For three years, Aaron and Rachel Bode have looked for property close to Interstate 65 in Seymour for their trucking company.
Aaron said he is going into his 28th year of trucking on his own, and 99% of what he hauls is oversized farm equipment. He also hauls some construction equipment.
He owns three of his trucks, and four owner-operators are leased to him and pull his trailers. They run to 48 states, but a majority of it is in the Midwest.
In June 2022, the Bodes purchased a nearly 9-acre property at 4934 N. U.S. 31 for their home. Now, they want to have their trucking company there, too.
They attended the Jan. 11 Seymour Plan Commission meeting to request a land use variance, and that was approved 9-0 with President Jeri Wells and new member Kendra Zumhingst absent.
The petition moved on to the Seymour Board of Zoning Appeals for a final vote. During Tuesday night’s meeting, the BZA voted 4-0 in favor of the land use variance. Karen Munson was absent.
“Most of my guys 99% of the time leave on Monday and they are back home by Friday,” Aaron said. “The guys all take their trucks home. My trucks will typically come home, which would be the three, and there will be some other trailers around every once in awhile. There will be a truck come in to switch trailers. It’s not going to be like a truck stop or not a lot of truck traffic.”
He said he wants to be very respectful to the neighborhood and community.
“I do my best to keep our property nice and neat and presentable,” he said. “I do want to be proactive about it. … I do want to do the right thing.”
Rachel said as a mom, she understands anyone who lives close by being concerned about the potential of increased truck traffic.
“There’s no way as a mom having children that I would be like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re going to run trucks in and out of our property daily,’” she said. “It just wouldn’t happen because it’s just not safe, and our trucks, literally there are weeks that I’m like, ‘Has a semi even been in and out of our driveway?’ because our trucks go out, they stay gone for a while and our guys typically take their equipment home. If there’s a truck in and out, it’s just the three trucks we own.”
Aaron said there may be an occasion when one of the owner-operators is hauling an oversized load and leaves it parked on the Bode property, but it won’t stay there long.
“On an oversized permit, you have to stay on a permitted route or you can variate just a little bit outside of that permit,” Rachel said. “One reason why the property off 65 was such interest is so that we can still obey the law on permits but yet give our guys an opportunity (to leave their oversized loads at the Bode property). If they are passing through and need to get home, they would have that opportunity, as well.”
Aaron said he had a stone driveway put in place, and his intention is to build a 60-by-90-foot shop on the property to work on his trucks. Depending on cost, it may be a year from now before he builds, he said.
“I want to keep it closer to the commercial side and away from the highway view because if you drive past the house or street view, you can’t really see much of the stuff behind the house,” he said.
Dave Eggers, a member of the plan commission and BZA, asked if the Bodes had considered changing the zoning to commercial. It’s currently zoned single-family residential.
“Residential on a commercial space is not unheard of. Just a question more than anything,” Eggers said.
At their previous home, for tax purposes, Aaron said they had the property in their name, and the trucking company rented the shop from that.
“That was our plan going forward,” he said. “With me living there, I didn’t know that that would be an option because our personal house is there. I don’t know what the options are either way. I’d have to get educated about that from talking to everybody here. This seemed to be my best route.”
City Building Commissioner Jeremy Gray said he suggested the Bodes request a land use variance because that stays with them as long as they own the property. A rezone, on the other hand, is forever.
No one spoke in favor of or against the proposal at either meeting, but Eddie Murphy with SpaceGuard Products Inc., an adjacent land owner to the northwest, talked about an issue that needs to be addressed in the area.
“There are some pretty well-documented stormwater issues in that area, and they affect our property as well as the 25 acres to the south of us owned by Dayton Freight,” Murphy said.
As development continues in the area, Murphy asked the plan commission to highly scrutinize the effects on the drainage because his business gets flooded out.
“I’m certainly pro-growth, and I hope we continue building on our property, so I’m certainly not against rezoning necessarily, but there has been a lot of rezoning, people using zoning going from rural into the commercial and industrial overlay,” he said of the area east of the interstate.
City Engineer Bernie Hauersperger, who also is a member of the plan commission, said he has walked around that area and noted there’s a terrible erosion problem on the north line of the Bode property that goes into the SpaceGuard area.
“To me, this is development, and it should be a surface area, and it should probably have a detention pond associated with it,” he said.
Gray said if the Bodes build a shop, they will have to get a building permit, and Hauersperger should be consulted about drainage.