Schuylkill County
Three operations on a borough of under half a square mile
This borough carries three entries: a stripping operation working hard coal with 1 person on the record, a coal breaker 1.36 miles out with 6, and a crushed-stone operation 1.30 miles away with 9. The nearest of the three sits 0.73 miles from the Census centre.
A borough of under half a square mile holding three separate industrial operations is unusual, and the payrolls tell you what kind of industry it is: one, six and nine. These are small operations, not works.
Fifty coal mines in one county, most of them tiny
Beyond those three, the county is hard-coal country: the Mine Safety and Health Administration lists 50 coal mines in it. This is the southern end of the anthracite region, where the coal has been worked since the 1820s.
The concentration nearby is remarkable and so is the scale. Within four miles there are five strip mines carrying two or three people each; the Wadesville workings 7.1 miles off carry 37, the Primrose operation at Mahanoy City 5.9 miles away 19, and the Pottsville Quarry 7.1 miles out 18. A great many one and two-person operations, and a handful of larger ones among them.
That shapes the trucks. An operation with two people runs a couple of trucks hard for a long time and replaces them one at a time, so the equipment here is older and better used than a fleet average would suggest.
Twenty-three restricted crossings, and none of them close
Beyond the pits, the road picture is better than the county’s age suggests. Within ten miles the National Bridge Inventory records 159 structures and 23 coded below legal loads — 6 county-maintained and 7 township-maintained — but the nearest of them is 3.91 miles away, which is a long way for a restriction to sit from three working sites.
The ratings are unusual too. The lowest among the restricted group is about seventeen US tons, and that is also the lowest that clears the commercial floor — so there is no crossing here in the band that admits no commercial vehicle at all. Every restricted crossing within ten miles takes a truck part loaded.
Across the county, 16 of the 60 bridges it maintains fail on load and 15 of its townships’ do, so the two tiers are close to even and a lane may answer to both.
A body that carried anthracite and later ran crushed stone is the ordinary history on this borough, with the breaker and the stone operation barely a mile apart. Between them and the Pottsville Quarry 7.1 miles off the runs are short and heavy, and the wear lands on springs and brakes.
- Ordinary on a truck off the Tuscarora Breaker or the Pottsville Quarry 7.1 miles away.
Where an operation carries one or two people, the truck is retired when the person is, and there is often nobody in the family who wants it.
Beyond that the work changes. A body set up for the stone operation here suits the strip pits badly, and between the Tuscarora Breaker 1.36 miles off and the Wadesville workings 7.1 miles away it is easier to change the work than the truck.