Roofing Road Trips Podcast: Reed Hitchcock

By Lauren White, RCS Reporter.

ARMA is helping to educate the industry, combat the labor shortage and raising awareness about recycling asphalt.

Reed Hitchcock, the vice president of the Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association (ARMA), speaks with Karen Edwards, RoofersCoffeeShop® editor, at the 2020 International Roofing Expo about some issues the industry faces and the specific challenges related to asphalt in the roofing industry.

With the current labor shortage, there are vacant jobs in all aspects of roofing, including asphalt facilities, chemists, roofing sales, mid-level roles in manufacturing, in addition to roofers who are in the field.  “I like to say, ‘Everybody needs a roof.  They don’t need a roof every day, but when they need it, they need it.’  So we need to do a better job of promoting the [livelihoods] that people can make in all aspects of the industry and not forget that there are jobs in every one of these industries...This isn’t one of those where I’m just waving an asphalt flag.  This is an industry flag.  This is roofing,” Reed shares.

The most important way to combat the labor shortage is through education, according to Reed.  By educating others, they are effectively changing the image of what it means to be a roofer and to be in the roofing industry, which sometimes has a negative connotation.  NRCA is “working on a toolkit for their members to help them sell jobs in their communities,” Reed shares.  “Particularly for us, what we need to do is build that toolkit for our manufacturer members to help educate the communities around them, the colleges, about careers on the manufacturing side.”

Multiple organizations are part of a forum that discusses education and the labor shortage regularly.  These organizations include: ARMA, National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA), ARMA, Single Ply Roofing Industry (SPRI), EPDM Roofing Association, and Polyisocyanurate Insulation Manufacturers Association (PIMA).  Reed shares that attending Roofing Day in D.C., in addition to meeting with lawmakers to raise awareness about the industry, is a great way to inform lawmakers about the value of roofing.  

ARMA is taking measures to enlighten contractors about the difference between recycling asphalt into new materials versus having it end up in a landfill.  Asphalt is a by-product of the distillation process of petroleum.  In its basic form, asphalt is the heavy deposits left over from the oil-refining process.  There are multiple uses for asphalt after its life on a roof, such as in pavements, specialty mulches and new roofing shingles.  The challenge is incentivizing roofing contractors to take the discarded asphalt to a specialty facility instead of a landfill since there are currently no monetary benefits for the contractor. 

By educating the industry, lawmakers, contractors and homeowners, ARMA is helping change the way people think about roofing.  ARMA is also taking measures to educate the industry and combat the labor shortage in the industry.  They are dedicated to finding ways to promote the benefits of recycling asphalt to contractors and homeowners to help asphalt roofing be a more sustainable practice.  

Listen to the podcast to hear more about the labor shortage and asphalt recycling from Reed.  Check out the RoofersCoffeeShop® podcast page for even more.