Fifty operations, and most of them are tiny
The North American Rail Network maintained by the Federal Railroad Administration and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics lists a rail yard here carrying the borough’s own name, about a sixth of a mile from the centre of it — not at the edge of the place but in it. It is run by the Reading Blue Mountain & Northern Railroad Commission, a regional operator rather than one of the national carriers.
The striking thing about the coal here is not the quantity but the size of the outfits working it. Inside about seven miles the Schaeffer Hill Refuse Bank at Minersville carries one person, the Winnie Land Operation at Forestville one, Saint Clair Bank two, Buck Mountain Stripping two, the E O J Strip Mine at New Philadelphia three and K K Strip at Cumbola three.
A handful are larger — Wadesville P-33 at St. Clair with thirty-seven, Serill Strip at Forestville with thirty-four, the New St. Nicholas Breaker at Seltzer with thirty, Good Spring South with fourteen. But the county’s coal is mostly worked by one and two-person businesses, and a business that size owns its trucks personally.
When the owner and the driver are the same person
That ownership pattern is what actually shapes this market. A one-man operation has no fleet to hide a stopped truck in, no workshop absorbing a slow repair and no second machine to carry the work while the first waits. When it stops earning it stops entirely, and it sits in a yard.
It also means the person selling knows the vehicle completely, which makes for a straightforward transaction. Tell us what it did, what has been done to it and what has not, and we can get on with it.
Coal is not quite all of it. The Pottsville Quarry works broken sandstone with eighteen people about 7 miles north, the one working face nearby that is not anthracite.
Coal haulers and tri-axle dumps, tractors and trailers off the strips and the banks, lowboys that moved plant between operations, plus rollbacks, service bodies and the pickups that every small outfit runs alongside the big truck.
Between Good Spring South about 2 miles north-west and the Auburn Preparation Plant about 4 miles south-west, most of what we are offered belongs to the person driving it. One truck is the usual sale here and it is no less welcome for that.
- One is plenty.
- I did all the work on it myself.Good — then you know it better than any inspection would. Tell us what you did and what you left.
- It is standing on a strip.We can come to you, or buy it remotely and arrange the tow off the site. Around Saint Clair Bank and the Pottsville Quarry either one is routine.
A one or two-person operation stops, and the truck stops with it. There is no fleet for it to fall back into and that is the commonest reason we hear in this county.
A retirement, an estate, a machine that outlasted the contract it was bought for and has been standing ever since.
Those stand between the Serill Strip about 7 miles north-west and Good Spring South about 2 miles north-west, on ground that no longer has a use for them.