Building Roads & Building History: Delta’s 100-Year Journey and Industry Insights

Ever wondered what “heavy highway construction” really means—or how Delta grew from paving city streets in 1923 to becoming part of a global network? In this episode of On the Surface, Seth Stevens, Brad Marotti, and Jordan Janet take you on a tour of our industry, explain what we do, and share the fascinating history behind Delta’s evolution.

From crushing rock and mixing asphalt to major acquisitions and global connections, this conversation breaks down how our structure has changed—and why it matters for the future.

Thanks for listening!

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Chapters

• 9:26 Patenting a Motorized Grader
• 22:44 Reeves/Delta Footprint
• 25:33 Bouygues

Transcript

Seth Stevens (00:05)
Hello and welcome back to On the Surface where we're talking all things heavy construction, material supply and general business. I'm one of your hosts Seth Stevens and this week I'm back with VP of Operations Brad Marotti and Division Sales Manager Jordan Janet. This week we're covering a 10,000 foot view of our industry, the history of our company and what our structure looks like today. I know you're tired of hearing me talk about open enrollment.

but please log in and select benefits. So this is important and we don't want anyone to miss out due to poor communication on our end. If you have any questions or issues, reach out to your manager or HR. All right, here's the conversation.

Brad Marotti (00:49)
Yeah, I guess we could start with what we do. Yeah. You want me to go? Heavy highway construction. What is heavy highway construction? Yeah. And construction materials. So what we do is perform work on on highways. We provide the materials for highways.  We do anything from large government projects.

Seth Stevens (00:54)
in what we do.

in material supply.

Brad Marotti (01:19)
to small residential projects. ⁓ We do earth work. We can build a job from the ground up. We can perform the earth work. We bring in the rock, lay the rocks at the foundation for the road, ⁓ and then provide the asphalt. Now, we're a vertically integrated company, and what that means is that we provide ourselves, we self-perform all of that work and provide our

own materials for that work. So we have rock quarries where we're crushing rock. ⁓ We're using those rocks to sell them and we also use them internally to perform our own work. We send our rocks to our asphalt plants where we ⁓ mix them with ⁓ liquid, asphalt liquid that we also have a terminal for that we provide ourselves.

Seth Stevens (02:12)
Mm-hmm.

Brad Marotti (02:20)
and then turn the liquid and the rocks into asphalt at our asphalt plants and send them to our construction crews on the road and lay them. Yep. And we do that for, like I said, large government highways and then driveways as well for residential folks. Yeah.

Seth Stevens (02:41)
Which works by, I mean if anybody's not familiar with kind of how that works, like a true heavy highway contractor is Department of Transportation for each state gets some money from the state through taxes and other budgetary means and some money comes from federal, the federal government as well and taxes and such and bills and whatever.

then they have a budget to spend money. So they publicly announce jobs, accept bids on it, and lowest bidder wins the job, has to perform the work. Unfortunately, yeah. You do have to go through a qualification process to bid with the DOT because it does take a lot of equipment. You have to be able to perform it.

Brad Marotti (03:21)
unfortunately.

Seth Stevens (03:35)
You don't want to run a job and start a job and get halfway through it and not be able to finish it because all this stuff, especially from a DOT standpoint, is for the good of the public. it's public money at work.

Brad Marotti (03:53)
Yeah, I think that covers what we do.

Seth Stevens (03:58)
Yes, industry as a whole at least.

Brad Marotti (04:01)
Yeah, the industry, I mean, it's a, you know, it feels like a small world once you get ⁓ involved and start attending industry association meetings and things like that. You run into a lot of the same people. Like just in, you know, and we operate in Arkansas and Missouri. There are really only a handful of large ⁓ contractors and self, you know, that self-supply. There's really only a handful.

Seth Stevens (04:31)
that are involved in all the parts of the process. Like we are. Very fair.

Brad Marotti (04:34)
built structures. Yeah.

Yeah.

Jordan Janet (04:40)
You had mentioned it, but I just wanted to highlight it too. You know, we are a material supplier as well. you know, selling the rocks to external customers, providing those materials to this market. And, you know, hopefully growing that market, the footprint of that market, as well as asphalt mixes. Customers can come in and buy mix from our plants and take it to their own jobs.

Seth Stevens (04:50)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Brad Marotti (05:04)
huge

part of our business. It's a very important part of our business. ⁓ We'd love to do, you know, to grow. We call them FOB sales, but they're, you know, sales to other contractors and customers from our asphalt plants and our quarries.

Jordan Janet (05:20)
And liquid, I didn't mean to leave that out. supply liquid to far more than just Delta plants.

Seth Stevens (05:27)
Yeah, I'm glad that you brought that up because at any stage of our process we do sell anything externally as well. other contractors which are external to us.

Jordan Janet (05:39)
important piece that, know, for a lot of reasons, but to be able to supply the market with those materials is a really valuable piece of who we are.

Seth Stevens (05:49)
Yep. So in a nutshell, we turn oil sludge into better oil sludge and we make Bouygues rocks into small rocks. And then we put them all in a Bouygues, easy bake oven. And then we send them out to basically a rolling pin.

Jordan Janet (06:02)
with said oil sludge.

It's so simple.

Seth Stevens (06:14)
Put it on the road.

Brad Marotti (06:16)
That's a great way to explain it to my 10 year old.

Seth Stevens (06:20)
Or lower majority of my audience is younger than that but

Jordan Janet (06:21)
I was going to say, they might be like.

Brad Marotti (06:25)
Yeah.

Seth Stevens (06:27)
Maybe this is a good spot to kind of transition into, you know, history of Delta and like how we even got involved in all this stuff. I mean, this predates us by a long time.

Jordan Janet (06:40)
year or two.

Seth Stevens (06:42)
Yeah, for you, not for me, but... You know, we have the luxury of... Before I start, we have the luxury of being in business in total for just over 100 years now. And we did a Bouygues 100 year celebration a couple of years ago. And huge shout out to Don Rosenberger, who I know is listening, I'm sure. Put a ton of work into the history.

and detailing that. And so I was able to just kind of go pull highlights from all of that history from our website, which has a way more detail than what we could even cover in here and has some great videos that we've made and that kind of stuff to detail it. But so getting into it in 1923, Edward Regenhart and sons

His sons, William and Ted, started Regenhardt Construction Company. And they brought in the Harrison Brothers, which were Charles, Robert, and Arthur at the time to partnership with them and kind of help run the business side of the construction company. I guess the Regenhardts wanted to do the construction side. The Harrison Brothers wanted to run the, or, you know, kind of help run the business side of things.

There's a lot of different changes and iterations through the years of this, but in the end, it's still the Regenhardts and the Harrisons at some point that are together. So pay attention.

Brad Marotti (08:17)
in.

Seth Stevens (08:17)
At the time when they started, they mainly operated in Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky. And their first project was actually paving the city streets of Poplar Bluff, Missouri, which is crazy. This is 1929.

Brad Marotti (08:34)
for Poplar Bluff no can't say that

Seth Stevens (08:40)
Definitely their first project. It could have been close. It 1923. I mean, that's not that far after like cars. So it definitely could have been. And that's still kind of like a  of where we operate in Poplar Bluff. So it's pretty cool to, you know, see that. All right. So we got that. They started in 1930. The Regenhardts sold their all of their shares to William Senior.

Brad Marotti (08:48)
Right.

Seth Stevens (09:10)
Regenhardt so I think that would basically be Edward and Ted selling their shares to William It consolidated into one Regenhardt . You understand that you're not

Jordan Janet (09:21)
following you so far.

Seth Stevens (09:24)
Okay, then in 1931, this is actually pretty crazy. They developed the first, or one of the first motorized subgrade machines, which I guess would be like a grader. Like a motor grader, which is what? To people that don't know what that is.

Brad Marotti (09:36)
to

⁓ It's a machine with a blade that's in the middle that rotates up and down side to side. It sits on a ball. And it's used to grade the road. It takes uneven surfaces and you can shape them into flat. can add slope. Yep, but it's what you use to finish ⁓ earthwork and base work.

Seth Stevens (10:11)
which is the basis of all road building. Because if you don't have good earthwork and dirt work, then rock and asphalt and all that on top of it don't matter.

Brad Marotti (10:21)
Yeah, so you use a bulldozer, a dozer, to rough it in, to get everything in place. Usually that's how goes. You can use a motor grader also, also called a blade. But the blade or the motor grader would be used to finish it off, to get that slick final surface before you move on to the next step.

Seth Stevens (10:41)
So they made this motorized subgrade machine and actually got it patented, which is wild. I'll try to include a picture of this like on the, you know, carplay screen.

⁓ Okay, so they kind of worked through the 30s and stuff. I'm going to jump to the late 1940s. ⁓ you know, all the Regenhardt shares were with William Senior and in the late 40s, Bob Harrison bought out all of his Harrison partners. So at this point, it's just Bob Harrison and William Senior running, I'm assuming still Regenhardt Construction Company is what it was called.

Okay, then in early 1950, so in 1952, William Senior passed away and left all his shares to his three sons, which were William Jr., Thomas, and Joe Regenhardt. And then also, I think in that same year, Bob Harrison passed away and left his shares to Donald L. Harrison, which was his nephew. And for anybody that's local to the area and is familiar with CMO,

The College of Business is actually the Donald L. Harrison College of Business. So, he had a lot going on, for sure. Good, savvy businessman.

Jordan, you knew him personally?

Jordan Janet (12:11)
No, I didn't know. I know a lot of people that knew DLH, but I always make that plug with the school of business.

Seth Stevens (12:19)
Okay,

so in 1959, jump into there, Regenhardt brothers sold their shares to, I'm gonna butcher this, Potashnick, Potashnick Company, and D.L. Harrison. So now, late 1950s, Regenhardts are out, Potashnick Company and D.L. Harrison are in.

Jordan Janet (12:31)
Potashnick

I that with confidence, but I'm pretty sure that's how say that.

Seth Stevens (12:49)
Okay, well it is now. So should roll with it. Okay, thank you. I think that's the only time I'm gonna say that. So then in the 60s, in the 60s, so the Regenhardts are out, but you know, can't, if you got an itch, you gotta scratch it, for sure. They won't back in at some point. So DL Harrison and the Regenhardts created separate businesses and ventures throughout the 60s.

in Missouri and Illinois creating several companies that we and a lot of the people that work for us are gonna be way more familiar with. So that's like when Delta Asphalt Inc started, Southeast Missouri Stone Company started, Southern Illinois Asphalt Company started, things like that. And another little snippet I pulled out of there that I thought was crazy is the US economy was slow through the 60s.

So D.L. Harrison started construction operations in Central America? Like this state's a baller.

Jordan Janet (13:52)
around the Panama Canal, I believe.

Seth Stevens (13:55)
Yeah, I think that was right. Yeah, it's nuts. So he's making things happen while the economy is Okay. In the 70s, they expanded into Arkansas. They created Apex Paving Company, which is a little confusing. Apex Paving Company is mainly a Missouri construction company, but they did start Arkansas operations and they started operating the liquid terminal in New Madrid, Missouri. So that

New Madrid basically sits on the river and that's how we get all of our oil is from barges off the river. We unload it into terminals. I guess they're called terminals.

Big things.

Jordan Janet (14:42)
million gallon.

Seth Stevens (14:45)
Here's a Bouygues jump 1987. They formed Delta Concrete, which we've talked about a couple times referenced anyway. That covered all of Southeast Missouri, so they had ready mix plants everywhere ready mixer concrete plants, whatever you want to call him. Everywhere to you know service the area and start.

Brad Marotti (15:06)
them.

Seth Stevens (15:08)
Which concrete's obviously used for lot of commercial and residential buildings and things like that.

⁓ it's not used for a ton of like road building. I mean, it is, but.

Jordan Janet (15:22)
You look around Cape Girardeau, Missouri, it is.

Seth Stevens (15:24)
Yeah.

Brad Marotti (15:25)
Unfortunately it is and it's used a lot of major around major cities you see more concrete than asphalt. Some states like it more than asphalt you can tell but yeah as faults more widely used for sure.

Seth Stevens (15:34)
and bridges, stuff like that.

Yeah.

Yeah, well at some point in the future we'll get into the differences and stuff. All right, so that happened in 87, Delta Concrete. In the 90s, this is when... ⁓

This is when I was born. ⁓ And ⁓ we start getting into more of the structure that we know today. So the nineties, Colas Inc. a Delta group of companies at this point. So all those different companies that they'd been making and stuff, they wrapped into like a Delta companies or group of companies or whatever. So Colas bought all of those companies. How much? In 1992.

Brad Marotti (16:29)
How do they pay for it? You should know that. ⁓ I don't either.

Seth Stevens (16:33)
I don't know.

Why should I know that?

Brad Marotti (16:38)
Okay. You know a lot of things.

Seth Stevens (16:40)
Okay. I appreciate your confidence in me and I'm sorry I let you down. look it up. I do not know that. ⁓ Jordan will be a fact checker.

Jordan Janet (16:51)
I

don't know if I can look that up, can I?

Seth Stevens (16:53)
Oh,

I don't know. Okay. Well, if we figure it out here at some point, we'll be sure to bring it back in. then in, you know, at this point, Colas owns Delta companies, right? And I'll get into who Colas is in just a little bit, but. Then in 97, they bought Baughn Construction in Arkansas. So that kind of added to the.

Arkansas operations, I think, added a couple asphalt plants like in Tuckerman and Black Rock. And increased presence in 1999, they bought Clinton materials companies, which is. Was like ready mix quarry and ready mix in a quarry in Williamsville and Poplar Bluff area and then Dexter Sand & Gravel which we still operate Williamsville and Dexter Sand & Gravel today.

We don't operate ReadyMix anymore, but that was kind of a Bouygues acquisition. Then into the 2000s. So there's numerous additions and divestments through the 2010s through 2020s. So in 2017, we bought Heartland Materials, which we now call Jackson Quarry, which is in Fruitland, Missouri. In 2018, we bought Asa Asphalt, which is...

Like our Missouri more residential county work, private paving, stuff like that.

Brad Marotti (18:23)
sold the concrete with the purchase of

Seth Stevens (18:26)
Oh

yeah, thanks. In 17 we sold Delta Concrete. Yeah, in 17 when we were purchasing Heartland Materials, the Jackson Quarry. good call. In 2022 we bought Asphalt Producers or API in Arkansas to add to construction and paving operations there. And then in 2023...

We had a bunch of operations in Illinois and we actually divested of all of those. So we were completely out of operating in the state of Illinois. We still sell some like liquid and materials and stuff like that into Illinois, but for the most part, we're out of it. That's kind of all the additions and divestment stuff. know, it gets a, there's a lot of action going on from the nineties to today.

whenever Colas took over, buying and selling. Once Colas took over, there's not a lot of creating companies or anything like that. It's buying and selling. So in 2022... Hold on, let me back up.

through the 90s to now, we were Delta Companies, Inc. We were a subsidiary of Colas, U.S. And Colas is a worldwide company that's based in Paris. They operate in 50 countries, all kind of construction and like similar industry based.

We have about 64,000 employees as of today across Colas worldwide. And we have different sections of Colas. So Colas has a U.S. kind of subsidiary, I guess, that ⁓ runs U.S. operations and has multiple subsidiaries that report to the U.S. sector. So those subsidiaries are

⁓ like us, there's Barrett Industries, which is like the Northeast, Ohio, New York, ⁓ mainly.

There's, what are you laughing about?

Jordan Janet (20:51)
trying to pick up my phone, had to dodge the mic.

Seth Stevens (20:53)
⁓

okay. That a boy. There's Simon Contractors, which operates kind in the West, ⁓ Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado. We have Sully Miller who operates in California pretty much solely like Brea and Los Angeles. We have Colaska which covers the whole state of Alaska. We have HRI and IA Construction, which are two different companies that operate in Pennsylvania.

Brad Marotti (21:06)
and stuff like that.

Seth Stevens (21:23)
And then we have Reeves Construction, which now owns Delta companies. I'll come back to that in a second, but they operate kind of in the southeast US, right?

we might as well just talk about that now. So Delta like in 2022.

Brad Marotti (21:43)
we get done, we'll summarize. This is a lot. This is a lot.

Jordan Janet (21:48)
Every time I try to unpack a piece of this with somebody, I'm like, wow, this is.

Brad Marotti (21:55)
I was like, are you still with me? Hang in.

Jordan Janet (21:57)
We'll

just move to the next tab.

Seth Stevens (21:58)
Yeah,

anytime we try to, I guess, explain this like in an interview or something to people, I'm just like, well, we're better off not explaining this. So in 2022, Delta, it actually made a lot of sense for Delta companies to move under Reeves Construction's umbrella. So we kind of have one president and directors and stuff for Reeves and they support Delta and then

Delta companies no longer has to report directly to cost US Reeves construction does and so forth, but we did keep our Delta name. That mess anything.

Jordan Janet (22:40)
Sounds great. Okay.

Seth Stevens (22:42)
Perfect. So that's how all that works. And where we operate as Delta is in Southeast Missouri and Northeast Arkansas. I'll try to put some maps on the pictures in CarPlay. ⁓ And where Reeves operates, like outside of our Delta operations, is South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. We also sell and have operated in

areas of North Carolina and stuff like that with the reason for as well. ⁓

I thought something else that's interesting.

Well, maybe we should kind of summarize that and then talk about like Colas bleak stuff. Yeah.

Jordan Janet (23:30)
I was wondering when you were going bring that up.

Brad Marotti (23:31)
So to summarize, the company was founded in 23. In the 60s, the companies a lot of us know today, the Delta companies were created. In the 80s, the Concrete company was created. In the 90s, Colas bought Delta from the Reaganhart family. In the late 2000s,

Seth Stevens (23:43)
Mm-hmm.

Brad Marotti (23:59)
We moved from a Colas subsidiary to a Reeves subsidiary.

Seth Stevens (24:03)
Yeah. Right. Yeah. You just put a bow on it. 100%. Yeah.

Brad Marotti (24:08)
easy way. ⁓

Jordan Janet (24:09)
So I,

and there's, there's plenty in the company that obviously knew the Regenhardt and the Harrison's, but I had the opportunity to meet and chat with Joe. Joe passed away. Joe Regenhardt passed away a couple of years ago, unfortunately, but he came strolling into my office one day and I had the opportunity to chat with him for a little while. It was a lot of fun. He's, he's a, he's an impressive guy. He was sharp.

Seth Stevens (24:29)
No doubt. Yeah, all those guys were that created all these businesses, ran it. know what mean? They did some groundbreaking stuff for sure. Okay, so what I wanted to come back to and talk about is Colas. So you can go to Colas website, colas.com and whatever, but I think it's like an EN website because it's European. ⁓ They're based in Paris, but they're actually owned by

Jordan Janet (24:34)
lot of fun.

Seth Stevens (24:59)
Bouygues a company called Bouygues, which you wouldn't be able to spell that based on pronunciation.

Brad Marotti (25:05)
That's

what it looks like.

Seth Stevens (25:08)
Sure.

Jordan Janet (25:08)
Yeah.

What is it? B O U Y G U E S?

Seth Stevens (25:12)
O-U-Y-G-U-E-S,

yeah.

Brad Marotti (25:15)
You might have seen it if you watched the Paris Olympics last year. Bouygues aquatic center is where they did all of the...

Seth Stevens (25:19)
For sure, yeah.

It's wild. Like I'll try to put this like hierarchy organizational chart type thing out there, but Bouygues ⁓ owns a construction arm which they operate Bouygues Construction, Bouygues Immobile, Immobile something, ⁓ Colas construction, right? They manage all those. They have an energies and services arms which that company is called

Equans? Equans? They have a telecoms arm which is Bouygues Telecom which I guess would be comparable to like AT &T or something right in the US and then they have a media company that's a TFI group which is just nuts the size of this if you imagine all of these companies I mean

Jordan Janet (26:09)
That's unreal.

And Brad, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know if you know this or not, but they're ⁓ privately controlled for the most part, correct? I mean, I think...

Brad Marotti (26:27)
Yeah, the bleak family is still...

Jordan Janet (26:29)
the shareholder or private owners.

Seth Stevens (26:34)
Yeah, that's true. It says that on this chart that Bouygues is privately controlled and Bouygues owns 100 % of the shares of all the construction businesses, 100 % of the shares of the energies and services businesses, 90 % of the telecoms business and 45 % of the media business. Wow. Which is crazy.

Yeah.

Brad Marotti (27:01)
Bye.

Seth Stevens (27:03)
Not bad.

Brad Marotti (27:06)
We're still involved. We had the pleasure of meeting William Bouygues. came here to visit Delta and was in Arkansas and Missouri and saw our operations. was a couple of weeks ago. First time we've had a Bouygues here. Cool. Yeah, it cool.

Seth Stevens (27:23)
That's pretty cool. Applaud

him for coming to see operations for sure. ⁓ Okay, so another thing that we could talk about in more detail from like a Delta, Missouri and Arkansas level is how we have been organized and how we are looking to be organized in the future because I think this will tee up some other conversations. So.

Historically, ⁓ like whenever I started, and I think both of you guys from our, you know, backstory episode is we had aggregate operations, which are quarries. We had ready mix operations, which are concrete. And then they were combined into a manufacturing region and managed at that level. And then we had asphalt.

plant operations and construction services, paving, earthwork, that kind of stuff. They were together in a construction region and managed at that level. So we were very much separated by

line of business essentially, except it just looked a little different because we had concrete involved and whatever. And then in 2018, whenever after we acquired that Jackson Quarry and divested of Delta concrete, we swapped some stuff up and went to a geography based structure.

So basically any operation in Missouri fell under North region and any operation in Arkansas fell under a South region and they were managed by teams locally in those states. then September of 2025, we announced that we would be going back to a line of business structure, except it looks a little different, which

You can tee up if you, I'll tee you up.

Brad Marotti (29:36)
Yeah, so I made a decision just a few months ago to switch ⁓ back to a line of business structure. ⁓ It will be a manufacturing region and a construction region. ⁓ Construction will, you know, both of those will span across state lines. ⁓ Manufacturing will have aggregates, have asphalt plants, logistics, which is our trucking division, trucking department.

⁓ Those are the major operations in manufacturing and then construction is going to have our shops flow into it, you know, as well as all of our construction operations, construction services. But you know, why? Why did we switch to this? And we're going to have an entire episode of that. you know, for sure, we've got the major, a major part of our business in Missouri is aggregates and ⁓ we haven't

Seth Stevens (30:23)
Yeah.

Brad Marotti (30:36)
always had the expertise that we've needed managing aggregates, managing manufacturing versus construction is a completely different mindset. There's a lot of a lot more sales involved. The efficiencies and the way that we measure success is just different in manufacturing versus construction. So really separating those to where we can manage each line of business as efficiently as possible, you know,

to drive costs down so that we can be more competitive. Those are the reasons why we're switching back to that. We've got good teams in both states and with the reorganization, we're kind of realigning some people and repurposing some people and it's exciting stuff. I think, yeah, I think we're just gonna be better set up. We've got to change. We're gonna be better set up to tackle the current market conditions.

with this structure. I'm excited about how there's some, it's going to be tough before it gets better, right? For sure. With the change and trying to get everything straightened out and people in their new roles, but.

Seth Stevens (31:45)
Yeah, change management.

Brad Marotti (31:48)
I just got into the other episode a little bit, I? Yeah. Yeah.

Seth Stevens (31:51)
That's okay. It's a teaser.

either.

Brad Marotti (31:56)
But yeah, that's geography-based too, line of business. It will go into full effect in January.

Seth Stevens (32:05)
I hope you all have a better idea of where we've come from and what we do on a day-to-day basis. please rate our show and leave a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and check out Delta on all social media platforms at Delta Companies and our website at deltacos.com. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.