American Aggregate-Lakeside Fuel & Supply

[AARR]

This is from Randall G at MichiganRailroads.com posted here for historical reference.

Grand Trunk Western delivered stone to us in Mount Clemens from AA in 30-50 car blocks into the 1960's. It took roughly three days to get it from Oxford to Mt. Clemens on the GTW, whereas the sand we had delivered from Koenig in the same area took around 18hrs. Never could figure out what in the hell was going on there. Eventually, we switched to dump trucks and thus began the slow destruction of M59 and 24 - pounded away by every ready mix company in greater Detroit (East side). Toward the end, one problem we had was securing hoppers from GTW for aggregate service. If you recall the final years of GTW, you'll remember seeing very few - if any - open top hoppers, other than in company ballast service. With the advent of larger double bottom dump trucks, GTW pretty much gave up on what had been a highly lucrative business...

RandallG

Lakeside Fuel & Supply encompassed an entire city block until the 1970's - Cass Avenue to Church Street, and GTW main to Floral Avenue.
There were two 40 car capacity sidings East of the mainline, and within the plant proper, room for another 30 cars on three individual stub ended tracks. One of those tracks took three hoppers at a time and unloaded them onto an underground conveyor which dumped into a bucket elevator and took it right up 70' to the plant hopper. I worked there during my college years, and we would regularly unload the entire block in a day.

This was just half of the Lakeside business, the other part being coal (steam coal) and coke. Here too, 50 - 60 car blocks would arrive monthly (into the early 60's) from the C&O coalfields, most of it from the West Virginia mines, and primarily from the C&O Winding Gulf field near Prince and Beckley. On rare occasions, N&W coal would be purchased via singular contracts. In the 1940' and 1950's, one could find literally hundreds of hoppers, both aggregate and coal in Mount Clemens on a weekly basis. This also taking into account the Selfridge Field coal appetite and the other coal distributors in the area - but Lakeside and Webb Fuel were clearly the largest. Incidentally, Lakeside had one of the largest totally enclosed coal bunkers in the mid-west for many years. Hope this answers your question.

RandallG

[hoborich]

Grand Trunk Western delivered stone to us in Mount Clemens from AA in 30-50 car blocks into the 1960's. It took roughly three days to get it from Oxford to Mt. Clemens on the GTW, whereas the sand we had delivered from Koenig in the same area took around 18hrs. Never could figure out what in the hell was going on there.

I worked for the GTW in Pontiac, back in the mid to late 60s. The gravel was brought in on the PO&N local, [Pontiac, Oxford and Northern]. It didn't run every day, which may explain the delay. I apologize for any delays.