Earlier this year, Carter Logistics predicted 100 employees would work at its new Stonequarry Crossings distribution hub.

But since the hub started operating in May, its workforce has grown to 146 employees, John Paugh, Carter Logistics president and chief executive, said Thursday.

And the site — dubbed a “cross dock” for the way material is moved from one side of the 143,000-square-foot building to the other — may employ 300 people, depending on market conditions and demand, Paugh said. Paugh noted that one of the company’s similar but smaller facilities in Anderson, Ind. employs 600 people.

“It’s the crossroads of America,” Paugh said. Interstates 75 and 70 “are right there, and also with the (Dayton International) airport at our back door.”

The airport is important because it provides a shipping option in the event the crossdock needs it, Paugh said. But when it came to deciding to build in Vandalia, Paugh also credited the way local officials pursued the development.

“Vandalia just really wanted us,” Paugh said.

The 150-dock Capstone Way facility was built with the help of a $200,000 Montgomery County ED/GE (Economic Development/Government Equity) grant and a 50 percent Ohio job creation tax credit valued at $404,000 over six years.

The $6 million facility faced a number of challenges on the way to Thursday’s official opening. The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan hampered Toyota, a key Carter customer, and Hitachi Transport System, which has controlling ownership of Carter Logistics. Over Labor Day weekend 2011, a windstorm knocked down much of the crossdock structure then under construction, delaying by five months what was supposed to be a late December 2011 opening.

Carter employs what it calls a “milk run network,” serving manufacturers that rely on lean manufacturing practices — low inventories and lots of relatively small, just-in-time shipments.

Kazuhiro Miyauchi, an executive vice president with Toyota Motor Engineering and Manufacturing North America, visited the Vandalia site Thursday and cited it as an example of the kind of “teamwork” the automaker relies on to get parts and components to its North American assembly operations.

“Toyota relies on (Carter Logistics) every day in our supplier base,” Miyauchi said.

Local officials noted that White Castle is building a food processing plant, also in Stonequarry Crossings, and that the crossdock is yet another distribution site in an area seeing a growing number of similar facilities built by Caterpillar, Payless Shoe Source and others.