GLEN JEAN, W.Va. – As the 2013 National Boy Scout Jamboree enters its final few days at the sprawling Summit Bechtel Reserve in Fayette County there’s one place the Jamboree couldn’t do without doing the past week.
It sits on a mountaintop away from all the activity, but the Arnold Logistics Center just may be the most important building on the 10,600-acre site.
What happens there? According to Operations Manager Christopher Walsh the center is the hub of the entire reserve.
“Think of it like your brain and nervous system for everything that goes on. That is us,” said Walsh.
The 75,000 square foot warehouse is where every item that’s found on the Jamboree site originated.
“Basically everything comes here and then we take it direct to site,” said Walsh.
That covers a lot of ground and a lot of items.
“We supply everything from the bikes to skateboards, the helmets, campsite kitchens,” he said.
And that is just a fraction of the items that came out of storage at the warehouse to create a 10-day city for 40,000 scouts and their leaders.
They’ve been storing those items for months. They were piled five rows high in 13,000 bays. Walsh and crew started moving things out to the Jamboree location in early spring.
“We started at the end of March and we finished roughly at the end of June to do all 800 campsites,” said Walsh.
The warehouse is pretty bare as the Jamboree wraps up. That’s because most items are, at the campsites and activity centers. But Logistic Floor Supervisor Brenda Howells said they still get orders for pressing items.
“There’s tarps. That’s been a hot item,” she explained. “Mops have been a hot item. Stress mats, anything to cover up electrical cords for safety issues. Duct tape, things like that, shade shelters, canopies, tents.”
But what is the number one requested item at the Logistics Center? Toilet paper.
Once the Jamboree wraps up on Wednesday, Walsh said their work is far from done. In fact, it’s just getting started.
“After Jamboree is over, we have to go out and get everything that we shipped out,” according to the operations manager. “We have to bring it back, clean it up, repack it, inspect it, make sure everything is good. If it’s broken, we have to take care of it, re-inventory it and store it for future Jamborees.”
Walsh said that will take about six months. And then they’ll get started on preparing for next summer’s Adventure Base Camps.
The Logistics Center employs 12 full-time workers and 15 to 20 seasonal workers. There are already plans to expand the warehouse to include a 12,000 foot refrigeration unit, if you’d like to Learn More about the logistic services then be sure to visit this websites.
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