Hog Mountain: Truck Stop Light & Freight Service Node, I-85 & US 129, Jefferson Georgia -- 75,000-85,000 vehicles per day, full-access interchange location

Status: conceptual development thesis prepared by North Star Group from iVerify screening data (Report 68). Not a site plan. No land under contract, no operator commitment, no financing in place. Exact configuration determined through due diligence and engineering.

Development thesis

A freight-service stop at a full-access interchange, not a speculative campus

Hog Mountain is a low-cost freight-service stop at the full-access I-85 / US 129 interchange on the northeastern approach to the Atlanta market. The initial facility is a Truck Stop Light — cardlock diesel, secure truck parking, clean restrooms, lighting and cameras, easy truck circulation, and separately fenced IOS / laydown areas leased to fleets, contractors, and equipment operators. The IOS component provides monthly base income; fuel and transient parking capture passing traffic; industrial pads or cross-dock come only after demand is demonstrated. The project is not dependent on a poultry fleet, a single tenant, or a speculative warehouse. The principal risk is the dirt, not the traffic.

Develop a simple, secure place at I-85 and US 129 where trucks can fuel, park, reset, stage, and prepare for the Atlanta market, supported by monthly IOS and laydown-yard income.

Conceptual development thesis. Not a site plan. Exact configuration determined through due diligence and engineering.

Location & traffic

I-85 & US 129 / GA 11, Jefferson, Jackson County, Georgia

AOI center 34.14884, -83.64751. Market: viable — Jefferson GA, rank 268 of 850 nationally. Location in market: full market relevance, about 3 miles from the Jefferson demand core.

RoadAvg. daily traffic (AADT)Year
I-85 mainline (north of interchange, stn 157-0303)58,9002017
I-85 mainline (south of interchange, stn 157-0305)54,1002017
US 129 / GA 11 arterial (stn 157-0245)25,4002017
US 129 / GA 11 arterial, second station (stn 157-0242)21,0002017
Total daily roadway exposure (combined, not unique vehicles)75,000–85,000

Source: GDOT AADT count network, queried live from iVerify's own traffic API. The 21,000 / 25,400 arterial counts are in Report 68's printed traffic table; the 54,100 / 58,900 I-85 mainline counts are on the report's interactive layer and confirmed live against GDOT stations 157-0303 / 157-0305, which sit just outside the report's tight screening frame but are the interchange's actual mainline counts.

Map of GDOT AADT count stations around the I-85 / US 129 interchange
Rendered from iVerify Report 68 / live GDOT AADT data — public, unverified screening data.

Regional orientation

Hog Mountain sits on I-85 at the northeastern approach to Atlanta, in the Gainesville–Jackson County industrial corridor.

Regional map showing Hog Mountain at the I-85 / US 129 interchange near Jefferson, Georgia
iVerify Report 68, live screening map — public, unverified screening data.

Parcel fabric

609 parcels in the screened area of interest, Jackson County, Georgia. Land within the AOI is public appraisal-district data — assessed values are rough order of magnitude, not market transactions or comparables.

Tax-parcel map of the Hog Mountain area of interest at I-85 and US 129
Rendered from iVerify Report 68 live parcel data (Jackson County, Georgia) — public, unverified screening data.

Demand drivers

Five nameable fleets, not an abstract traffic count

15,295 active FMCSA-registered carriers operate within 30 miles: 42,630 power units, 20,587 trailers (17,950 owned). The top ten by trailer count include local poultry and food-processing fleets — Wayne Sanderson Farms, Fieldale Farms, Wayne Farms — alongside regional and OTR operators such as Tribe Express and Titanium American Trucking. Owned trailers on local lanes mean trailer pools that sleep somewhere every night; this is a validation target list, not committed demand. Tenant/customer status is unproven until interviews land.

Hours of service
Drivers require legal locations to park, rest, and reset.
Fuel capture
Cardlock fuel at a key interchange captures local & transient traffic.
Appointment staging
Staging for deliveries and pickups in the Atlanta market corridor.
IOS & laydown
Contractors, carriers, and businesses need secure outdoor storage by the acre.
Fleet yards
Regional and local fleets need space for trailers, tractors, and equipment.
Map of the top 10 motor carriers by trailer count within 30 miles of Hog Mountain
Rendered from iVerify Report 68 / live FMCSA carrier data — public, unverified screening data.

Site conditions & risk

The principal risk is the dirt, not the traffic

Flood zones present in the area of interest: A (3), AE (2), X (6) — a Special Flood Hazard Area is present. Elevation across the AOI's bounding box runs 726.1–943.9 ft, about 217.8 ft of relief — notable slope, expect grading. Soils in the AOI are mostly well or moderately-well drained and buildable (Appling, Cecil, Chestatee, Pacolet, Rion, Toccoa, Wickham); no hydric soils are mapped. No local zoning layer is held for this county — permitted use and the entitlement path are established by county records and site work, not by this screen.

FEMA flood zone map of the Hog Mountain area of interest, showing A and AE Special Flood Hazard Areas along the creek corridor
Rendered from iVerify Report 68 / live FEMA NFHL data — public, unverified screening data.
Usable acreage is net of grading, drainage, detention, access, and buffers — not the gross parcel size. No land comparables and no local zoning layer are attached to this screen; both are open diligence items, not assumptions baked into the thesis.

This is not a site plan. Land, zoning, utilities, and demand are confirmed in the field and by the responsible partners — civil engineer, broker, parking/fuel operator.

Phased development plan

Low initial capital, scale with demand

1 · Truck Stop Light core (Year 1)
  • Cardlock fuel (twin-tank)
  • Truck parking & HOS reset
  • Restrooms & basic services
  • Security, lighting, access
  • Initial trailer & truck parking

Low initial capital. Focus on cash flow.

2 · Yard & IOS expansion (Years 1–2)
  • IOS lots by the acre
  • Laydown & storage yards
  • Fleet & contractor yards
  • Container storage
  • Truck/equipment parking

Monthly leases. Scalable revenue.

3 · Value-add services (Years 2–5)
  • Maintenance & tire service
  • Wash & mobile services
  • Additional fuel islands
  • Retail/food, as demand proves
  • Cross-dock / industrial pads

Driven by market demand.

Site cost, income, and NOI for this model are resolved by the fuel supplier / cardlock vendor / civil lane, not by the iVerify screen. See the ROM economics below and the calculator for the underwriting mechanics.

ROM economics (Truck Stop Light profile, model profile library v1.9): Capital intensity: low / moderate. Cost range: $2M–$8M plus land. Income logic: entrance fee per truck + discounted-fuel margin (+ optional overnight); pricing mix not yet locked. ROM only — not a bid, appraisal, final budget, or investment recommendation.

Interactive · adjust the assumptions yourself

Fuel & entrance-fee cash flow calculator

Placeholder basis, not yet underwritten. This calculator's total development cost and debt figures ($2,473,000 TDC / $1,608,000 debt) are a Truck-Stop-Light-class stand-in — a Hog-specific basis has not been set yet. The yield-on-cost number below is provisional until that decision is made.

The same facility, priced as a fuel and access operation rather than a monthly parking lease: every truck pays a flat entrance fee, most of them also fuel at a discount to street price. Move any of the three inputs below and the three-year cash flow table recalculates live.

60 trucks/day
$0.05/gal
100 gal
Year 1 Yield on Cost (placeholder basis)Net Operating Income ÷ $2,473,000 placeholder total development cost
0%

Defaults to a conservative base case: 60 trucks/day, a nickel-a-gallon fuel margin, 100-gallon average fill. Drag any slider up toward the interchange's real traffic (15,295 carriers within 30 mi, 75,000–85,000 vehicles/day roadway exposure at I-85 & US 129) to see the upside; nothing above this base case is underwritten. Held fixed regardless of the sliders: $14 entrance fee (every truck, park or not), 85% of trucks also fuel, 25% operating expense ratio, 3-year hold, 3%/yr NOI growth. The placeholder $2,473,000 build/land cost and its $1,608,000 loan (65% LTC, 7.0%, 25-year amortization) don’t change with these sliders — only the revenue assumptions do.

Year 1Year 2Year 3
Entrance fees
Fuel margin
Gross revenue
Less: operating expense (25%)
Net Operating Income
Year 1Year 2Year 3
Interest
Principal
Total debt service
Net cash flow
$0
Total 3-year operating cash flow (placeholder basis) Sum of net cash flow, years 1-3. No exit value shown — a cap-rate exit does not apply to an operating fee/fuel business the way it does to a leased real estate asset.

Placeholder basis: $2,473,000 total development cost, $1,608,000 debt (65% LTC, 7.0%, 25-year amortization) — a Truck-Stop-Light-class stand-in, not yet priced for this site. Operating expense ratio (25%) is a planning assumption, not itemized or confirmed against a real quote. No exit/sale value is computed on this page. Source: model profile library v1.9 (ROM economics), Report 68.

Next step: field validation

Confirm the numbers and the demand

Every validation item below is unresolved by this screen and belongs to the responsible partner — broker, civil engineer, or North Star directly.

  • Traffic counts (truck %)
  • Land basis & cost
  • Access & circulation
  • Utilities & site feasibility
  • Zoning & entitlements
  • Environmental & flood
  • Demand interviews (carriers, fleets, contractors)
  • Achievable rates

This report supports holding or dropping the AOI within the screening pipeline, selecting which parcels merit owner contact, and assigning validation items to responsible partners — it does not set a purchase price, provide a bid or appraisal, establish entitlement, or constitute a capital commitment.

North Star Group / iVerify

Real estate development, and an operating logistics background

Michael Hoffman has five decades of construction, real estate development, and brokerage experience. Between the 1990s and 2008 he completed five Walmart Supercenter site-selection and entitlement assignments across Alabama, part of a national rollout that covered more than 1.5 million square feet, and went on to develop sites for CVS, Walgreens, and Starbucks. He was the technical partner on the redevelopment of the 400,000-square-foot Huntsville Mall and redeveloped a 50,000-square-foot building in Anniston, Alabama.

His logistics knowledge is operational. He co-founded and ran a household goods moving company that grew from local operations to national scope, working dispatch, driver recruiting, interstate operating authority, and pricing. That operation grew into ProHRHQ, an active CDL driver recruiting company built on a carrier intelligence system covering every U.S. motor carrier: 4.4 million records refreshed monthly from the complete set of FMCSA data, live at prohrhq.com.

iVerify, North Star’s national site-screening platform, is patent-pending (USPTO App. No. 64/098,118). Hoffman designed and built the platform’s software himself and holds eleven issued U.S. patents from an earlier career in oilfield equipment manufacturing, with three further applications pending in housing and building technology.

Contact

Michael Hoffman

North Star Group, Inc.
Fairhope, Alabama
701-770-9118
michaelh@nsgia.com
www.nsgia.com

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