Lancaster County
A small pit among big ones
The limestone quarry the Mine Safety and Health Administration lists near this borough carries 8 people and is held by Pennsy Supply, 3.37 miles from the Census centre — and, like several quarries in this county, it trades under the name of a different community.
Eight is a small payroll for this district. The East Petersburg Quarry 5.2 miles from it carries 16, the Wrightsville Quarry 6.1 miles away 18 and the Rohrers Quarry 6.9 miles off 28. Being the smallest pit in a ring of larger ones shapes the work: the lanes are shorter, the customers more local and the fleet older.
Two mills of one family firm, eleven and seventeen miles out
Beyond the stone, the same family milling business appears twice within twenty miles of this borough — a mill 11.1 miles off at Lititz and another 17.4 miles away at Palmyra in Lebanon County.
That firm has milled since 1875 and ships on its own truck fleet, so it both generates freight and owns the trucks that move it. Two of its sites inside twenty miles is a real concentration of that kind of work.
A bridge circle that reaches into Maryland
Those lanes cross a lot of structures. Within ten miles the record holds 291 — three of them Maryland’s, so the circle is counted from every state file with structures inside it rather than from Pennsylvania alone.
Fifteen are coded below legal loads and 7 of those are county-maintained. In a farm county the practical effect is that the shortest route between two gates is frequently not the legal one for a full load.
A rail yard sits 7.0 miles off at Lancaster and the Talmage Quarry 13.9 miles away, with the York cluster of yards and plants starting about sixteen miles out.
Dumps of every axle count, bulk tankers off the mills, flatbeds and day cabs, rollbacks, box trucks, grain and livestock bodies, service bodies and pickups.
A small pit runs its trucks longer than a large one does, so equipment out of this borough tends to be older and better known to its owner.
- Common off a small operator. Around the Landisville Quarry and the Rohrers Quarry 6.9 miles off the trucks stay a long time and it does not count against them.
- It did farm work as well.The normal history in this county, between the pits and the farms.
A small operator keeps a truck until something forces the decision, so what comes off is usually a long-owned vehicle with a known history rather than a fleet disposal.
The rest is farms changing hands, retirements and estates, from Lititz 11.1 miles off to the Talmage Quarry 13.9 miles away.