Lower Macungie plant filling demand for heavy-duty vehicles.
April 16, 2005
Mack Trucks has boosted employment at its Lower Macungie Township plant by nearly 28 percent over the past 15 months as it prepares to add a second production shift, the company said.
Mack spokesman Bob Martin said the Lehigh Valley's largest manufacturing employer had 975 workers at the plant at the end of last month. That's up from 916 people at the start of the year, and 762 on Jan. 1, 2004.
Mack, which is owned by Volvo AB of Sweden, makes construction and trash trucks in Lower Macungie.
Demand has been strong for those vehicles, particularly for the new line of Granite construction trucks, officials said. Mack officials are adding the second shift to make up a backlog estimated at about 14,000 trucks.
''The demand has been really extraordinary, really at historically high levels for Mack,'' Martin said.
Mack announced the second shift in February and has hired workers to staff it, though production will not start until next month, Martin said. This will be the first time in the 30-year history of the Lower Macungie plant that Mack will operate a second shift.
The plant can make about 80 trucks per day. The second shift will add 20 percent to 25 percent, or up to 20 trucks a day, to that capacity, Martin said.
Martin credited the sales boom to a stronger economy. Customers are more willing to replace their truck fleets, or parts of their fleets, than they were just two or three years ago, he said.
''The absolute overriding factor in this is what I would term the brightening of the economic outlook in the United States,'' he said.
Industry analysts have also said customers are rushing to buy trucks to avoid tighter environmental regulations that take effect next year.
Mack delivered 25,469 trucks last year, 34.1 percent more than the year before. In December, 2,668 trucks were delivered, a 43 percent increase over the same month a year before and the highest monthly total in years.
Volvo President Leif Johansson has said he expects the North American heavy-duty truck market to grow 15 to 20 percent this year. He expects the market for construction equipment to grow 5 to 10 percent.
Mack also has a headquarters and testing facility in Allentown. It ranks as the sixth-largest employer in Lehigh and Northampton counties, with 2,100 workers at the end of last year.
Other Mack plants also are adding workers. Over the past 15 months, employment at Mack's power-train plant in Hagerstown, Md., has risen from 1,247 people to 1,522, a 22 percent increase, Martin said.
A plant in New River Valley, Va., that makes both Mack and Volvo-brand trucks employs about 3,000 people, up from 2,200 a year ago, spokesman Jim McNamara said. Most of those new jobs were added last year to handle production increases, he said.
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