Please register to participate in our discussions with 1.5 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Hi everyone,
My family and I want to move to Oregon and have heard alot about Prineville so I need some info please! I know it's small but how small? What types of stores are there (grocery,clothes) What types of jobs are available, I'm in customer service and hubby's a firefighter so what are our choices? We're a young family that enjoys the simpler things in life so what is there for us to do in and around Prineville? For the kids? How are the winters? What's the overall feel of the town, is it a friendly, family oriented town or the type of place where everyone just hangs out at the bar(s)? I see housing is reasonable and abundant, what are the neighborhoods like? We're also interested in Redmond, any answers to the same questions above but about Redmond would be appreciated! We will be coming from the Lakeview way so hows the drive? Thank you to anyone and everyone who can give us a little insight!
The drive from Lakeview to Prineville is really nice if you like High Desert. Just be sure to fill up on gas when you can as the economy has closed a lot of places.
Weather, crime and other useful information scattered about as well. Near the top there is also a section which gives links to a few recent City Data forum threads on each town.
Oh PRINEVILLE! For some reason I was thinking Pendleton.
Do not move there right now without jobs. It's a great small town, and is trying to bank on high tech data centers such as Facebook's to bring jobs in. The problem is that large data centers are remotely managed and don't need a lot of employees after the initial build out.
Les Schwab is the "big" employer in the area, with something like 400 jobs total. They moved their HQ into Bend, and from an economics standpoint I would not be surprised to see the distribution center moved in the near future. It no longer makes sense being where it is.
My statements about the drive are still true though. Fill up on Gas in Lakeview. Your next gas station is Paisely, then Silver Lake, then La Pine. Paisely and Silver Lake may both be closed, or have extremely limited hours. After that population density drastically rises and you can find gas easier. The drive along the Fremont Highway (395) up until Abert Lake is my favorite stretch of road in Oregon though.
That entire area is High Desert still. You're over 3000 feet in elevation so it tends to be hotter in the summer then Portland, and more snow in the winter. But summer recreation is awesome, especially if you like camping or exploring Ghost Towns and abandoned gold mines, apparently the fishing is pretty good too.
Ochoco National Forest has some fun places to go and is far enough out that you're not over crowded with weekenders from Portland. Deer and Elk are very common. Last time I drove through there I stopped counting when we hit the triple digits.
The distribution center isn't going anywhere. Land is cheap in Prineville, and that's why they still have the warehouse.
It's not the cheapness of the land that is the problem. It's the supply and distribution chains that are the problem. My understanding is that Les Schwab no longer produces tires and purchases completely from South Korea. That means that the shipments come in to the US via Cargo Ship from LA, Portland or Seattle.
My assumption is that they're then put on a train and shipped to the distribution center there in Prineville. They are then put on trucks and moved to individual locations from there. This is where the huge cost comes in.
It doesn't make sense for the original shipment to come into Seattle, be shipped all the way to Prineville, broken up, and then re-shipped back up to the Seattle area for instance. I'm willing to bet that 50% of the cost of their products are eaten up in just the shipping.
I'd have to be deeper into the companies financials, but I'm pretty sure that opening up a more centralized distribution center near a major urban center or two could save the company several million a year. The major problem would be the initial up front costs. Based on my observations of the company, there could also be some cost savings in the loading and offloading of the trucks.
(Cavet - my grand father was good friends with Les and would drive up to the Prineville DC to pick up his products personally so that they could have lunch together. I've personally ridden in that Grey Jeep that used to be in all his free beef ads.)
Les Schwab has outlets all up and down the west coast, and in Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and California. There is no reason to suggest that Bend is more centrally located than Prineville, or that Portland, Seattle or San Francisco is more centrally located.
You're missing my point. The concept of a centrally located DC does not usually make sense in the modern business world due to shipping costs.
A DC in Seattle, one in Portland, one in SF may be a significant cost savings over shipping from a centralized DC. A normal semi-truck costs about $1k per a day to operate. If a truck in Portland can make it back and forth from the local DC to several stores in the same day, vs. only being able to hit one store, there is a cost savings right there. Yes, that cost maybe eaten up by the additional costs of having another DC, which is why I said I'd have to be more deeply into the companies financials to know for sure.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DesertPox
Your guess of 50% of revenues being related to shipping is shooting from the hip, at best.
It's an educated guess about the normal division of profits among companies with long supply chains that ship products from over seas, as I've recently helped another company deal with this same issue.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DesertPox
But none of that has anything to do with the basic common sense of having the distribution center in an area with cheap land, that is centrally located.
But you don't seem to realize that the cheap land is only a small part of the equation. There is localized labor, power, water, repair centers for vehicles, parts for vehicles, gas costs, gas shipping costs, local taxes, access to freight trains, access to sea ports, shipping of office supplies, competent back office labor, land use restrictions, etc, etc, etc.
The City of Prineville could be paying Les Schwab to keep their distribution center there, and it may still not be cost effective for them to do so. This is all pretty basic supply chain economics and is why Memphis Tennessee is now called "America's Distribution Center."
That all being said, I never said this was going to happen. I said I would not be surprised if the DC did close. But you would need to be crazy to think that the board of directors has not already gone down this road and examined the financials with a fine tooth comb to find out if money could be saved in closing the DC there.
That all being said, I never said this was going to happen. I said I would not be surprised if the DC did close. But you would need to be crazy to think that the board of directors has not already gone down this road and examined the financials with a fine tooth comb to find out if money could be saved in closing the DC there.
The currend BoD of Les Schwab has made as many bonheaded decisions as possible with regard to the future of the company. Why not make one more?
It's interesting how the climate was a consideration when deciding to locate there. The cooling of the servers is a major engineering problem. In the summer they use the “You open up your windows at night and shut them during the day” strategy.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $53,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 1.5 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
