Tiny rural idyll is transformed into buzzing boomtown where jobs market 'is going nuts' - but some locals are now furious at farmers for selling out: 'They hate us'
Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, and nearby rural towns like it are being drastically transformed into distribution hotspots for major retailers like Amazon and Walmart - to the dismay of some longtime residents.
With its endless acres of farmland, the tiny town is seemingly the perfect location for huge warehouses - and it is at most a day's drive away from one-third of the US population and half of Canada's, making it the ideal delivery truck epicenter.
Many farmers who owned the land companies wanted to build on were unable to refuse the bags of cash they were offered to sell up, Bloomberg reported. But this has led to tension among locals.
Some residents acknowledge the presence of industry titans has led to a boom in jobs. Others are furious at the farmers for 'selling out' and forever changing the idyllic character of the town they grew up in, with farms destroyed for warehouses and hills flattened for parking lots.
Aerial shot of farmland surrounding Shippensburg during late fall
Street views of the town of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania
The job growth is hard to argue with after dozens of big name corporations opened warehouses in the Shippensburg area.
P&G, which owns Charmin, Crest, Gillette and Pampers, was one of the first to do so in 2014, followed by Amazon.com, DHL, FedEx, Home Depot, Kohler, Lowe's, Office Depot, Pepsi, SC Johnson, Staples, Target, Ulta Beauty, Unilever and UPS, among many others.
Shippensburg isn't the only town in the state that's being overhauled in order to keep up with the nation's massive consumption.
In fact, Pennsylvania has added more than 170 million square feet of warehouse space in the last 10 years, double the amount of office space in San Francisco.
What's happening in Shippensburg is similar to what's already happened to California's Inland Empire, which used to be a major center of agriculture. Now, this area of southern California is the nation's warehouse capital, home to Amazon and Walmart facilities.
When Shippensburg was solely agrarian, locals had three typical career paths - farming, the military or manufacturing. But now high school graduates can take warehousing jobs that pay as much as $35 per hour.
If they do decide to go to college, Shippensburg University even offers a supply chain and logistics major.
Students who get that degree have a 99 percent job placement rate, with most graduates receiving a $60,000 to $90,000-a-year offer, the program's chair Robert Setaputra told Bloomberg.
Shippensburg University offers a supply chain and logistics major now that its become a hub for distribution centers for dozens of big name companies
Students who get a degree in supply chain management have a 99 percent job placement rate, with most graduates receiving a $60,000 to $90,000-a-year offer, the program's chair Robert Setaputra told Bloomberg
This major has been around since 2007 but didn't start gaining traction until farmers like Robert Commerer Jr. allowed Shippensburg to be recrafted into a shipping megapolis.
Commerer sold his 120-acre dairy farm in 2002 to Prologis, a warehouse developer.
Even though he received a large payday - more money than a lifetime spent toiling away as a dairy farmer - it certainly wasn't an easy decision for him and his wife.
Commerer bought the farm from his grandparents when he was 28, looking to make a living and support his two young children.
But the reality of working a farm struck him rather quickly. The hours were long and the work was stressful, he said.
So when developers began calling to tell him his farm was exactly what they were looking for - his land sat a few hundred yards from the I-81 exit ramp - he eventually took the offer from Prologis.
'You're taking out loans,' he told Bloomberg, 'hoping you get the right amount of rain, that you get your crops off in time. After a while it really works hard on you.'
Twenty years later, there is still a stigma attached to selling your land from his fellow Shippensburg neighbors.
'Some guys kind of hated us,' Commerer said. 'Jealousy. Sometimes, you just avoid people after that.'
Robert Commerer Jr. sold his 120-acre dairy farm in 2002 to Prologis, a warehouse developer
A row of cattle feeding on hay in an open barn on a farm
Josh Diller, one of Commerer's co-workers at Best Line Equipment, a company that rents commercial and industrial equipment to individuals and companies, didn't seem to begrudge him and other farmers for making an economical decision.
'Everyone gets mad at the farmers who sold out. He's worked his whole life. He's paying taxes on that land. Milk checks might be down,' said Diller, who works as a sales representative.
'He does have money in the land, but he doesn't have a bunch of cash flow, so then all of a sudden you get offered a stupid amount of money. His next generation might not want to farm. Wouldn't you take it?'
Laverne Martin, who grew up next door to Commerer's farm, gave some insight into the types of offers Shippensburg farmers are receiving.
Martin still lives on his 60-acre property, where he and his family run a metal roofing business for their primary income. On the side, they harvest corn and soybeans on their land.
'The most we ever got offered for that was over $100,000 an acre,' Martin told Bloomberg.
He always refuses though, essentially leaving $6 million on the table in exchange for keeping the land that's been in his family for decades.
Another nearby farm, he said, was going for $125,000 an acre.
Courthouse in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, a town near Shippensburg that's going through many of the same changes
The Volvo Construction Equipment manufacturing facility in Shippensburg
Now, more than 20 years after Commerer's sale, his dairy farm is no more.
Gone are his house, barn and 150 cows. Instead, there now stands a parking lot and 1.5-million-square-foot distribution center for Georgia-Pacific, which manufacturers everything from tissues, packaging and building products.
Commerer noted that even the land itself is unrecognizable. His acreage used to be full of character, with rolling hills and valleys. But since warehouses require flat land, the hills were shaved down and the depressions were filled.
As the character of Shippensburg does a complete 180 thanks to land-hungry warehouse developers, the question on some people's minds might be: was it worth it?
But with employment in warehousing and storage tripling nationwide from 2010 to 2022, others argue that Shippensburg is simply going to where the demand is and meeting it.
Young people who want to capitalize on that demand turn to Shippensburg University, often shortened to Ship, to get an education that will prepare them to be operations manager, purchasing analyst or inventory analyst.
Pictured: Georgia-Pacific's distribution center, which replaced Commerer's 120-acre dairy farm after he sold it in 2002
Walmart's 1.8 million square foot fulfillment center in Shippensburg, which employs roughly 500 people in the town of about 5,500
These jobs have high salaries but are based in Shippensburg, allowing students who want to stay local to do so without feeling like they need to pick up their entire life and move to a major metro area.
McKenna Borrell is one of those people, graduating from Ship in 2022 as a supply chain management student.
She was in college as a supply chain management student during the Covid-19 pandemic, which plagued the US with endless supply chain issues we're still facing to this day.
Borrell recalled the toilet paper shortage of 2020, sensing at that time that once she graduated, her expertise would be in high demand.
After dozens of companies came knocking, she decided to take a job as an operations manager at Walmart's 1.8 million-square-foot fulfillment center in Shippensburg.
The salary range for Borrell's position is $65,000 all the way up to $139,000, according to a job posting.
Even earning $65,000 on the low end right out of college could be considered an amazing first gig, considering the average single earner in Pennsylvania makes just over $60,000 a year.
Rook Smith is pictured alongside Brooke Commerer, the daughter of Robert Commerer. Like many Shippensburg Gen Z'ers, he decided to go into the warehousing business
Rook Smith, who is engaged to Commerer's daughter Brooke, grew up sledding on a hill next to his soon-to-be father-in-law's farm.
And when Georgia-Pacific broke ground on the massive warehouse, he said he remembered thinking, 'This might be something I need to get into.'
Years later, he went to Ship and received offers from every single company he interviewed with at the university job fair.
'Everybody's really looking for people with supply chain skills,' Smith said.
He works at Allen Distribution as a production supervisor managing a team assembling variety packs of Snyder's pretzels and other snacks.
These eventually get shipped to Costcos and Walmarts all over the country.
Smith and his fiancé acknowledge the sad reality of picturesque farms like Commerer's getting swallowed up while simultaneously embracing the economic reality small towns like theirs face.
'Goods need to get to people,' Smith said. 'It's a necessary evil.'
