By Tim Mekeel
The Intelligencer Journal/New Era
LANCASTER, Pa. — American LaFrance has pulled a U-turn.
The company has reversed plans to close its aerial ladder firetruck factory in West Earl Township.
Instead, it has kept the plant operating and added a service center but cut about four-fifths of the site’s payroll.
The recently opened service center repairs, maintains and upgrades firetrucks made by American LaFrance and other manufacturers.
“We have a lot of flexibility” with the service center and manufacturing operation at the same complex, spokesman Richard Ball said.
When manufacturing is slow, employees from the 68 Cocalico Creek Road plant can help in the service center, he explained.
“Sometimes, it’s the same person who built the truck,” Ball said.
Service manager Tim San Martin called that experience “an asset unmatched in the industry.”
American LaFrance came here about 10 years ago by purchasing Simon Ladder Towers. The local plant makes firetrucks that have aerial ladders reaching as high as 110 feet.
But the parent firm, based in Summerville, S.C., eventually fell on hard times, filing for bankruptcy reorganization in 2008. Those hard times hit the local plant too. Instead of making 100 trucks a year, volume skidded to 50, a plant official said at the time.
In April 2009, American LaFrance said it would close the site, idling all 245 workers and shifting the production done here to its headquarters.
“That was the plan, to bring everything to South Carolina,” Ball said. “But the more we looked at it, we thought that might be a short-sighted decision.”
Instead, American LaFrance cut the Ephrata work force to about 50 employees. That staffing includes 10 in the service center.
American LaFrance tested the service-center’s appeal earlier this year with by advertising in trade magazines and attending trade shows.
“We got some good business out of it. We said, ‘We think we got something here,’” Ball said.
Ball said several trends are pushing business to the service center.
The weak economy is encouraging fire companies to refurbish vehicles rather than replace them, he said.
At the same time, new national standards for firetrucks are spurring fire companies to get their vehicles updated.
Copyright 2010 Lancaster Newspapers, Inc.