Marble Mining Crew Trades Pickaxes for Volvo Loaders

Wed December 27, 2000
G.W. Hall

Two Volvo D Series wheel loaders have become important parts of the operation at the historic Georgia Marble Company in recent months. The 116-year-old mining operation in Tate, GA, acquired a Volvo L70D last summer, then added a Volvo L330D to its equipment inventory in September.

The Volvo L70D quickly became an essential part of many different maintenance and utility chores, such as transporting saws and heavy equipment and assisting in cleanup operations. The Volvo L330D, with its powerful block-handling attachment, plays an even bigger role in the operation. The immense loader serves as Georgia Marble’s primary workhorse for hauling 20-ton (18 t) marble blocks out of the mine.

“So far, we have been very pleased with the performance of the Volvo loaders,” said Charlie Holbert, quarry manager. “On steep inclines, both up and down, the machines do extremely well. They are also tops in operator comfort and are extremely quiet.”

He added that the company, which had always purchased used equipment in the past, did considerable research before making the decision to purchase its new Volvo equipment.

“We looked at other comparable machines, but we found that the overall package of performance, price and warranty sold us on the Volvo machines,” Holbert said.

Georgia Marble purchased its Volvo loaders from Trax Inc. sales representative Tony Taylor, who works at the company’s Gainesville, GA, branch. Trax Inc. also has Georgia branches in Atlanta, Savannah and Macon, as well as operations in Birmingham, Decatur, Mobile and Montgomery, AL; Jacksonville, Tampa, Fort Meyers, Orlando and Miami, FL; Reidsville, NC; and London, KY.

“It’s been a first class relationship and Trax has been prompt in responding to our service needs,” Holbert said. “Tony [Taylor] has done everything I’ve asked him to do, and more. When I needed price quotes and specs on the machines, he was quick in responding to my needs.”

That kind of old-fashioned service means a lot to a company with a tradition as rich as Georgia Marble’s. Stephen Tate founded the company in 1884, the year after the North Georgia Railroad first reached Jasper. Within six years, the mine produced nearly $150,000 worth of marble each year.

The company’s first great period of expansion came after the death of Stephen Tate. The founder’s son, Col. Sam Tate, inherited the company. Col. Tate then incorporated other local quarries into the enterprise, which he named the Georgia Marble Company.

Five of these quarries continue to supply high grades of marble in several distinct colors. White Cherokee marble accounts for approximately 80 percent of the quarries’ business. The Tate operations also produce varieties called White Georgia, Pearl Grey, Solar Grey and Etowah Pink for construction projects, monuments, and landscapes across America.

Marble from the Georgia Marble quarries graces many of our nation’s best-known buildings and places of honor. For example, the entire Lincoln Memorial and the East Wing of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., were built with marble supplied by the company. Other famous buildings made from marble quarried in Tate include the New York Stock Exchange, the Cleveland Public Library, and the Federal Reserve Bank and the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta. Georgia Marble also provides the Veterans Administration with most of the marble used for headstones in national cemeteries, including Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, VA.

“One of our latest projects involves providing marble facing for the new Federal Reserve Bank building that’s under construction in Atlanta and the Tweed Courthouse building in New York City,” Holbert said.

He added that equipment such as the Volvo L70D and the Volvo L330D has greatly simplified the process of supplying the marble to such high-profile projects.

For most of its history, the company relied on derricks to hoist the marble from below ground to the surface. But in the late 1980s, the company changed its approach, built haul roads and began using heavy equipment to transport marble.

When Georgia Marble extracts a 20-ton (18 t) marble block from one of its quarries, workers send the massive stone slab to one of its two finishing plants. The company’s plant in Tate specializes in memorials, while the facility in nearby Nelson, GA, produces structural marble.

“The finishing plants cut the marble according to our customers’ needs,” Holbert said. “We typically turn orders around in 30 to 120 days, depending on the complexity.”

In addition to highly visible items like monuments, solid architectural blocks and marble slabs for building exteriors, Georgia Marble’s finishing plants produce kitchen counter tops, floor tiles, bath vanity tops and a variety of other products. The company has even found a market for fragments of marble left over from the mining and finishing operations. Workers break down large fragments into approximately 15-in. (38.1 cm) pieces utilizing an excavator with a hydraulic hammer. The fragments then go into a jaw crusher, which produces crushed marble by-products for a variety of industries. Cement blocks, for example, contain a significant amount of crushed marble.

In addition to pioneering these and other products at the Tate-area operations, Georgia Marble created two other business units through the years. The company’s Industrial Group produces ultra-fine, ultra-pure marble powders, which serve as fillers or extenders in cosmetics, glass, household cleaners, chewing gum and a variety of other consumer products. The Consumer Group mines and crushes marble for use in construction applications, swimming pool finishes, agricultural lime and other specialty products.

To support its expansion in these areas, the company also acquired quarries outside of Georgia through the years. Georgia Marble now operates production facilities in Alabama, Arizona, New York and Wyoming.

The company has experienced ownership changes, as well. The last change occurred when Georgia Marble became a division of Imerys, a global mining company based in Paris, France. Today, the Tate operation is the only division of Imerys in North America that mines block marble for use in monuments and large marble business projects.

Yet with each new development, the company has continued to take advantage of new opportunities and strengthen its reputation as one of the world’s leading suppliers of marble and marble products. Company officials believe their decisions to purchase a new Volvo L70D and Volvo L330D from Trax Inc. will help continue these Georgia Marble traditions by providing the Tate quarries with major muscle for many years to come.

This story also appears on Construction Equipment Guide.