VALLEY – The first new road in Valley Industrial Park is under construction. It branches off Valley Industrial Drive in the direction of I-85 and will serve as an access road for Four Star Freightliner, which intends to build a truck sales, repair and service center on a 10-acre site that can be seen from the Interstate.

At the Monday evening council meeting, Mayor Leonard Riley talked about the project. He said that dirt was being brought in from city-owned property and that a pipe would be going in in a few days.

The Public Works Department is getting the project started, but a private contractor will finish the job. At the Monday meeting, the council authorized Mayor Riley to seek bids on the finishing phases, which will include the sub grading and final grading along with stone, curbs, gutters and paving. The Public Works Department should be finished with its portion of the work in about three weeks.

“We will get it up to where we can do the final grading,” he said. “They’ve been doing a good job. They know what they are doing.”

A new crossover lane will need to be built in the Industrial Drive median.

Some due diligence needs to be taken care of before the property sale is finalized. Some soil samples will be taken to test the firmness of the ground. This is a routine matter, and no problems are anticipated with this.

“We hope to close by Dec. 1,” Riley said. “We’d like to have the new road completed by then.”

In July, Four Star agreed to purchase a 10.3-acre site from the city for $400,000. The new business that will be going in there will employ some 18 people, among them diesel mechanics who will be making excellent salaries. The company has a service center off I-10 near Tallahassee, Florida, and is building another one off I-75 near Valdosta, Georgia.

The contract between the city and Four Star obligates Valley to provide an access road, water, sewer and natural gas service along with electricity, phone, cable TV and internet service. The new business could be open by August 2019.

Freightliner Trucks is an American truck manufacturer and a division of Daimler Trucks North America. It’s mainly known for heavy duty class 8 diesel trucks as well as class 5-7 trucks. The company began in the 1930s when Utah-based Consolidated Freightways decided to build their own trucks because the ones on the market at the time had difficulty climbing the steep mountain grades in the western U.S. From their earliest days, the Consolidated Freightways trucks were commonly called Freightliners.