WINN CORP.

Adding sand and gravel operations kept this southeast Iowa trucking firm growing

A little more than a decade ago, the owners of Winn Corp. were faced with the prospects of the business not surviving past the current third generation. Founded in the late 1940s, the business had thrived nearly 50 years doing trucking, spreading ag lime for local farmers and digging and hauling sand from around the banks of the South Skunk River near Ollie, Iowa.

Vice President Terry Winn and his father Bill, who’s President, decided if they wanted Winn Corp. to carry on, they would have to look at expansion. “There was a sand and gravel deposit near Ollie that no one was making use of,” noted Terry of the move that happened in 1998. “Up until that point, we were buying materials from another company and hauling. We already had the trucks and a customer base to work with. We figured it would be beneficial to start making our own materials.”

Winn Corp. uses this PC200LC-6 excavator equipped with a Tramac hammer to break up oversize rock at its Keokuk County Quarry.

Throughout the next 10 years, Winn Corp. mined more than a million tons of material out of its initial pit. It’s since closed and been reclaimed, but the company has added three locations that serve about a 40-mile radius of its southeast Iowa home base of Fairfield. Just outside of Fairfield is Jefferson County Quarry, Keokuk County Quarry lies near Ollie, while its newest operation, Wapello County Sand & Gravel, is on the edge of Ottumwa.

“Our business is split between our hauling jobs and selling materials to outside contractors and the general public,” said Terry. “Our locations put us in a position where we can respond to our customers’ needs quickly. Trucking has always been the backbone of the business, and as we’ve expanded, it’s remained that way. We also hire outside trucks as needed. The combination of the quarries and the trucking makes us very competitive in bidding work in this area.”

“One-stop, get-it-all” family business

The Winns estimate they crushed more than 1 million tons of material last year and sold almost as much as they crushed. Winn Corp. used to outsource crushing, but in the past few years through acquisitions and purchases, it’s acquired the equipment necessary to do its own crushing and relies on outside help when additional volume may be needed. It also has its own testing labs to ensure quality control.

“Each one of our locations has a full lineup of sand and gravel materials, as well as items such as mulch and wood chips,” said Bill. “We call it ‘one stop, get it all’ because we carry about 50 different products. If we don’t have the materials to make a product at one site, we can haul it in from another one with our trucks. But