Distribution Business Articles

As if to prove a point in our last article, this article demonstrates that distribution centers rarely stay open more than ten years.  Huntington, Indiana is looking at losing 140 jobs when a 400,000 + square foot distribution center closes down a year from now to be replaced by a new distribution center in Ohio that will be 600,000 square feet.

Huntington will lose a major employer in spring 2009 when Collective Brands Inc. closes its 140-employee distribution center as part of a company consolidation, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reports today.
The Topeka, Kan.-based company, which owns Payless ShoeSource and The Stride Rite Corp., plans to close the distribution centers in Huntington and Burnaby, British Columbia.
The work will go to the footwear company’s 600,000-square-foot Eastern Distribution Center in Brookville, Ohio, which is under construction.

Ohio site to siphon 140 jobs in Huntington

We're not making a judgment call on this one way or the other, but states, counties and cities have been pitted in a collective race to the bottom for some years to make their areas more attractive for business and their tax rebates and other forms of public funding are rarely returned to the local economies that support them. 

It makes good local headlines to bring jobs to an area, but in many cases the jurisdictions are paying entirely for those jobs at ridiculous prices.  This happens from public sector warehousing jobs, to government jobs with the USPS to silicon valley jobs making Linksys router s  to biotech and education and more.  Its predominant in the US economy today and a large part of the reason, many governments are busting their budgets left and right.