LAFLIN — Carol Keup likes to say she sells space for a living.
At any given time, she has about 2 million square feet to offer at one of her 10 warehouses in Northeast Pennsylvania, headquartered in Laflin.
Companies send their inventory to her.
She stores the product until they need to use or sell it.
Then she makes sure the product gets to market via truck or train.
The company, Valley Distribution and Storage based on Passan Drive in Laflin, just celebrated 70 years in business.
“We did this before pallets, before forklifts,” Keup, the company’s CEO and president, said recently during a tour of the business. “Technology has really entered the business.”
During a recent tour, Keup showed off the product she was storing.
Bird seed for Ace Hardware and hundreds of crates of tomato sauce for Nardone’s Pizza were just a few of the products on hand. Another major customer is Duraflame Firelogs.
“We have a niche business,” Keup said.
Keup’s uncle John J. Passan started the business with one truck in Wilkes-Barre as City Delivery Service in 1953. He got his big break delivering products in Northeast Pennsylvania for Sears Roebuck and Co.
He eventually bought land in Laflin, where he built a series of eight warehouses next to a group of Norfolk Southern railroad tracks, a major benefit in the logistics industry. The private road is called Passan Drive. Two of the warehouses allow a train car to go directly inside the building, which makes it easier to unload and ship products.
Passan, who is the benefactor of Passan School of Nursing at Wilkes University, later opened another warehouse in South Scranton.
Keup said she is proud to carry on her uncle’s legacy.
Valley Distribution and Storage, she said, prides itself on taking good care of a company’s products and getting them to market in less than 24 hours within 250-300 miles.
A unique thing about her business is she owns all her buildings, she said.
“We are not dependent on leasing buildings,” Keup said.
Valley Distributing and Storage primarily services the New York and New Jersey metro area and the Mid-Atlantic region.
Keup says her business, which has about 45 employees, does so well because the cost of doing business in Northeast Pennsylvania is substantially less than other places in the country, including the Lehigh Valley.
Sandra Surdy, the human resources manager for the company, said they have a great, loyal workforce.
“Our turnover is very low for this industry,” Surdy said.
Keup noted her brother, Conrad Kotlowski, the general manager, has worked for the company for more than 40 years.
“We like to develop and promote from within,” Keup said. “If you want good employees and work tenure, you don’t want turnover.”
Unlike many companies in the same business, Valley Distribution and Storage operates only day shift Monday through Friday.
“We like to have a good work-life balance,” Keup said.
Kyle Dickinson, the director of sales, said he has an easy answer when he pitches the business to potential customers.
“People ask me what I sell. I say, ‘I sell space,’” Dickinson said.
Keup said she’s always amazed at the variety of products that show up at her buildings.
“In the warehouse distribution business, it could be anything,” Keup said.
