ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Wednesday, February 12, 1997           TAG: 9702120056
SECTION: BUSINESS                 PAGE: B-6  EDITION: METRO 

IN BUSINESS

Railroads set freight records

U.S. railroads set records in 1996 for total freight volume and for intermodal freight, cargo that travels by rail and some other mode of transportation such as truck or ship, the Association of American Railroads said.

Total freight volume was estimated at 1,320.2 billion ton-miles, up 1.9 percent increase from the previous record set in 1995. New records have been set during each of the past 10 years.

Intermodal freight traffic totaled 8.122 million trailers and containers, up 2.3 percent from a year earlier and 1.7 percent more than the previous record set in 1994.

U.S. railroads originated 17,730,247 carloads of freight in 1996, a half-percent drop from the previous year.

-Staff report

Briefly ...

* A new Dollar General Store will open Feb. 20 at Orange Plaza, 2312 Orange Ave., the company said. Dollar General Corp., based in Nashville, Tenn., operates more than 2,500 discount stores in the Midwest and Southeast. The company has one store in Vinton and another in Southeast Roanoke.

* Handi-Aware Parking Area Maintenance Inc. of Salem has changed its name to Kinney Parking Area Maintenance, said company president Bob Kinney. The new name is intended to reflect a broader spectrum of services that have been introduced over the past five years, he said.

* McDonough Bolyard and Peck, a construction engineering and management firm with offices in Roanoke and Fairfax, has won a three-year contract from The Virginia Department of Transportation to provide studies in the Bristol, Salem, Lynchburg and Staunton highway districts to reduce delays during highway construction projects on busy roads. The company has 12 employees in Roanoke and 34 in Fairfax. Jordan B. Peck III is in charge of the Roanoke office.

* Olver Laboratories Inc., a Blacksburg environmental services company, has received a contract to determine whether a Utah incinerator designed to destroy chemical warfare agents is meeting U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards for burning hazardous waste. Midwest Research Institute picked Olver to help with technical issues in tests of the Tooele Chemical Disposal Facility.

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