Eight miles away the Torrance mine at Blairsville carries 54 people and is worked underground rather than at surface. That is less unusual in this state than it sounds — the Mine Safety and Health Administration lists 39 underground workings in Pennsylvania and 13 of those are crushed stone — but it is a different job for a truck: loading from a portal on a fixed schedule, in weather that never changes, rather than from an open face.
Nine restricted crossings, and none of them severe
Beyond the mine, the roads here are easier than most of this county’s history would suggest.
The ratings are the good news. The lowest among the restricted group is about twenty-two US tons, well above the point at which a commercial vehicle is turned away entirely, so every restricted crossing within ten miles still takes a truck part loaded.
Tungsten, sandstone and soft coal in the same ten miles
Beyond the limestone the mix is wide. A stone and lime operation works 5.2 miles off at Latrobe with 12 people, a tungsten plant sits 6.5 miles away, and the Hoover Stone Quarry works sandstone 8.3 miles out at Saltsburg with 8.
Then it turns to bituminous coal. A mine sits 9.8 miles off at Ligonier with 2 people, Knob Creek 11.3 miles away in Indiana County with 21, and further out the Brush Valley workings 17.9 miles off with 68 — the largest payroll within twenty miles — and a small pit at Homer City with 3.
Two rail yards sit about fourteen miles away, one of them at a power station. The Sewickley Mine works stone 15.1 miles off at Avonmore with 6.
Tandem and tri-axle dumps, flatbeds and day cabs, rollbacks, box trucks, grain and livestock bodies, service bodies and pickups.
A body that ran limestone and later carried soft coal is an ordinary history in this county. Between the Torrance mine 8.4 miles off and the Hoover Stone Quarry 8.3 miles away, the hauls are moderate and steady rather than punishing.
- Around the Torrance mine that is normal work and it makes no difference to how we buy the truck.
Six-person operations retire trucks one at a time and rarely to a plan, so what comes off is usually a long-owned vehicle with a history its owner can tell you.
The rest is the ordinary run of it, from Latrobe 5.2 miles off out to the Brush Valley workings 17.9 miles away — retirements, estates and contracts that ended.