Industrial sand one way, aggregate the other
The North American Rail Network maintained by the Federal Railroad Administration and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics lists a rail yard here operated by Norfolk Southern, 0.79 miles from the Census centre of the borough.
The nearest works of any size is the Mapleton Depot Plant, 7.6 miles off, and it is the outlier of the group: industrial sand rather than construction aggregate, and the largest payroll on the local record with 42 people on it.
Then it becomes limestone. The Canoe Valley Aggregate Plant sits 8.5 miles away at Alexandria, and Union Furnace Quarry 11.5 miles out. Industrial sand and crushed limestone do not ride the same way — one is graded, dry and abrasive, the other is dead weight that packs.
Over the line into Blair County, where the stone gets bigger
Two of the nearer operations are not in this county at all. Grannas Brothers Stone & Asphalt sits 10.7 miles off at Williamsburg and the Tyrone Forge Quarry 15.3 miles out, both in Blair County, and the second of those carries a payroll about three times the size of the quarry at Alexandria.
For a truck the practical shape of that is a long thin working area rather than a tight cluster. The gates run from about seven to about fifteen miles out in two directions, so the miles here are real miles.
Dumps of every axle count, pneumatic tankers off the sand, flatbeds and day cabs, rollbacks, box trucks, service bodies and pickups.
A truck that has run between the Mapleton Depot Plant and the Union Furnace Quarry has usually carried more than one product, and it leaves two different residues in the same body.
- Common on a truck working the Mapleton Depot Plant and the Canoe Valley Aggregate Plant in the same year.
- Can you collect from a yard gate?
Work here spreads across two counties and a fair number of miles, so a truck that stops suiting one lane does not always find another one close by. That is the ordinary reason a good truck ends up standing.
The rest is retirements, estates and fleets renewing themselves — the same in Blair County as at the Tyrone Forge Quarry end of the run.