Luzerne County
A pit, a plant and a bog inside three miles
Two sites recorded by the Mine Safety and Health Administration sit almost on top of this borough. East Point Aggregates is 1.22 miles south, a crushed-sandstone operation with 1 person on it. The White Haven Plant of Pioneer Aggregates is 2.62 miles north with 12 people, also crushed sandstone.
A one-person pit, a twelve-person plant and a bog, inside a three-mile radius. That is an unusual spread for a borough this size, and it means there is no single trade here to describe.
Further out the ground turns to anthracite, and it is where the people are. The Eckley Operation of Blaschak Anthracite is 5.18 miles south-west with 23, Highland No 5 is 6.48 miles south-west with 20, and the Stockton Preparation Facility is 9.81 miles south-west with 22.
Eighty-nine structures and only three of them restricted
Those lanes run over an unusually open network. Within 10 miles the National Bridge Inventory records 89 structures — a thin circle by the standards of this state — and only 3 of them are posted for load.
Three restrictions in a circle that size is a very short posting list. It is a mountain and forest circle rather than a farm one, so there are fewer small crossings to post in the first place, but the practical answer for a loaded truck is the same: most ways out of this borough are open.
The nearest restriction is 2.82 miles south-east on a state bridge rating 36.3 tonnes, which is the figure at which a legal load crosses whole. So the first posting a truck meets leaving here does not require it to shed anything.
The three that are posted, and the three that are shut
Those three postings are spread rather than clustered. After the state bridge south-east there is one 4.84 miles east rating 34.5 tonnes, and one 9.23 miles north on a municipal road rating 20.0 — the lowest open crossing in the circle and the only one that takes a truck part loaded.
The closures are the real constraint here. Three structures inside ten miles are recorded closed rather than posted, at 8.54, 9.31 and 9.83 miles, all out toward the edge of the circle. A closed bridge is not a loading question, it is a routing one.
Luzerne County maintains 79 structures of its own and posts 15 of them, so the county network as a whole is far more restricted than this particular circle is. That contrast is worth holding: an open ten miles here does not mean an open county.
Sandstone, and what that changes about the dust
So the load off East Point Aggregates 1.22 miles south and the Pioneer Aggregates plant 2.62 miles north is crushed sandstone rather than the limestone most of this state quarries. The difference is not commercial, it is in the material.
Quarry work in sandstone carries a silica exposure profile rather than a carbonate one, because the rock is substantially quartz. The Mine Safety and Health Administration respirable crystalline silica rule sets a permissible exposure limit of 50 micrograms per cubic metre and an action level at half of it, and the compliance date for metal and nonmetal operations has passed.
For a truck it means fine hard dust in the filters, the seals and the brake hardware, and a body floor that has taken an abrasive load rather than a soft one.
Flatbeds, lowboys, rollbacks, service bodies, farm trucks and pickups fill in around them.
A seasonal truck and a daily one wear in opposite directions and both are normal here. Standing costs brakes, seals, batteries and the fuel system rather than the engine, and none of it shows from the outside.
- Common on this ground. Standing costs brake contact faces, seals, batteries and the fuel system, we expect to find it, and it does not stop us buying.
- Can you even get a truck out of here?Usually easily. Only 3 of the 89 structures within ten miles of this borough are posted for load and the nearest of them is 2.82 miles south-east rating 36.3 tonnes, so most ways out take a legal load whole.
- It is past one of the closed bridges.Three inside ten miles are closed rather than posted, at 8.54, 9.31 and 9.83 miles.
When one stops the trucks come off together, and a borough this size has no trade big enough to absorb them.
Between East Point Aggregates 1.22 miles south and the Eckley Operation 5.18 miles south-west they turn up steadily.