Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 8, 1993 TAG: 9307080105
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LON WAGNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This is not just window-unit air conditioner cold.
This is bone-numbing, breath-freezing cold.
Here inside the Cassco Ice & Cold Storage warehouse in Salem cold air cascades down from the ceiling to preserve the company's commodity: frozen water.
It must be nice to work there on a 96-degree day. Wouldn't it be great to duck into that huge freezer and disappear for a while?
"It depends how long you're in there," says Jay Dillon, a summer worker at Cassco.
Cassco's Salem operation does not manufacture ice; that is done in Radford; Harrisonburg; Washington, D.C.; Richmond; and other places. Cassco's plants have been making ice nonstop - three shifts a day, seven days a week - since June 1, according to Gail Price, spokeswoman for WLR Foods Co., the Rockingham County company that owns the ice maker.
"Yes, it is our busiest time and yes, we normally make a lot of ice," Price said, "but this has been an unusually big summer, and we don't see where that's going to stop anytime soon."
Those who work at the Salem ice storage warehouse unload ice shipments from the manufacturing plants, store them in the building, then ship them out in smaller trucks to Smith Mountain Lake, Bedford, Lynchburg, Rocky Mount and so on. Retailers such as supermarkets and convenience stores then sell the bags of ice to consumers.
The loading and unloading means a handful of workers at the Salem operation move in and out of the five-below-zero warehouse dozens of times daily. On days like Wednesday, a worker running a forklift from the loading dock into the warehouse undergoes a temperature change of about 100 degrees.
"That's a nice break," said Rick Bowles, manager of the Salem operation, "but we were just talking about that today - we wouldn't like to get stuck in there."
A worker who has to be in cold storage for more than a few minutes has to put on protective clothing. Otherwise, the "standard wear for ice people" is shorts and a T-shirt, Bowles said.
With the exception of those quick trips into the warehouse, the dockworkers at Cassco are just like the rest of us these days - hot and sticky.
But surely the truck drivers, whose refrigerated trucks are plugged in overnight to keep the cargo cool, get to ride in comfort.
No. The truck's cabs aren't air-conditioned.
by CNB