About Us
Rotondo Warehouse began its "operations" at the site of my great grandfather's two-story home on North Clinton Street in the City of Syracuse in the mid-1940s. Our first account, Big Jo Flour, was stored and peddled by my great grandfather and my father in a panel truck to our local customers. At that time, Clinton Street had a railroad track which ran down the center of the street right in front of their house. Floor-loaded rail cars of bagged flour were "placed" in the front of the house and unloaded by hand-truck using a wooden plank from the rail car floor height down to the street level and then carted into the "warehouse". Seventy-five years later, that little storage room has evolved into a full-service, 250,000+ s.f. full-service, state-of-the-art warehousing and logistics enterprise. Four generations of Rotondos have devoted their time and efforts to create a warehousing legacy: (great grandfather John, his sons Sam and Andy, Sam's sons John and Sam, and finally John's sons Jack and Rob (me) are carrying the business forward.
|
Over the years we have nurtured a close relationship with the four railroads that serviced the upstate New York market: the NY Central Railroad, the Penn Central Railroad, Conrail Railroad and now the CSX. We are currently salvage agents for CSX and have enjoyed similar relationships with the former railroads as they have come and gone. We have bought and sold damaged freight, participated in derailment recovery efforts, provided material handling services, unloaded thousands of customer rail cars, and stored product on an as-needed basis for the railroad. One of our earliest storage customers was the NY Central. Our relationship with the railroad spawned a family owned lumber yard and several surplus grocery stores under the name Northway Home Center. I was an eager grocery bagger at our flagship store located on the corner of Pond and Lodi Streets at a very green eight years old.
As our warehousing customer's demands increased, so did our footprint. In the 1970s, we purchased a 10,000 s.f. building at 921 North State Street (pictured above) and then a 160,000 s.f building located at 717 North Clinton Street (currently the Clinton Street Commons, a 75-unit apartment complex). The public warehouses of this era were multi-level buildings that were very inefficient by today's standards with slow-moving freight elevators to carry product from floor to floor. As the logistics industry evolved, our customer's demanded greater handling efficiencies and larger warehousing capacity. So, in the 1980's, under the management of Sam Rotondo and John Rotondo (my father), Rotondo Warehouse constructed three state-of the-art warehouse facilities which covered an area of 300,000+ s.f in the Woodard Industrial Park just north of Syracuse to service an ever increasing number of customers including the Church & Dwight Company (Arm & Hammer baking soda) and all of the major US cigarette companies. In the 1990s, we partnered with Barilla Pasta Company, becoming their first US-based distribution center providing full logistical support as they were broke into the US pasta market.
Presently, Rotondo Warehouse operates at the Steelway Boulevard North location which is a 175,000 s.f. rail-served facility. With our long history of handling a broad range of products, and armed with the knowledge and experience that comes with 75 years in the business, we have earned the right to say that we can handle any and all warehousing and logistics challenges. We've seen it all and we've done it all. With an ear to the ground and our finger on the pulse, you can rest assured that we have more to offer than our competition. Robert Rotondo President |