Day 5 — Sand
I got a phone call as I was barreling through the West Texas landscape toward the oil patch in our RV.
"We've exceeded our production this week. We won't be running the night shift tonight."
Shit…
In early 2018, an upstart named Turner Mining Group had a stripping project in the "town" of Maryneal, Texas, and I had an open invite.
Since I still had an M-F job, I'd wake up at 2 AM on Saturday, arrive by 7 AM, shoot until lunch, and drive home. Or I'd sleep in my car to be there for sunrise. But I've grown up—I draw the line at 25' RVs now.
The photos I captured and the budding relationship with TMG helped put me on the map, giving me the confidence to start BuildWitt officially.
When I saw Turner Mining Group land another West Texas project, I had to check it out for nostalgia's sake.
We planned to drive all morning, arrive in West Texas in the afternoon, and shoot the crew into the evening for perfect lighting. But so much for that.
We pulled onto the frac sand mining site around 5 PM. I spoke to the superintendent to see what we could do since we were there. Fortunately, despite hitting production numbers early, the night crew had to be on call if the plant needed them. Perfect.
After 7 PM, as the summer sun lowered, we drove out to the cut, where one of TMG's Hitachi 1200s crawled onto the bench. The machine started eating at the earth above, filling the enormous special-purpose bucket and loading trucks for us.
"They can work as long as you need them to." Music to my ears.
Like the highly trained task force we are (yeah, right), we sprang into action to make the most of every moment and bucket of sand. The material streaming out of such a beautiful piece of steel backlit by the West Texas sunlight was spectacular.
The show continued until about 8:30, when the sun finally disappeared. The trucks returned to their den, and 1200 went quiet.
And before I conclude today's note… Just how vital is this sand they're mining? Without it, you wouldn't have products like gasoline, plastic, and asphalt.
We're off to Colorado for a day of rest before we're back at it. We'll see you on Monday for week two!!
