Road and Rail Make Ark-Tex a Distribution Hub
Published Feb 28, 2008
The region’s central location and easy access to main transportation has made it into a hub for distribution centers.
Grocery Supply Co. moved to its current site in Sulphur Springs in 1965, and the spot has served the convenience store supplier so well it’s expanded 14 times in 40 years to 450,000 square feet.
“We have a good, central location to our service area, complimented by the Interstate system,” says John Prickette, division manager.
GSC supplies independent and chain convenience stores in seven states, but it is far from alone in using the Ark-Tex region as a distribution point.
In fact, employment in the transportation and warehousing sector is way up in the nine-county area covered by the North East Texas Workforce Development Board. The number of such jobs jumped more than 50 percent in four years, to 4,655 in June 2007, according to the agency.
The Union Pacific and Kansas City Southern railroads serve the region. Interstate 30 and Interstate 49 are major routes for trucking, augmented by U.S. highways 59, 67, 71 and 82.
Taking advantage of that access is an impressive roster of national and regional companies, who have relocated to the region.
Campbell Soup supplies 14 states in the Southwest and Midwest from its distribution center in Paris. Paris is also a hub for We Pack Warehousing & Distribution (also known as WeStow.com), which provides storage containers and office trailers. In 2007, TAC Energy, a division of Truman Arnold Companies, finished a $5 million expansion of its Caddo Mills fuel storage facility.
Even the military is on board, with a Defense Logistic Agency Distribution Operations Center at the Red River Army Depot that opened in 2000. Its 205 warehouses store more than 100,000 repair parts and other items for tracked and wheeled vehicles, aircraft and weapons defense systems.
“For anything related to movement, parts of the region are well suited because of interstates and railroads, and land is comparatively inexpensive,” says Jerry Sparks, economic development director for the Texarkana Chamber of Commerce.
Additionally, the region is far enough from the Dallas metroplex that trucks can navigate without brutal traffic but close enough to the area to serve it, he says.
The region also includes Miller County, Ark., where Southern Refrigerated Transit moved into its new location less than two years ago.
“They put us on the radar screen for anyone who is doing trucking and distribution,” Sparks says.
Lowes set up shop in Mount Vernon more than 10 years ago and has since expanded its huge distribution center. With 1.3 million square feet in two buildings, the home improvement giant sends about 100 trucks a day to its stores in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas.
“One of the things that helps us here is that I-30 makes it convenient to get trucks in and out, and employees, too,” says Jeff Foster, Lowes’ regional general manager.
The smaller of the two buildings stores major appliances and high-ticket items like premium lawnmowers that could be easily damaged – they are loaded onto the trucks first. The next building – 134 shipping doors, 60 receiving doors and an automated sorting system – holds the rest of the massive inventory.
With more than 1,100 workers, a third of them from Titus County, Lowes’ distribution center is a major employer in the region.
Grocery Supply has about 375 employees and its own fleet of trucks, too. The company has been in this region of Texas for more than 60 years, and given its rapid growth, it doesn’t plan to go anywhere.
“We are in an area of the country where there is still a lot of growth,” Prickette says.
Story by Pamela Coyle
Photo by staff
Current Weather Conditions In Texarkana, TX (75503)
Partly Cloudy, and 71 ° F. For more details?
Click here...
