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Ethanol shipped into Norfolk Southern’s yard in Roanoke is trucked to tank farms to be mixed with gasoline.
land says. “It’s that whole concept of economic gardening in your area. You’re growing businesses here — not that we don’t want to have the large plant and companies come in. We’d welcome them. That building of small companies is helping diversification.”
to the community.” Some of those companies are big. UPS and FedEx have regional distribution centers at the Roanoke Regional Airport. FedEx broke ground in October on a $12.6 million expansion that will give the company the ability to handle up to 50,000
“Ninety percent of the people employed here work for companies with less than 50 people,” Strickland says. “It’s that whole concept of economic gardening in your area. Fitzpatrick wants people to remember that companies participating in some form of distribution are still part of that diversification. “Sometimes if they’re not big, they’re kind of out of sight, out of mind,” Fitzpatrick says. “But added up, they’re much bigger than one big distribution center in terms of job creation and income and resources 10
MARCH 2013
packages a day, up from its current capacity of 30,000. Sherry Wallace, manager of marketing and air service development at Roanoke Regional Airport, says FedEx and UPS handle 10,000 packages in a typical night’s work outside the holiday season. Last year, more than 22.7 million pounds of cargo passed through the airport.
Most of that was on FedEx and UPS planes, but passenger airlines and private planes often carry cargo, too. Fresh flowers, live fish and sushi are among the cargo flying into Roanoke — dogs, too. (They fly in a special section in cargo that is climate controlled and pressurized). “We hear them barking down at the check-in counter,” Wallace says. Sometimes she sees organ transplant teams, coolers in hand, headed for the general aviation terminal. When people think of air cargo, says Wallace, “most of us think about shipping our gifts for the holidays, or I ordered something from Land’s End and it came in,” but it’s clearly much more than that. Strickland notes that, measured by the value of goods shipped, the airport is the main cargo conduit in the area. “It’s got a higher value, but the tonnage is not that great,” he says. For tonnage, the railroad still wins out. Norfolk Southern spokesPhotos courtesy Norfolk Southern