Vulcan Materials

Vulcan Materials Has Maximized Savings Across Bank Fees and Payments with Redbridge Since 2018

Vulcan Materials Company is the country’s largest supplier of crushed stone, sand, and gravel. If a road is being paved or a building is going up in the US, there is a good chance the aggregate under it came from one of Vulcan’s quarries. The company is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, with 425 sites across 23 states and $7.9 billion in annual revenue. The treasury team that oversees all of its banking and payments is small and has partnered with Redbridge since 2018 to help monitor and negotiate better terms with its banks and merchant card processors.

Challenge

Vulcan’s treasury team manages over 80 domestic and international bank accounts across multiple banks. With a small team, it does not leave much time for a deep review of bank fees or card processing charges.

When Vulcan first came to Redbridge in 2018, the problem was that there was not a clear picture of what made up the amounts the banks were charging. Prices had not been negotiated and costs had crept up over time.

In 2024, the same scenario surfaced on the payments side. Vulcan was accepting card payments and had plans to launch an e-commerce site. The team wanted someone to take a long look at what they were paying in processing fees and interchange, and to advise them on set up of the new site to avoid overpaying interchange rates from day one.

Solution

The relationship started in 2018 with HawkeyeBSB, Redbridge’s bank fee monitoring software. The internal treasury team imported their monthly account analysis statements into Hawkeye, which broke down every charge billed by their banks. This allowed Vulcan to have a clear, consolidated view of what the banks were billing them.

The results from Hawkeye opened the door to the full cash management advisory engagement in 2019 and 2020. Redbridge pulled 12 months of statements, benchmarked every line item against its market database, and built an action plan that listed, fee by fee, where Vulcan was overpaying and what a fair price should look like. Redbridge flagged earnings credit yields that were below market and also revealed services Vulcan was paying for but no longer using.

From there, Redbridge ran a formal RFP process in parallel. The RFP launched in January 2020, which disregarded Vulcan’s international banking to focus on the US footprint. Over two rounds of negotiations, Redbridge put the bank’s proposals into a single format Vulcan could compare.

Redbridge finished the engagement by confirming fee schedules in writing with the banks which were locked in for three years. After that, HawkeyeBSB continued to monitor in the background, checking every month that the banks were charging what they had agreed to.

In 2024, Redbridge’s Global Payment Strategy team picked up where cash management left off. They started with a scorecard that compared Vulcan’s current card processing setup against the market. Vulcan decided to skip a formal RFP and go straight to direct optimization work first, which produced real savings on interchange and processing without having to change systems. As the e-commerce project took shape, Redbridge ran a lighter-weight RFI to select a new payment gateway for the site.

Vulcan has an outside partner that understands both sides of its treasury operation, bank fees and card processing alike. When the internal treasury team wants to look at something new, Redbridge already has the context to pick it up quickly.

Results

Over 40% Savings in the First Year

The 2020 cash management engagement produced over 40% in annual bank fee savings from reduced fees, cleaning up unused services, and one-time credits.

Negotiated Contracts in Place

Bank fees were locked into three-year pricing deals with HawkeyeBSB to monitor compliance monthly.

Lower Card Costs and a New Payment Gateway for E-commerce

The 2024 payments engagement cut card processing and interchange costs through internal optimization, and the follow-on RFI produced a new gateway provider for Vulcan’s e-commerce project.

A Partner That has Grown with Vulcan

What started as a monitoring project in 2018 has grown into a working relationship that covers both bank fees and payments.