Chester County
One quarry here cuts stone instead of crushing it
The American Black Quarry works dimension granite as a surface operation under Pennsylvania Granite Corp, and it reports 8 employees to the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Every other quarry the Mine Safety and Health Administration lists within ten miles of it crushes rock instead of cutting it.
The Birdsboro Quarry about 5 miles north-west works traprock with 40 people, the Douglassville Quarry about 7 miles north-east works traprock with 18, and the Dyer Quarry about 8 miles north-west works traprock with 28. Dimension stone is the odd one out here.
Cut stone and crushed stone are different trades
That difference decides what the truck looks like. Crushed stone leaves a quarry loose, by weight, in a dump body. Dimension stone leaves in blocks and slabs, chained and blocked on a flatbed, and the load is measured by what it is rather than by how much of it fits.
So an eight-person dimension operation and a forty-person crushed-stone quarry five miles apart do not share equipment and do not buy each other’s trucks. The Rolling Rock Pit about 17 miles north is the nearest operation in the same trade, and it reports 38 employees against this one’s 8.
A ring of quarries, and one road system under all of it
Those operations sit close together. Within about 12 miles the Mine Safety and Health Administration records the Honey Brook Quarry working sandstone with 10 people, the Rheems Quarry working limestone with 18, the Silver Hill Quarry with 16 and the Downingtown Quarry with 35. Three materials, four operators, one network of two-lane roads between them.
So the traffic is heavier than the borough suggests. The Norfolk Southern bulk terminal at Pottstown is about 8 miles north-east and the Pottstown Yard about the same, which is where a good deal of it is going.
Flatbeds and lowboys off the dimension side, tri-axle dumps and aggregate haulers off the crushed side, day cabs and road tractors, rollbacks, service bodies and the pickups every small operation keeps beside its big truck.
Between the American Black Quarry and the Martin Stone Quarries about 15 miles north-east the equipment turns over on its own cycle, and a flatbed set up for blocks is not what a crushed-stone operation is looking for.
- A flatbed that carried dimension stone is still a flatbed.
- We are an eight-person outfit.That is the size of most of what we buy here.
A contract ends, a pit works out, or the one person who drove the flatbed retires, and the truck has no obvious second home.