Old Dominion Moves Into Expanded Facility in Mobile
Trucking company Old Dominion Freight Line held a ribbon-cutting March 13 to celebrate its move to a larger facility for its Mobile, Ala., service center, one of five in the state.
Dave Bates, senior vice president of operations for the Thomasville, N.C., company, said the new facility wouldn’t immediately result in new jobs. But it provides “lots of room, lots of capacity for growth,” he said. An Old Dominion spokesman said the company had invested $6 million in the service center and had received no local tax breaks as incentives.
A service center basically is a switching yard where shipments consisting of LTLs are combined for outbound shipping and the contents of inbound trucks are parceled out for local delivery.
Until recently, the company used a 25-bay facility off Conception Street Road north of downtown Mobile. The new one has 44 bays and, according to General Manager Steve Mixon, much more yard space for trucks to park and maneuver, with a location that provides easy access to I-10 near the terminus of I-65.
Mixon said 26 people work at the site, including 12 drivers who make local pickups and deliveries and four more who run regular routes to other hubs.
Bates described Old Dominion as a growing company that has upgraded several service centers and added new ones in the past year. It has 235 service centers nationwide; its other Alabama locations are Huntsville, Dothan, Montgomery and Birmingham.
It’s possible the company could add another.
“As business comes to the state, that’s going to dictate our presence in the state,” he said.
Service centers tend to operate out of sight of the public, with their busiest hours in the early morning or late evening and drivers on the road overnight. But Mixon said they have a big impact on everyday life.
When people shop in local stores, he said, they should keep in mind that “it all got there on a truck.”
Old Dominion Freight Line ranks No. 11 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America.
