Landscape stone
Five people, and a name that says what the stone is for
Schell Quarry reports five employees to Mine Safety and Health Administration, carried as a surface operation working industrial sand under Schell Building and Landscaping Stone. The operator name says building and landscaping, while the Mine Safety and Health Administration lists the work as industrial sand.
That is a recognised pattern rather than an oddity — the same shape appears at Rademann Stone & Landscape in Wisconsin and at Whittlesey Landscaping in Texas. Beyond the federal mine record this operation is thin, and nothing further about it is asserted here.
A ring of collieries seven miles south
So the traffic argument here is not the quarry. It is what sits below it: within about eight miles south and south-east the Mine Safety and Health Administration lists a dozen coal operations in a tight arc.
Ellangowan Stripping and the St. Nicholas Cogeneration Plant lie about 7.1 miles south, Brownsville and Park Mine Coal Company about 7.2 miles, Park Place Bank about 7.5, Mahanoy City Stripping about 7.6, Blaschak Breaker about 7.7 and Primrose Operation about 7.8 miles south-east.
The St. Nicholas yard sits about 7.8 miles south and the Packer V Preparation Plant about 8.0, so the loads have a rail outlet at roughly the same distance as the workings themselves.
Refuse banks are a working face here
Those postings sit over ground that has been worked twice. Pennsylvania’s noncoal mining rules cover extraction from waste or stock piles, pits or banks as well as from the ground, which is why culm banks and colliery refuse appear as operations rather than only as spoil.
It is visible in the names around this arc. Park Place Bank, Mahanoy City Stripping, the Blaschak Breaker and the Packer V Preparation Plant all sit within about a mile of one another, working the same material at different stages.
So a truck here has often worked soft, uneven ground rather than a paved quarry floor, and then a posted road out. Frame, suspension and brakes carry that; the odometer does not show it.
A truck that ran between Schell Quarry and the Blaschak Breaker has done short posted runs over rough ground repeatedly. That is a duty cycle rather than a mileage figure, and the wear lands on the frame and the brakes first.
- Age on its own is not a problem here, and Pennsylvania does not brand a vehicle for it either. Completeness is what matters.
Between the Girard Breaker about 8.3 miles south-west and the Packer V Preparation Plant they turn up steadily.