By 1980 the active face of the quarry had receded so far from the primary crusher that transporting the now larger volumes to the processing plant became a big problem. So the company bought the world's largest mobile crusher, a colossal contraption designed by Krupp of West Germany and Graniterock's own engineering team. Try to conjure a coffee-bean grinder on steroids mounted on 10-foot Goodyears -- tires so humongous, and yet familiar looking, that the sight of them is totally disorienting -- and you'll come close to what the locals liked to call "La Machine."
It was a long way from that McCully No. 3. The crusher could roll to any spot on the quarry face and chomp up to 3,000 tons every hour. At the face a ghastly sounding gizmo known as a "scalping grizzly" automatically separated larger rocks from small ones, and then La Machine took over, churning the rock into useful sizes and ferrying it down conveyor belts. The innovation gave Graniterock the one competitive advantage it really needed at the time: speed.
In the years to come, as the world grew increasingly connected, customers everywhere expected focused, convenient service -- and self-service, whenever possible. At Graniterock that meant that customers wanted constant access to the quarry. They wanted to pick up their truckloads early or late, even in the middle of the night.
So Graniterock developed a one-of-a-kind automatic-loading system called GraniteXpress. Based on ATM technology, it provided truck drivers with wallet-sized cards that they would swipe through a machine. The drivers would then pull into an overhead-bin lane and tug on a rope, which would trigger the system to load a precise amount of rock directly into the trucks. The company has recently replaced the sleek smart cards with SmartPass-like radio-frequency tags mounted on the driver's side door of customers' rigs -- the same technology that's rubbing out the need for tollbooth stops on California's clogged roads and bridges. You just whoosh on through. The whole shebang is a perfect example of how a century-old company pursuing a centuries-old trade can adopt technological innovations to improve processes.
It's the morning after the centennial celebration, and everybody's back in the Esplanade. Graniterock has put together an all-day educational program, a smorgasbord of 29 seminars with titles like "The Future of Road Building in Northern California," "Steel: The New Stud," "Building Your Business with E-Commerce," and "Selling Techniques for the Next 100 Years." Last night was for looking back and cutting loose. Today is for talking about this new economy of ours and Graniterock's place in it.
The company's whole approach to dealing with change is to examine it thoughtfully before taking any action. Woolpert explains that concept by illustrating his Rubber-Band Theory of Leadership. Holding out his hands with the palms facing each other, he loops a rubber band around his index fingers. As he pulls one hand forward, the elastic prevents the other hand from falling too far behind. "When it comes to changing something," he explains, "always concentrate on the people who'll advance. Don't waste your energy on the ones who don't buy in, because they'll only move forward when the front-runners do. Don't worry about the gap. Coach the top, and the bottom will spring up."
One of the biggest challenges Graniterock has faced has been dealing with the influx of female workers. Women have worked at the quarry since 1922 -- the first, Pearl Sallows, was weighmaster on the truck scales -- but a scant few drove rigs during the rest of the century. Toward the end of the 1970s, the company hired its first two women drivers. One was Ricki Mancebo, who says she started driving a truck "because my dad said I couldn't." She's been driving ever since.
In 1996 a companywide survey revealed that 80% of the employees favored hiring more female drivers at Graniterock. Driving-school tuition was about $3,000 a student, so the company designed its own eight-week course called the Women's Driving Program. Neophytes learn how to operate the mixer and line trucks that the company uses and, if they complete the program successfully, apply for a commercial license. "Some of our current drivers volunteered to act as mentor-trainers, and they managed the whole experience for the trainees," Woolpert says. "We paid each trainee $8 an hour to learn. Then they became candidates for jobs with Graniterock."
So far some 20 women have completed the program. One of the mentors, Bill Russell, a loose-jointed, quiet cowboy of a guy, plays down his part in the program but seems proud of it. "You just get on the horse, slap its butt, and you learn to ride," he says.
Ever since Wilson's day, the company has relied on the expertise of its workers. "This whole business revolves around talented people," says John Franich, vice-president at Graniterock and general manager of one of the company's fastest-growing divisions, called Pavex Construction Co. Pavex is based in Redwood City, right in the shadow of San Francisco International Airport, which, not coincidentally, is a big customer. The division Franich leads started out in 1988 as a two-person paving contractor that shared parking space with its neighbor, Divine Love, a church-music publisher. Pavex has since morphed into a full-fledged general-engineering contractor with more than 200 employees.
"As the world turns," Franich says, "new opportunities come up in other industries, so there's more competition for talent. There's not enough skilled labor, so we do a lot of training. We differentiate ourselves from other construction companies by offering more."
Terry Tuggey, head of Pavex's mammoth runway-construction project at the airport, says that "it's so easy to just collect a paycheck in this industry. That's why we're trying to get away from the free-agency thing. We want people to move with us to the next project, not just take off."
People in the construction business call those on-again, off-again types "boomers," fickle workers who sign on to one job and end up on another. Industry veterans say that the worst thing about hiring boomers is that it creates safety concerns. Transient workers often haven't had the training that permanent employees receive. To deal with the problem, at Pavex "every morning, every crew on every job huddles for 10 or 15 minutes," Franich says -- Hazard Awareness Meetings, they're called. "In other companies the superintendent shows you where to dig and tells you when to stop. Here you get the full picture, so you can think about it during the day. It's a much safer environment when everybody's informed." As an extra safety measure, new hires wear bright red hard hats, making it easier for supervisors to keep an eye on them.
"The tradespeople, the ones who go out and do the work, they're not going to be the ones who reap the benefits of the new economy," says Franich. "There are some people who were in our business and have migrated to be a part of a dot-com somewhere, so it's more of a challenge for us to keep really good people. At the same time, the dot-com mentality has created more business for us, because they're all building new buildings and demanding better roads."
Not that different from how it was a century ago.
Nancy K. Austin, a contributor to Inc., is the coauthor with Tom Peters of A Passion for Excellence.
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