A $22 million trucking project begins with a $1.2 million grant for the city of Hope, one of seven cities to receive grants from the Economic Development Administration. The development was planned by executives of Fikes Truck Line.
The $1.2 million will fund the construction of an access road to property recently purchased by the Magnolia Development, LLC, venture of Fikes Truck Line Chairman/CEO Gary Salisbury and President Jack Milligan. The property provides immediate access to Interstate 30 at Exit 31.
Salisbury and Milligan outlined for the Hope City Board of Directors in May a plan to take the existing facilities on the property, expand and retrofit them for cold storage products transportation as part of a general three-phase project to develop a trucking center on the site.
“They are going to make it trucker friendly, because they know what truckers want,” Hempstead County Economic Development Corp. President Wesley Woodard said.
The first phase of the project, possible by the end of 2015, is the development of a cold storage transportation terminal, to be followed by the construction of a trucking outfitting and sales facility, and a “trucking plaza” which will offer overnight services to the trucking industry.