Though the past ten months have been scaled back for many university students, Baxter Jones found himself fully emersed on a daily basis as an aggregate company mining engineer.

Jones, a junior in mining and minerals engineering, has spent the better part of a year participating in Luck Stone’s Undergraduate Co-Op program. The unique program, hosted by the Goochland-based aggregates company, offers students a chance to put their classroom knowledge to practice while gaining a more in-depth view of what it means to be a mining engineer.

“I’ve learned a lot about the role of a mining engineer and got to explore apects of the industry which I've always found interesting,” said Jones, a native of Henrico, Virginia. “Luck Stone helped me obtain my drone license, so I’ve been able to operate it for safety, blasting, and geotechnical applications, such as inspecting highwalls.”

Luck Stone is the nation’s largest family-owned and operated producer of crushed stone, sand and gravel. Its well-regarded aggregates co-op program begins with a summer internship, followed by an immersive, year-long, work experience which starts in January of the following year.

Never happy to work on one thing, Jones appreciated the variety of projects that came with the internship. “No day was the same. Two or three days a week I arrived at the corporate offices early to work on designs or have meetings with supervisors and mining engineers about designs I had worked on,” recalled Jones.

“But I also got to spend time on the road, touring different operations and visiting with plant managers, foreman, and supervisors.” Jones would plan out all of his site visits, which took him to North and South Carolina, northern Virginia, and Atlanta, Georgia.

Since Jones sees education and learning as one of his basic core values, he made it a point to learn as much as he could about what a mining engineer does. “I had the opportunity to spend time and learn about different departments, such as safety, operations, or sales. I spent a couple of months at Luck Stone’s south Richmond quarry where I operated equipment and learned about the plant and pit,” said Jones.

The co-op program not only exposed Jones to the workings of the company, but it also required him to carry out the duties of a typical engineer. “I created mine designs and conducted greenfielding work, where I basically examined new sites, made pit cuts, then determined the correct ratios of dirt and rock.”

another aerial photo of quarry taken by jones
Baxter Jones took this aerial drone photograph to the Charlottesville quarry west end pit, plant, and various equipment.

His first challenge was getting trained on the specialized software needed for his job, which he completed during the initial phase of the co-op in the summer of 2019. “I was going to have to carry out a lot of surveying and GPS work,” said Jones. “And for blasting, I needed to rely on Austin’s 3G Blastmetrics software, which let me set up blasts with the aid of a drone.”

One of his favorite projects was developing 5-year plans, which relied on his use of ArcGIS and Surpac. “This work was great since I got to design what each plant would do for the upcoming 5 years. By the end of the co-op, I could already see how my designs were progressing on the ground.”

According to Jones, he was already sold on being a mining engineer once he came to Virginia Tech, but the co-op has strengthened that decision while complementing his coursework. “Prior to starting the co-op I took an explosives class,” Jones recalled. “The experience at Luck Stone really drove home those concepts once I performed actual blasting work."

As he settles back into his academic routine, Jones is more excited than ever about his chosen field. "The past year has shown me what it would be like to be a mining engineer, and I realize how much I enjoy its daily challenges and the opportunities to be working on multiple projects.”