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OCR for page 48
Labor and workforce
Every freight facility is different, but labor skills, costs, and the overall
workforce environment can play a key role in location selection.
While some forms of freight facilities are highly automated or do not
have high skill requirements, others involve assembly, manufacturing,
value-added processing, or other operations where the availability
of a trained talent pool may be a significant requirement.
Freight facilities can require a wide variety of employee talents,
Freight facilities can require a depending upon the exact nature of the facility. Such skilled
wide variety of employee talents, employees may include forklift operators, assemblers, truck drivers,
depending upon the exact nature machinists, mechanics, technicians, material handling specialists, and
of the facility. Skills required engineers in addition to unskilled labor.
may include forklift operators,
assemblers, truck drivers, In evaluating locations, companies may first examine data from the
machinists, mechanics, technicians, Department of Labor and Department of Commerce regarding
material handling specialists, and overall employment for a region or community. This information
engineers in addition to unskilled indicates the overall labor market health of the community and may
labor. also give indications as to the general level of labor costs.
For example, Family Dollar partially selected a distribution center
site based on the workforce characteristics in and around Marianna,
Florida. Family Dollar received over 6,000 applications for the 515
available jobs. Similarly, Old Dominion, a national trucking firm,
chose a site in Morristown, Tennessee, over a Nashville site primarily
because of the greater availability of workforce in Morristown. The
Morristown area of Tennessee has a strong furniture manufacturing
history, and, at the time that Old Dominion was considering developing
a regional hub, furniture manufacturing was decreasing in the area
and moving overseas. This left a large pool of former manufacturing
employees who were available and trainable for employment at the
new distribution center.
Companies may speak directly with peer companies in the local market
to better understand local salary trends, best practices for attracting
and retaining key talent, and to determine unionization trends. They
may also examine the education infrastructure to determine overall
48 Freight Facility Location Selection: A Guide for Public Officials
