Freight ATL: Northwest

Atlanta, a City Built on Freight 

The story of Atlanta is in many ways, the story of freight. Atlanta is set apart from almost all other United States cities, indeed, it wasn’t envisioned as a city at all. Atlanta began as a humble outpost, a spot on a map, the southern terminus of the Western & Atlantic Railroad. The railroad, which began in Chattanooga, would provide a gateway to connecting Georgia with both the Northern and Midwestern markets. The Western & Atlantic, chartered by the state, was visionary in many ways. The 1820s had been defined by canal building, as the most efficient way of moving freight. Surveys of the land in north Georgia saw the infeasibility of that approach and ultimately foretold the demise of the canals, which dominated the North, and the superior possibility of railroads. The official charter of the railroad required the southern terminus to be in Dekalb County, near the south bank of the Chattahoochee River. The river was bridged in 1838, in an area that would become the northwestern portion of Atlanta, today known as Bolton.  

In looking for an appropriate terminus however, the railroad engineers were forced to move further south, away from the river. The location eventually selected was in Land Lot 78, which they naturally called, Terminus. As the railroad grew, and as the small hamlet that was established to serve it grew as well, individuals began to see the potential of the place. Samuel Mitchell, the owner of Land Lot 77 donated five acres of his land to the State of Georgia to be used for the railroad, and it was here they placed the zero-mile post for the Western & Atlantic Railroad. This location would prove to be more than a convenient place to end the railroad. It would become the center of a rapidly expanding and dynamic city. Mitchell, a savvy investor, had placed his own land in the center of future development. This new town re-wrote all the accepted rules. It was one of only a handful of cities not directly on a major river or body of water, and this meant that its future would be defined differently.  

The outpost known as Terminus would adopt the name Marthasville in 1843, in honor of the daughter of Wilson Lumpkin, the former governor, and advocate for the establishment of the Western & Atlantic Railroad. This was also when it became clear, that the growing town, would soon be defined by railroads. The Western & Atlantic Railroad had been established by the state, an unusual circumstance in railroad history, as majority of railroads were developed by private investors. The Georgia Railroad, which began in Augusta, Georgia and the Macon & Western Railroad, originating in Macon, were two privately developed railroads that sought to connect with growing Marthasville. The growth of these rail lines foretold the possibility of this location becoming a hub. Atlanta’s location was important, because its positioning at the apex of several geographic regions would make it a gateway for commerce and people alike. J. Edgar Thompson, the chief engineer of the Georgia Railroad, would suggest changing the name of the town once more time -to something shorter that would fit on the rail schedules. In 1847, Atlanta, a feminine version of the word “Atlantic” was chosen, to honor the railroad that started the venture.  

The ability to efficiently transport goods, particularly raw materials, was one of the South’s greatest needs. The three initial railroads’ freight depots in Atlanta are at the root of understanding how goods move through the city to this day. While grand passenger terminals are often the focus of historians, they provide a limited glimpse into what was always the true business of railroads, freight. The Terminal Station, built in 1905, is now long gone, demolished in the 1970s, as passenger service on railroads dried up and almost completely disappeared. The Georgia Railroad Freight Depot, built in 1869, on the other hand, is the oldest building remaining in  downtown Atlanta. It is also located directly adjacent to the site of the zero-mile post.  Indeed, examining a map of Atlanta it immediately becomes apparent that freight was always king.  

Already established as a major junction with three rail lines converging, Atlanta would continue to attract more lines, with a fourth railroad, the Atlanta & LaGrange Railroad being added in 1854. Atlanta would eventually be home to all the major southern railways. Unfortunately, the presence of these railroads would also be a huge factor in the fate of the city during the Civil War, as railroads, which so often served as supply lines and as routes for rapid troop movements, became frequent military targets. In the 1864 Atlanta Campaign, General William T. Sherman pushed south along the Western & Atlantic Railroad route, and the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain was largely waged for its control. The Battle of Atlanta likewise focused on the Georgia Railroad tracks, which ran east from the city to the coast. Atlanta’s role as the most comprehensive network of rail lines in the South, sealed its fate during the war, as the Northern troops fought for control of Southern supply lines, and much of the city was destroyed in the process. While these railroads, and Atlanta itself, recovered from the damage they suffered during the war years, it further cemented that controlling the movement of goods was at the core of Atlanta’s story. 

Each of these companies would eventually establish their own freight terminals, often multiple freight terminals through the city to process the goods moving through Atlanta. These depots served a range of needs, not just the transfer of goods, but often warehousing as well. At the peak, Atlanta would be home to more than a dozen freight depots, some small and only serving limited functions. Others, like the enormous Atlanta Joint Terminal, was part of Hulsey Yards, a massive complex, which incorporated facilities for at least five railroads, bordering Dekalb Avenue that remains today.  

The overwhelming majority of these freight depots would be clustered in the northwestern portion of the city. This area, adjacent to Bolton, where the Western & Atlantic first crossed the Chattahoochee River would become an established industrial area as a result of the abundance of rail lines and freight depots. Major manufacturing companies such as the Whittier Textile Mills and the Chattahoochee Brick Works would establish their businesses along the banks of the Chattahoochee to take advantage of the proximity of the railroads, constructing spurs to connect their facilities with the main line. Inman Yards (Southern Railroad), Hill’s Park Yards (Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railroad), Bellwood Yards (Atlanta, Birmingham, & Coastal Railroad), and Howell’s Yard (Seaboard Air Line) would all be clustered in this portion of the city. On maps this entire area is marked as clearly industrial, and the neighborhoods which grew there, located some six to eight miles outside the city center, grew out a need for an industrial work force. One of the most noteworthy of these communities was the memorably named Blandtown, which grew in the area surrounding the Seaboard Air Line Railroad.  

Though motor vehicles first appeared on the market in the late 1880s, the trend was a slow moving one, particularly in a rail-centric city like Atlanta. At the turn of the century, Atlanta also measured just 11 square miles and was considered a highly walkable city. City Council meeting minutes focus largely on the condition of sidewalks, not the conditions of roads. The 1904 fiscal year shows that 0.33 mile of roads were paved, and 6.11 miles of sidewalks were paved. The number of automobiles was also negligible, with just 99 vehicles registered in Fulton County in 1904. Vehicles were largely the playthings of wealthy individuals, not seen as a challenge to long-held traditions of rail lines used for freight movement. This would quickly change however, and Atlanta would be forced to change with it. In 1909, the Ford Motor Company named Atlanta their hub for sales in the Southeast, leading a flurry of automobile manufacturers to follow. As the number of vehicles increased, so did the city of Atlanta’s spending on roads. By the mid-1930s the number of registered vehicles in Fulton County had risen to nearly 70,000, including a growing number of trucking companies. The way freight was transported began to undergo an enormous shift. The Motor Carrier Act was passed in 1935, regulating the growing trucking industry. This act set freight-hauling rate regulations, restricted the number of hours truckers drove, monitored companies' range, as well as the type of freight they carried. Atlanta was poised to become a hub for more than rail going into the mid-20th century.  

Atlanta, Bringing Out and Bringing Back the Troops

Georgia’s railroads reached their zenith just following WWI. At that time 7,600 miles of rail track crisscrossed the state. The South was still largely agricultural in nature, with approximately 70% of the population of Georgia still working on farms. Unfortunately, this reliance on agriculture also meant that the economy could easily crumble. Two of Georgia’s largest cash crops, heart pine and cotton would jointly be exhausted in the 1920s. Pine, which had been a major crop since the founding of Georgia as a colony, was used for everything from construction to tar. Massive deforestation resulted in the state having exhausted its old growth pine forests by the 1920s. At the same time, the boll weevil, described as a “cross between a termite and a tank” decimated the South’s cotton crop, with Georgia losing half of its acreage by 1923. Railroads were forced to reduce their lines as a result, with nearly every major rail line abandoning portions of track in the wake of reduced freight transportation.  

On July 4, 1938, Franklin Delano Roosevelt called the South “the nation’s number one economic problem.” He encouraged a reevaluation of not just the economic system, but the infrastructure, or lack thereof, which held back a region rich in natural resources. This message, released in conjunction the Report on the Economic Conditions of the South would become a major focus when directing New Deal funds. Though the largest New Deal programs would focus on development of social institutions, a significant amount of the funding would result in road construction, which vastly improved roadway mobility throughout the 1930s.  

While trucking was slowly on the rise, the shift in railroad freight to trucking freight operations largely owes its story to WWII and the changes the conflict brought to Atlanta. Fort McPherson, located in southwestern Atlanta, was originally developed as operational barracks in 1867 and was an important asset during the Reconstruction era, as all the federal troops housed in Atlanta were garrisoned there. The permanent post was developed in 1885. Camp Jesup was created within McPherson and served as an internment camp for German POWs during WWI. The Fort also served as a hub for military motor pool training. The motor pool became the main shipping and receiving site in the Fourth Service Command for thousands of tactical and administrative vehicles. The entire site was covered with vehicles assigned to this division. 

Overall, a relatively minor installation prior to that period, Fort McPherson would become a hub for military activity in the Southeast as one of the key deployment centers, due to its proximity to Fort Benning, just 100 miles to the South. Between 1940 and 1947, 16.5 million men and women would serve overseas in the US Armed Forces. This equates to about one-third of the American male population aged 15 years and older, with 73% of those serving deployed overseas. In what was known as the defense period, occurring pre-Pearl Harbor the United States, began to put in place infrastructure for mobilization of troops in the event of entering the war.  Fort Benning, with facilities to house approximately 100,000 men, would become the largest infantry training post on the planet. The milder winters made Georgia ideal for many of the necessary mobilization and training needs of the military. The established rail lines further facilitated these functions.  

McPherson was also located on the heavily industrial western side of the city of Atlanta. The Western & Atlantic Railroad and Central of Georgia converged just south of the fort, in East Point. The railroads traveled north through the city, still crossing the Chattahoochee at the original 1838 bridge location at Bolton into Cobb County. The same path of the Western & Atlantic that was followed by Sherman, and fought over in the Civil War would again be a major player in the war effort.  

Though historically southwest Atlanta was not as heavily industrial as the northwest, McPherson was still located in a designated industrial zone between two freight depots, the Industry Yard (serving the Central of Georgia Railroad) and the West End Yard (serving the Louisville & Nashville Railroad). To the south of the city lay not just Fort Benning, but Camp Gillam and the Conley General Depot, located in Forest Park. All the troops and supplies were converging to the north at Fort McPherson. Fort McPherson and the western side of Atlanta were now served by active rail lines, freight depots, as well as improved New Deal era roads. Atlanta’s location, far inland from the coast, meant it was less vulnerable to attack and ideal for military operations. As a hub for both deployment of personnel and the motor pool headquarters, Fort McPherson would be poised to utilize both forms of infrastructure.  

Another significant hub of wartime activity for Atlanta would be established roughly 15 miles to the north of the city in Marietta. In 1940, General Lucius D. Clay, the son of Alexander Stephens Clay, a U.S. senator from the state of Georgia was called into service for the Civil Aeronautics Administration. He led an emergency airport-construction program, which built 450 airstrips, including Rickenbacker Field (later Dobbins Air Force Base) in Marietta, to prepare the country for war. The Bell Aircraft Corporation of Buffalo had been awarded the contract to build B-29 bombers, and the proposed site for the factory was Atlanta. Clay, now heavily involved in the war effort, lobbied for his hometown to be chosen as the site of the factory. Begun in 1942, the Bell Bomber plant would be the largest facility ever built in the South covering 4.2 million square feet and costing nearly $73,000,000 to build. Bell Bomber would go on to employ 28,000 Georgians, 57% of them women. The population of Marietta grew from 8,667 in 1940 to 20,687 in 1950. With wartime shortages in labor, fuel, and construction supplies many employees could not easily relocate to Marietta and were forced to carpool to the plant. Wartime maps of Atlanta show that the improved main military access road would run directly from Fort McPherson to Bell Bomber, passing through the heavily industrial area of northwest Atlanta, crossing the Chattahoochee right beside the original 1838 rail crossing.  

The road from McPherson to Bell Bomber would reroute one of Georgia’s most noteworthy roadways.  The Dixie Highway was conceived as early as 1915, as a route for northern tourists to travel south from Detroit, all the way to Miami. In an age before widespread interstates and government maintenance of roads, the Dixie Highway was stitched together from existing routes, traveling through small towns, many of which prospered from the tourists the roadway brought. True development of the route did not occur until 1921 when a fuel tax was levied and to help pay for roadway improvements. The Dixie Highway meandered through the northern reaches of Atlanta, in the Buckhead area, following Paces Ferry Road, to West Paces Ferry, to Peachtree Road, finally merging into Peachtree Street in downtown. The existing Dixie Highway was not sufficient for the proposed construction of Bell Bomber and the flow of military personnel, civilian staff, and supplies that would be moving through western Atlanta. Between 1937-1942, US 41 (Northside Drive in the study area) was constructed as a bypass route for the original Dixie Highway. Noteworthy as the first four-lane, “dualized highway” in Georgia, the US 41 Bypass would become the major route in the pre-interstate era that served the west side and went straight to Bell Bomber. These routes would become increasingly important as the war neared its end, as the improved roads, legislation regarding trucking, and established industrial areas would cement the evolution of freight moving through the city.  

Fort McPherson was designated one of nineteen Army Personnel Centers in July of 1944.  With the war nearing its conclusion, Fort McPherson would shift its purpose towards getting American soldiers home. Over the next three years approximately 20,000 soldiers each month would be discharged from Fort McPherson as part of Operation MAGIC CARPET. Bell Bomber decreased operations after the surrender of Japan and canceling of the contract for the B-29’s, but would be reopened during the Korean War and grow into a major installation for the private aviation company Lockheed Martin. Northside Drive/US 41 would remain a significant route, particularly as freight trucking began to further expand with the end of wartime fuel rationing in the post-war years.  

Atlanta, a City Poised for Growth

In the wake of WWII Atlanta was poised for growth. The war had irrevocable changed the landscape of Georgia. An infusion of wartime spending had shifted the economy towards manufacturing. More than 500 new factories would be built across Georgia in the five years following the war, and in 1950, for the first time in its history, more Georgia workers were employed off farms, than on them.  

After the passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944, Harry W. Lochner, the transportation planner for Cook County, Illinois began his own transportation planning company in Chicago. As just one of three firms nationwide that specialized in designing urban highway systems, Lochner would go on to design the highway systems for over 30 major US cities in the South and Midwest, including Richmond, Louisville, and St. Louis. In 1944, shortly after beginning the firm, he was contracted by the city of Atlanta to develop a Highway and Transportation Plan.  

This Highway and Transportation Plan, commonly known as the “Lochner Report” warns, “expressways are not by-passes or tourist facilities. They are utilitarian highways to serve primarily the traffic moving about the metropolitan area or traffic with either origin or destination in the urban center.” The design proposed was to conform to the “most modern highway design standards as developed by the Federal Interregional Highway Committee.” Interestingly enough, the design was far from groundbreaking, and in fact, closely follows the historic routes of the railroads that had run through Atlanta from the time of its inception. The report even addresses the proposal that the highways be built over the existing roadways but dismisses the proposal as such a plan would require replacement of all passenger and freight engines with either diesel or electric locomotives. The required clearance for trains is also 22 feet above the tracks and would result in highways elevated 30 feet or more above ground level, with unusually long ramps, that would eliminate, “ a considerable portion of present and potential industrial sites adjacent to the railroad tracks.”  

The question of this industrial space is an important one. With the changing economy of Georgia these industrial spaces were becoming more important than ever. While the Lochner report devotes very little attention to freight traffic, it states, “choice of industrial sites was once governed largely by availability of railroad freight transportation and proximity to an ample supply of labor. Many Atlanta neighborhoods, including Cabbagetown, Whittier Mill, Blandtown, and Lindburgh-Armour all developed to house industrial labor. But as one report states, the general opinion of such industrial areas was mixed. “In the pre-World War II era industrial areas conjured up in the mind belching, polluting smokestacks of heavy metals manufacture, smelly food-processing plants, or noisy machine fabrication stamping plants of the inner-city. Frequently these industrial areas were  at "the wrong end of town" in interior sites with poor access to major roads. Prejudiced planning never located industry on main streets with "front" sites, but placed it in the interior, forcing industrial traffic to penetrate residential neighborhoods. Industry, being closely tied to rail spurs, developed in linear, sprawling radial bands.” These assertions were, in part, true. Industrial spaces were crowded, often unsafe, and in need of improvement on a variety of fronts. In the 19th and early 20th century, they were also necessary, as heavily industrial areas were often located several miles outside the city center and commuting was not an option for most workers.  

The automotive age of transportation, however, has led many companies in Atlanta and elsewhere to locate sizeable plants in semi-rural areas. “This policy generates a great deal of highway traffic, and in time will cause dispersal of population,” the Lochner Report predicts. The data supplied in the Lochner report itself, in the form of a map, that shows the location of those who work in industrial areas for the purposes of transit planning, does not support this. Rather, it shows the pattern already established through the history of rail freight, that industrial areas were clustered around the railroads in the southwest and northwest portions of the cities. It also shows a growing industrial area in the southeast, which as the site of new manufacturing, would eventually become one of the largest clusters of trucking terminals in the city.  

 The Lochner Report formed a depressed system of highways, bridged by surface streets in the city. This system would be made up of expressways radiating from the city center, with one highway proposed to travel east-west, connecting to Augusta and Birmingham (the future I-20), one highway traveling from the northwest to the southeast, connecting Chattanooga and Florida (the future I-75), and a third highway traveling southwest to northeast, connecting Montgomery to Charlotte (the future I-85).  The design is particularly enlightening because it highlights the proximity of the proposed routes to the wartime improvements in the region, “The northwest route (I-75) would connect with the recently constructed four-lane highway through Marietta (US 41), passing Bell Field [Bomber} en route. The northeast fork (I-85) would serve Buckhead, Oglethorpe and other northside communities, the Naval Air Section and Lawson General Hospital, connecting with Piedmont Road and Buford Highway.” The wartime infrastructure projects would continue to shape the post-war landscape, and perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the proposed expressway plan in the Lochner Report.  

The Lochner plan made several serious miscalculations, which continue to shape the transportation system in Atlanta to the modern day. The first was a massive miscalculation of the project traffic volumes. By 1958, a mere 12 years after the report was issued, Atlanta traffic exceeded 65,000 vehicles per day through downtown, a volume which significantly exceeded the projections the Lochner Report made for 1970, 25 years in the future. The Lochner plan also was based largely on the projection of traffic flowing into downtown Atlanta, for the purposes of business and shopping. There are projections of thru-traffic, but as the plan was developed in isolation, without a full vision for what would eventually become the national interstate system. As a result, it failed to anticipate that Atlanta would become a regional hub and all traffic would by default pass through the proposed system. This is a particular failing when one considers patterns of transportation. The lack of emphasis on transportation as a means of moving freight is particularly glaring in the report and is an enormous part of the failure of the Lochner Report to anticipate the growth in traffic volumes. The presence of the expressway would turn Atlanta into an enormous trucking terminal, but this was not planned for in the initial design.  

The plan also failed to predict the inevitable white flight of the 1950s and 1960s. As increasingly large numbers of urban dwellers abandoned the city of the suburbs, the traffic patterns begin to look remarkable different than what was predicted in 1946. The most striking example of this is a diagram showing the projected traffic volumes on a proposed “western bypass route” (what would eventually become I-285 or ‘the Perimeter’), depicted on the diagram as a mere trickle of vehicles compared to the centrally located highways. These miscalculations would necessitate substantially redesigning the interstates before they had even been completed.  

The Lochner plan began to be implemented at the Atlanta Expressway two years after the initial report was delivered. Construction was slow, with challenges in acquiring right-of-way from close to 3,000 parcels along the proposed route. Costs ran so high, that construction was only able to continue in 1952 when both the city of Atlanta and Fulton County approved $12.7 million dollars in additional funding. Urban sections of expressways only made up 11% of the overall mileage; however, they represent 42% of the overall cost.  Two years later in September of 1954 the Metropolitan Planning Commission, took the next steps in planning Atlanta’s expressways with the "Now for Tomorrow" plan which was essentially a report to the Mayor and Board of Aldermen outlining the subsequent amendment to the City of Atlanta Code, known as the Truck Route Ordinance, adopted on April 6, 1955. This ordinance, as a part of the planning for the new expressways under construction, would dictate which routes freight trucking were allowed to use when accessing the city.  

In 1958, with traffic volumes increasing, the proposed Downtown Connector, which was at the heart of Lochner’s expressway plan, was expanded from four lanes to six, further increasing costs. Overall, only 18 miles of the proposed expressway were complete at that time and open to traffic, and the Connector itself would not be completed until September of 1964. The only factor which allowed the project to be completed was the passage of the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act. Under this act, the federal government provided 90% of the costs of building the interstate highway system. By its completion, the cost of constructing the Downtown Connector topped $33 million dollars, and still fell significantly short in terms of meeting the requirements of the growing city.  

The other incalculable loss to the city was the neighborhoods which were destroyed and displaced. The Lochner Report proposes, “the neighborhoods in Atlanta through which it would be feasible to purchase suitable rights-of-way, being the most depreciated and least attractive, are most in need of this rejuvenation.” The report includes photographs of these slum neighborhoods proposed for clearance. These neighborhoods disproportionately housed African American populations, and the proposed design would physically cut these communities off from the downtown. John Wesley Dobbs had been the driving force behind registration of African American voters in Atlanta, advocating for civil rights, and was known as the unofficial mayor of Auburn Avenue, Atlanta’s most important African American business district. 

 On June 3, 1952, he went before the Metropolitan Planning Commission to plead for the preservation of Auburn Avenue, which was earmarked for slum clearance. Dobbs addressed the all-white Commission saying, “in every city of America where Negroes live in large numbers they eventually develop a main business street for Negroes. In Atlanta, Georgia, Auburn Avenue happens to be that symbol of our business progress and achievement…It is true that we are poor people, liberated only 85 years ago, without education or money; and yet in the last 50 years we have acquired property along Auburn Avenue, built businesses…Your proposed plan would destroy this development of ours, which represents two generations of sweat and toil. This attempt, ladies, and gentlemen, is fundamentally wrong and unsound”  

Despite Dobbs plea, Auburn Avenue would be truncated by the connector, and while the neighborhood was not completely destroyed, the Downtown Connector permanently divided it. No exact statistics are known regarding the number of households or individuals that were displaced during this era of interstate construction in Atlanta, but the majority of sources suggest the number is in excess of 50,000.  

A New Perspective on the City 

The passage of the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act was motivated by many factors, Dwight Eisenhower who had been advocating for a national highway system since taking office, described the importance of the undertaking by saying, "together, the united forces of our communication and transportation systems are dynamic elements in the very name we bear - United States. Without them, we would be a mere alliance of many separate parts."  

The reality was Eisenhower had seen firsthand in his military career that countries with national systems of roads, like the Autobahn in Germany, were able to be significantly more successful in all aspects of life. The historical literature analyzing the fact focuses heavily on the defense aspect. The Cold War had brought fear of another kind of war to the United States and increased mobility and ability to move both people and cargo was paramount. The impressive mobilization during WWII was a good start, but should a nuclear attack occur, the rules of war would quickly change.  Freight movement is mentioned almost nowhere in the literature, but the statistics speak loudly in this regard. The interstate system changed how freight was moved in America.  

In 1950, as Atlanta was booming with post-war factory building and population growth, only 173 billion ton-miles of commercial interstate freight, or about 1% of overall freight, was transported by truck. In the following twenty years, that number would shift to 25% of all commercial interstate freight being transported by road. The type of freight that was carried was also changing, with more expensive or perishable items now being entrusted to trucking routes, and the bulk of dangerous items being transported by rail. The face of the areas of the city where freight was handled was also changing. “ [19th and early 20th century] Industrial neighborhoods deteriorated into slums and vandalism, crime, and pollution were handicaps. Incompatible uses were frequent. Run-down housing, saloons, and other shoddy commercial uses, vacant lots, dead-end, and crowded streets were further blighting forces. Outmoded zoning tagged industry as the least desirable land use. Sites were crowded and little expansion space existed. Facilities were frequently old and poorly maintained. Streets were poorly paved and full of pot-holes. Parking was practically non-existent and precious little docking space for trucks existed. New technological developments thus forced industry to relocate.” 

The changing landscape of Atlanta would both influence highway construction and be influenced by this need for access. The second phase of highway development in Atlanta involved the construction of what was originally proposed as the western bypass route, what would become I-285, the beltline highway around the city. The trucking ordinances, put in place in 1955 would be further amended following the completion of I-285 in the late 1960s. The Atlanta Journal Constitution is full of letters to the editor throughout the 1960s and 1970s regarding trucking and the potential impact it would have on Atlanta’s roads. Trucking traffic would be banned from utilizing the other three major highways (I-75, I-85, and I-20), which passed through the Downtown Connector. Instead, freight traffic (with the exception of local deliveries) was re-routed to the perimeter expressway, to bypass the city. Subsequently, the areas that this roadway would create, would eventually become the new freight hubs for the city. In some cases, these hubs were new, created by the conjunction of the new highway and changing patterns for commerce. In others, they tied the existing historic industrial areas. 

A 1970 map of trucking terminals in the city shows distinctive clusters, with 33 terminals in the southeastern portion of the city, 17 terminals in the northwestern portion of the city, 13 in the city center, and only 3 located in the southwestern portion of the city. The northwestern cluster represent the historically industrial area that had been located there since the 19th century. This area was still crowded with manufacturing and rail terminals. Examination of the manufacturers show that many began to add roads tying them into the surrounding areas. Where these facilities had previously been serviced by rail spurs so their goods could be tied into the main rail lines nearby, they began to diversify, often removing the rail spurs entirely, in favor of new roads for trucking.  

The massive growth of trucking terminals in the southeastern part of the city reflects the shift in how industrial spaces were designed in America. Atlanta never was a heavy manufacturing center in the traditional sense, even with the proliferation of manufacturing the post-war years. It was however a major distribution center, a carry-over from the very origins of Atlanta as a railroad junction. In terms of wholesaling, Atlanta's growth in handling goods in the mid-20th century was second only to New York. As a result, it is not surprising to learn that industrial parks in the greater Atlanta area were constructed mainly for the distribution of goods. Eugene Huber, president of the Georgia Motor Trucking Association (GMTA) echoed Hartshorn’s sentiments when interviewed by the Atlanta Journal Constitution in January 1970 for an article entitled “Don’t Cuss That Truck””, saying, “the big industries, the big manufacturers,  think of Atlanta as one big warehouse.” The article emphasizes the regulation of the industry, which at the time processed approximately 65,000 items per day through Atlanta. Trucking was such a priority that then governor, and future president Jimmy Carter spoke as the keynote address at the GMTA conference that year. To do this effectively firms need large sites, and good accessibility to transport services. The article further outlines how the southeastern section of the city has become a hub for this activity, due to its proximity to the perimeter interstate and the growing airport. 

The future of industrial spaces in America was going to be defined by industrial parks. This design was seen as superior in many ways. Industrial parks standardized construction, and while the buildings were customizable, they still required the same strict codes which decreased risk that had always been an issue in industrial areas. Secondly, upfront investment covered the costs of the infrastructure, which was a major lure for those looking for a manufacturing space. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, industrial parks were located outside the city center, in proximity to where more than one mode of transport synchronizes with ports, highways, airports, and railroads. In 1950 there were just 150 industrial parks nationwide, by 1970 the number had grown to 2,400.  

In November of 1971, Dr. Truman Hartshorn, a professor of geography at Georgia State University led a tour of Atlanta’s planned office and industrial parks for the National Council for Geographic Education. The supplemental materials for the tour are very instructional in understanding the shift in attitudes surrounding industrial spaces. Whereas before, industrial districts were catch-alls, seeking to put manufacturing, transportation, and freight together. This eliminated smoke and mess from production and railroads alike, forcing them into specific regions of the city. While industrial parks did not truly deviate from this pattern, they redesigned the concept in a far more organized and efficient model. Hartshorn states in his description, “this change is due to technological changes especially automation, truck-autofreeway developments, and increased emphasis on a favorable public image which nave all influenced the pattern of industrial location.” While the face of freight was changing due to the rise of interstates, the new model was making how Atlanta moved freight more efficient.  

In 1970, Atlanta ranked as the nation’s 20th largest city, by 1990 it had risen to 13th largest. During that time the percentage of freight moved by expressway expanded exponentially. In 1980, the same year that the Atlanta airport opened its new terminal, commercial freight by truck reaches 555 billion ton-miles. In the next five years it increased to 650 billion ton-miles. In 1993, Hartshorn, writing in The Dynamics of Change: An Analysis of Growth in Metropolitan Atlanta over the Past Two Decades [1970-1990] would reflect that, “The Atlanta region has very little manufacturing (12% of all jobs) compared to areas like Dallas-Fort Worth (17%) and Detroit (21%). The local economy’s strength is in trade and transportation; no other major metropolitan area has such large employment concentrations in these two categories.”  He refers to this phenomenon through what he calls “superdistricts,” hubs of transportation and goods and appropriately calls I-285 the “main street” for these industries. 

Two of these super districts correspond to the previous industrial areas already discussed. Superdistrict 31 developed in northwest Atlanta extending north to Lockheed-Martin (the successor to the Bell Bomber plant). Manufacturing represented 60% of employment in this superdistrict, and by default this scale of manufacturing required significant support from freight. The other significant superdistrict developed on the southside of Atlanta. This superdistrict developed from the growth of industrial parks, serving major retailers like J.C. Penny, which maintained a distribution center for its nationwide catalogue. This distinguished this area from the other developing superdistricts in northeastern Atlanta, which had grown up in the Chamblee area, formerly the other military hub centered around the naval airfield and Lawson hospital. That area had become a hub for commerce in the form of shopping centers and regional offices for businesses moving outside the city center. 

 These industries relied on the freight and transportation services elsewhere on the perimeter. The most important factor of all, was that the southside trucking terminals were also proximate to the next great advancement in the world of freight, flight. As the Atlanta airport grew, air joined rail and trucking in creating a trifecta for freight transportation in Atlanta. The completion of the new terminal in 1980 ushered in the golden age of airport development in Atlanta as the city was poised to have the busiest airport in the world. With this distinction, came new opportunities to expand the freight business through all modes of transportation, as air provided a means for more freight to be brought into the city for distribution.