The interesting thing is who holds it. The operator of record is Eureka Stone Quarry, a firm with workings in the Philadelphia suburbs, better than a hundred miles south-east of here.
Between two army installations and the Scranton rail cluster
Beyond the quarry the neighbours are unusually institutional. The Scranton Army Ammunition Plant sits 9.6 miles off and the Tobyhanna Army Depot 10.8 miles away, so two military installations fall within eleven miles in opposite directions.
The rail is close too: the Steamtown yard 10.0 miles off, a yard 10.9 miles away at Taylor and an intermodal ramp 11.2 miles out. Depot and ammunition-plant traffic is contract work with tight gates and long lead times, which is a different rhythm from quarry haulage.
The Keystone Quarry works sandstone 7.2 miles off at Dunmore with 34 people, four times this quarry’s payroll and the largest within ten miles.
Eighteen restricted crossings, and the lightest takes nothing at all
Those routes have to be chosen. Within ten miles the National Bridge Inventory records 192 structures and 18 coded below legal loads, of which 5 are county-maintained and 2 belong to townships, with the nearest 2.29 miles away.
The lowest rating in that group is about five US tons, which is below the point at which any commercial vehicle crosses even empty. So some of these are not restrictions to plan around; they are crossings a loaded truck simply cannot use.
South-east of here the ground changes again: a sandstone quarry 9.6 miles off in Pike County with 13 people, the Locust Ridge Quarry 13.5 miles away with 15, and two small dimension-stone operations about twelve miles out towards Scranton with 2 and 7.
Dumps off the stone, flatbeds and day cabs for the depot work, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies and pickups.
A truck here has often mixed quarry haulage with contract runs to a military gate, which means paperwork, waiting and tight manoeuvring rather than tonnage. Between the Keystone Quarry 7.2 miles off and the Tobyhanna Army Depot 10.8 miles away those are two quite different jobs in one week.
- Common around the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant.
- The mileage is modest for its age.Expected where routes bend around crossings. Around the Daleville Quarry we look at the driveline first.
Contract work ends on a date rather than tapering off, and when a depot lane closes the truck that served it is surplus the same week.
The rest is the ordinary run of it, from Dunmore 7.2 miles off out to the Locust Ridge Quarry 13.5 miles away — retirements, estates and fleets renewing themselves.