Dayton Freight – Lebanon (Nashville) Terminal

Renier Construction has completed a brand-new facility for Dayton Freight Lines, Inc. The state-of-the-art building is the new home of their Nashville Service Center and will better accommodate their Tennessee customers.

Built on a 36.5-acre lot, Renier was able to more than quadrupled the size of their previous location and add a maintenance facility as well. The 76-door facility includes 4 maintenance bays and is approximately 75,000 square feet.

This project was a "blast" - seriously:

This project had its own challenges prior to the project start. The entire job site is sitting on solid fossiliferous limestone, basically, clay and limestone that is so old it has become fossilized. This fossiliferous limestone is almost the same hardness as granite, and there is only 1” to 6” maximum of topsoil on the surface. Renier hired a blasting contractor to create a workable site for proper excavation. All of the blasts were at a minimum of 8 ft. deep, and the “blast swells” (aka rock piles) reach nearly 12 ft. in height. In all, the property required blasting of over 200,000 cubic yards of rock. That a lot of blasting!

You can watch one of the blasts here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8uko0yiCjY&feature=youtu.be

There’s no place like home:

During the thick of the build for this project, a small but deadly outbreak of bad weather hit the middle and west side of Tennessee. March 2nd and 3rd of 2020, Davidson, Wilson and Smith counties were hit with an EF3-4 tornado. That meant the area was struck with winds up to 175 mph during the 34-hour event.

We were lucky there was not a significant amount of damage to the actual jobsite compared to many parts of the state. However, the repercussions of it for subcontractors and areas businesses certainly impacted the project. It was the 6th costliest tornado in US history – total damage reached 1.61 billion.

Here is a video to show some of the storm’s destruction in the area: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHg9x9xeJUY

It’s how one handles challenge, that makes all the difference:

Not even the greatest Design-Build teams could have predicted the storms that hit Tennessee. And certainly not a pandemic! Once again, the Renier team showcased their ability to build a sound facility, in almost any location, at any time of year and throughout some of Mother Nature’s most wild challenges. The Renier team banded together, determined to finish the project that they had started, and sailed through rough, unchartered waters to complete this impressive build in approximately one year.