Intel’s 916,000-pound shipment is a “cold box,” a self-standing air-processor structure that facilitates the cryogenic technology needed to fabricate semiconductors. The box is 23 feet tall, 20 feet wide, and 280 feet long, nearly the length of a football field. The immense scale of the cold box necessitates a transit process that moves at a “parade pace” of 5-10 miles per hour. Intel is taking over southern Ohio’s roads for the next several weeks and months as it builds its new Ohio One Campus, a $28 billion project to create a 1,000-acre campus with two chip factories and room for more. Calling it the new “Silicon Heartland,” the project will be the first leading-edge semiconductor fab in the American Midwest, and once operational, will get to work on the “Angstrom era” of Intel processes, 20A and beyond.
I don’t know why, but I’ve never thought of the transport logistics involved in building a semiconductor fabrication plant.
Is Intel paying the state or country for this abuse of the logistics network? This feels like freeloading on a publicly funded piece of infrastructure.
Road closures for oversize loads always cost money, sometimes on a per minute basis
I’m assuming the transport accommodations are part of the perk package (for lack of a better way to put it)
I have no insight into this particular plant, but in most big investments like this, the company is usually in talks with several locations negotiating for the best tax breaks, permitting accommodations, etc under the promise that it will bring skilled jobs to the area.
Basically, it’s seen as an investment both from the company and the location’s points-of-view.
I’m a logistics professional with some project cargo experience. The transportation arrangements are almost certainly being made by a private company not related to Intel. There are only a handful of trailers in the country that can move something like this.
Intel will be paying people to build and work at the factory. Highly skilled labor that can’t be shipped overseas easily. It will also likely bring other companies to the area because of access to those highly skilled workers. The state will likely make more a lot more back in taxes and economic growth than the cost of the transports.
Intel also works with local community colleges to offer semiconductor specific training to be a manufacturing technician, and it’s not a huge jump to be a maintenance/repair tech or jump to IT within the fab and in my experience all those roles from technician to IT pay fairly good wages high 20’s to mid 30’s/hr and up depending on experience.
I hope truckers, pilot car drivers and dispatchers will be making crazy money off this parade as well. Ohio exists, might as well make the best of it. XD
The investment in public infrastructure is not only for you to use on your car. Part of it is enabling the industrial growth of the region.
If every company had to build its own infrastructure, why are they paying taxes?
It would be a huge waste to have that much one-time infrastructure.
We all pay. That’s how it works. Gas taxes and registration fees. The driver paid for a license. The truck had sales tax. It’s a distributed payment method. Not a pay as needed system. Unless they go on a toll road. But that’s a separate rant.
It’s Ohio