 Eventually, more efficient fossil fuels substituted for wood-based charcoal, and “the semi-feudal iron plantation was replaced by the urban establishment and the company town” typically possessing a coke furnace.The lack of nearby ore deposits additionally limited many plantations from being able to economically transport large quantities of ore over long distances to be smelted on the plantations themselves.Wagon transport of bar and pig iron to cities further added to costs and could run as high as forty percent of the market price per ton of pig iron in 1728, according to John Potts, a member of an iron plantation in Pennsylvania.