Somerset County
Three rocks and a coal seam, inside six miles
The ground here gives up several different things at once. Eichorn Mines works broken limestone with twenty-eight people at the edge of the township, the Rodamer Quarry takes sandstone with four about 2 miles east, and M & S Stone Quarries Inc cuts dimension sandstone with three about 3 miles off.
The coal is close behind them. The Casselman Mine works bituminous with thirty-nine people about 6 miles south — the largest single workforce anywhere near this township — with the Shaw Mines about 12 miles away and the Westgren Mine about the same.
Cut stone and crushed stone will not share a truck
Those trades divide the local fleet cleanly. Crushed limestone and sandstone go in tipping bodies; dimension sandstone is cut and lifted flat, banded, and ruined if it shifts.
So a small operator here often keeps a flatbed alongside a tri-axle and uses each for one thing only. Between the Rodamer Quarry about 2 miles east and the Rockwood Quarry about 12 miles north, that is the ordinary shape of a yard.
Two state lines within reach
It is the borders rather than the distances that complicate a week here. The nearest rail is about 20 miles south-southeast and is in West Virginia, and the nearest military installation about 24 miles southeast is over the Maryland line.
Inside Pennsylvania the general ceiling is 80,000 lb gross and the binding number on a lane is frequently a posted one set by a township. Across either line the posting authority, the permit and the bonding belong to somebody else, and a hauler working this corner deals with three systems.
All of it comes to us. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the limestone and coal. Flatbeds for the dimension sandstone. Day cabs and road tractors, rollbacks, box trucks, service bodies and the pickups and work trucks that follow a mine crew.
Most of it works between Eichorn Mines, the Casselman Mine and the Romesburg Quarry about 12 miles north.
- What about the title itself?
- Can you collect from a mine site?Tell us how the ground is around the Casselman Mine side and we will bring what suits.
- Do you come out this far south?We do, and we can also buy it remotely and arrange the tow without a visit.
A machine left when somebody died and nobody in the family drives it.
Yards near the Rockwood Quarry and out toward the Shaw Mines hold a few in that position.