02-12-2012, 10:13 AM
I think the "light bulb" just went on. I keep hearing people talking about modeling a Home Depot or Lowes as a destination for lumber, but I've never seen a big box store with train access! It just dawned on me that they probably have some sort of company distribution centers located in various parts of the country where they receive building supplies by railroad and then truck the stuff to local stores in the area. Does anyone know how many such places they would have or how far apart they would be? I am presuming that they would be within 10 hours from each other by truck so that no store would be more than 5 hours from a distribution center. I would think that they don't want to have driver's run sleeper cabs, pay for hotel rooms, or hire two driver teams to get product from a distribution center to a store.