Luzerne County
Fifteen square miles, and coal that is ground rather than burned
This community covers about fifteen square miles. The Mine Safety and Health Administration lists a hard-coal facility 1.63 miles from the Census centre, and the North American Rail Network maintained by the Federal Railroad Administration and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics a rail yard 3.00 miles out.
The coal operation is held by the Shamokin Filler Company and carries 4 people. A filler operation grinds its mineral to a controlled particle size for use in other products rather than selling it as fuel, so what leaves here is an industrial input measured by fineness, not a load of coal measured by heat.
A yard under a short line, and stone around the coal
Beyond the coal, the rail yard is operated by the Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad rather than a large carrier.
A sandstone quarry works 5.8 miles off with 12 people, while the Small Mountain Quarry works 6.9 miles away with 11 and East Point Aggregates 8.2 miles out with a single person.
Out towards Freeland, where the payrolls get larger
Beyond that ring the coal gets bigger. The Laurel Breaker sits 5.6 miles off with 6 people, Upper Lehigh 7.4 miles away with 6, Highland No 5 9.9 miles out at Freeland with 20 and the Eckley Operation 10.0 miles away with 23.
Westward it turns back to stone and silt: the Wilkes Barre Materials quarry 10.4 miles off with 13, Buck Mountain 10.7 miles away with 4, and workings at Glen Lyon 10.8 and 10.9 miles out with 3 and 8.
On a place this large, a truck can work all day without leaving the community it is registered in.
Tandem and tri-axle dumps, pneumatic tankers off the ground product, flatbeds and day cabs, rollbacks, box trucks, service bodies and pickups.
Finely ground mineral is a different load from lump coal — it is dusty, it packs, and it often moves in a sealed body rather than an open one. Between the Laurel Breaker 5.6 miles off and the Eckley Operation 10.0 miles away a truck here may have carried both.
- We buy those the same. Around the Shamokin Filler operation that is the normal load.
- There is fine dust through the whole cab.Expected on filler work and on the Laurel Breaker runs.
A four-person operation retires a truck when the person driving it stops, and a sealed body specced for ground mineral has a thin local market when that happens.
Beyond that it is the usual, from White Haven 5.8 miles off out to Glen Lyon 10.9 miles away — retirements, estates and contracts that ended.