for limestone, though.

Some Delta employees are mechanics and maintenance workers, overseeing the company's vast fleet of heavy machinery.

Others work in quality control, testing various mixtures of asphalt aggregates to cater each one to specific environments. Several also work in accounting, keeping the company's finances on track.

Delta offers tours to students from elementary school through college. They can teach the older students about job opportunities they might not otherwise be aware of.

Janet said he found out about the company through an advertisement he saw while studying at Southeast Missouri State University. He had no prior experience in the asphalt industry, and now he's been with the company for 14 years.

"As long as you have the desire to learn ... you don't have to have experience to come work for us, more often than not. We'll get you the training you need," Janet said.

The company helps employees understand different asphalt forms and offers a mentorship program where more experienced workers can help train newer ones.

"We've brought in experienced, educated mechanics and we've brought on inexperienced mechanics, as well, and given them the knowledge they need to be able to work on our specialty equipment," Janet said.

At Delta Companies, each aspect of the asphalt lifecycle is conducted in different locations around the quarry. Blacktop asphalt is formed by combining limestone, sand and liquid asphalt to create a hard, sticky construction material.Christopher Borro

Big costs, big business

With a fleet of large vehicles, numerous locations and several months of continuous work, the asphalt industry can be an expensive one. It is not immune to inflation.

"Every industry is experiencing inflation, and it is causing our costs to go up so, therefore, the cost of our product has gone up," Janet said. "We experience it the same as everybody else. It is unfortunate, but that's business."

A single truck tire can cost $12,500. A portable asphalt plant cost $3.6 million a few years ago, and now would cost an extra $2 million on top of that.

Janet said it is important for the company to be transparent with their customers so they know what these higher prices are being used for.

Delta is vertically integrated, meaning it is just one link of a larger chain. It has subsidiaries of its own and is itself a subsidiary of larger corporations.

All of the material the company uses comes from its own subsidiaries, though it does sell to outside companies and individuals, as well.

"We have to have excellent quality and excellent customer service at every level of that vertical integration because we are selling internally and externally at each of those," Janet said.

In 1992, Delta's owners sold the company to Colas Group, a French civil engineering firm.

Colas Group is also the world's largest asphalt paving company; the name itself is a contraction of "cold asphalt". It employs some 50,000 people across its many subsidiaries.

Janet said good people are the company's greatest asset. Some have been with Delta for more than 30 years. Many take so much pride in their work they bring their families out to sections of road they've paved to show it off.

Peterson said the company wants to make customers for life, and having quality workers at every subsidiary is an important step of that.

"Even though we're a big company, we operate as a family business," he said.

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