Many distribution centers have taken advantage of this, including Lowe's and Dillard's. But Valdosta hopes to attract a new kind of industry with its latest efforts. The city has set aside a 40-acre (16-hectare) tract, located within two to three minutes from I-75 and five minutes from the regional airport, for high-tech industries. "We don't expect to ever land an IBM," says Garren. "But the satellite businesses that serve the technology area would be a good fit because of our location halfway between the hubs of Atlanta and Tampa."

The most recent win for Valdosta was Convergys's 600-job call center. Although the company didn't locate in one of the community's five business parks, it did opt to take advantage of the available and skilled labor pool.

From Valdosta, I-75 leads into Macon, where another call center plans to open up operations. Ikon will establish a finance and accounting center in the city, where it will employ between 400 and 500 people.

Call centers are, in fact, a major target for the Macon area. In order to attract more call center interest, the local technical school, Macon Tech, has designed a program specifically for the industry. The program provides a certification for its graduates called the Certified Customer Service Specialist (CCSS).

GEICO Insurance plans to take advantage of Macon's well-trained labor pool with its latest expansion. GEICO will add 2,000 new jobs in the next four to five years at its new insurance processing operation.

"In their words, they chose to expand here because of the work ethic of the people," says Pat Topping, projects director with the Macon Economic Development Commission. "They already had an operation here with about 200 employees, and they looked at five other communities for this new facility. So work ethic and the training that is available are the two main reasons."

I-75 leaves out of Macon and heads into one of the fastest growing markets in the Southeast, Atlanta. And according to Lynn Pitts, the general manager for business development at Georgia Power Co., "Atlanta continues to have phenomenal growth, even with extremely low unemployment numbers and bad press on traffic."

And its growth is in a wide variety of industries -- many in the high-tech arena. "There are lots of telecom-related projects and 'switching hotels,' and we have continued growth in the 'e-business' and dot.com business in the Midtown and Perimeter areas," explains Pitts. "There have been many, many warehouse/distribution locations, especially south of the airport in Henry County."

For some time now, Atlanta has been a hot spot of technology/IT/e-commerce activity, and it looks like that will continue. In 1999, Gov. Roy Barnes' new Yamacraw Mission, an initiative designed to enhance the state's leadership in electronic design and high-bandwidth communication, attracted its first partner, Star*Core, a new enterprise created by Lucent Technologies and Motorola to combine efforts in digital signal processing (DSP). As part of Star*Core's partnership with the Yamacraw Design Center, the company plans to hire 100 electronic design positions by the end of this year.

"We expect our relationship with the Mission will in many ways help us meet our aggressive plans for technology development," says Jim Boddie, executive director of the Star*Core Technology Center. "Not only will our association with the Yamacraw Mission help us attract more top talent to our design center in Georgia, but it will allow us to draw on the research and development work that is directed through the Mission to offer new and exciting technology solutions to our customers."

In other technology news, the e-business industry continues to grow at a rapid pace in Atlanta. E*Trade, a Web-based stock brokerage group, has expanded in the metro area. The online stock trader has added 100,000 sq. ft. (9,290 sq. m.) of space and 600 jobs.

Of course, the e-commerce industry's rapid growth in the past few years, coupled with Atlanta's transportation and telecom networks, has made it a hot spot for e-commerce distribution centers as well. Some of the top names that came into Atlanta last year were Amazon.com, Intelligent Systems for Retailing and Toys "R" Us. And many of these centers are locating just south of Atlanta city limits along I-75 in Henry County.

Amazon.com has obtained a highly mechanized distribution facility in the Henry County area to reduce standard shipping times to customers in key southeastern markets. The 800,000-sq.-ft. (74,322-sq.-m.) facility will be the company's largest distribution center to date, and it will employ 500 workers.

Toys "R" Us relocated from its old Atlanta facility to a new 972,000-sq.-ft. (90,302-sq.-m.) megacenter in Henry County, and S.E. Johnson Wax signed a 400,000-sq.-ft. (37,161-sq.-m.) lease there, with expansion capabilities of up to 800,000 sq. ft. (74,322 sq. m.).

North of Atlanta, in the prospering little town of Dalton, Ga., I-75 plays a key role in that economy as well. Dalton, if anyone hasn't heard, is the carpet and rug manufacturing capital of the world, producing 75 percent of the carpet and rug products in the country.

"Having the interstate run right through our community is great for the industry, because the carpet and rug industry transports its products primarily by truck," says George Woodward, president and CEO with the Dalton-Whitfield Chamber of Commerce. "So you can imagine the number of trucks that are moving in and out of this community every day."