Churchman Sand & Gravel

Now this is an interesting place. First, you’ll need your GPS to find this supplier. There is no large commercial sign at the entrance only a house number (4250) on a with fence mounted to a stone wall. And the house number sign is so small you’ll think it couldn’t be the place, but it is.

Once you drive down the dirt driveway (maybe 1000 yards) you’ll see a building on the right that looks like someone’s house. There is a small office sign hanging on a pole, but at first it’s a mystery where the office is. Don’t fret, just go through the garage, keeping the cars to your left and hugging the right-hand wall. Take a hard right through a doorway at the end of the garage and then another hard right to a doorway. Open the door and you’ve arrived at command central.

I was met by a very nice and extremely helpful woman who answered my plethora of questions and gave me carte blanche to enter the stone yard and explore and take as many pictures as I wanted. She even radioed ahead to one of her crew to make sure I was taken good care of. Now I call that uber customer service.

Once in the yard, I was met with waves from the crew and a cornucopia of sand and rock products.

Backtrack a couple of years ago. My wife and I needed some small boulders (about 1′-2′ in diameter). Once we checked into the office we were let loose in the yard (with our car) to find whatever we needed and load it into the back of our small SUV. One of the yardmen even asked us if we needed help lifting them into the back of our vehicle. We took him up on his offer. Nice guy.

On checkout, the nice office woman looked in the back of our car and said that would be 20 bucks. Wow, what a deal! This is the minimum charge for any small quantity, but I felt we really got our monies worth and then some.

Take your time to find the place. Hopefully, the featured picture in our gallery will give you an idea of what the entrance looks like … and the small house number mounted to the fence.

If you’ve got a pickup they can load you (they have lots of heavy equipment on the property to make this a walk in the park). There is no fee for loading your vehicle.

Here are a few pointers.

• Bring a pair of gloves. Rocks can be tough on the hands and hell on a good manicure.
• You might also consider a bandana, Buff or dust mask as you’ll likely encounter loaders filling up trucks that enter and exit the area (it gets pretty dusty).
• Just park your car out of the way of all heavy equipment and you’re good to go.

I can’t say enough good things about Churchman’s. It’s worth the trip.