Great Dane Opens Factory, Begins Work on Design Lab

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Great Dane Trailers unveiled two major expansion projects for its operations in the Savannah area last week, officially opening the doors on its ninth manufacturing plant and breaking ground for an engineering and testing facility.

The projects, which will add about 450 jobs to this area of southeastern Georgia, were announced as the national trailer sales market continues to be strong, following a recession that brought business to a virtual halt.

Officials broke ground here April 4 on a project that will create an engineering technology center for Great Dane’s design initiatives and will include a road simulator that will allow it to test trailers, truck bodies and buses.

Bill Crown, Great Dane’s CEO, said the Savannah facility will “allow us to map the future of our entire company.”

Crown, who heads the firm from its Chicago corporate headquarters, noted that Great Dane began as a pipe maker in Savannah around 1900, before evolving into a steel manufacturer and, eventually, a major trailer producer.

Crown praised Great Dane’s “cutting-edge materials and products” and told the crowd gathered at the groundbreaking that the company had produced the first refrigerated trailers ever seen in the United States.

A day earlier, Crown had presided over the ribbon-cutting that marked the official opening a 450,000-square-foot factory in Statesboro, Ga., to produce the company’s new Everest line of refrigerated trailers.

The engineering complex will be built on land surrounding Great Dane’s existing corporate offices here, adjacent to the Port of Savannah, and the project will include a renovation of the current facility.

The company said the road simulator will be the only such facility in the country and, according to Rick Mullininx, Great Dane’s executive vice president of engineering, will be capable of inflicting 10,000 miles of highway use on vehicles in about two weeks. This simulator will speed testing of designs and materials, he said.

Officials said this facility also will be used to do automated, full-scale trailer floor testing.

The 27,000-square-foot engineering building and the 5,500-square-foot simulator system are expected to be completed during 2013.

Included in the facility will be a customer center, where the company will showcase new designs and provide a showroom for its product offerings.

Employment in the Savannah complex will rise to about 180, from the current 130, officials said.

Meanwhile, the vast Statesboro plant is just gearing up to begin production. About 150 workers are currently producing one trailer a day over one shift, as the company refines its production line.

Great Dane expects to increase production to six a day in a few months and plans to build 10 trailers per shift, on two shifts a day, by next year.

At full production, the company plans to build 5,000 trailers a year, with 400 workers.

Crown said the company’s investment in the facility, about 45 miles from Savannah, showed its continuing belief that U.S. factories could be competitive with manufacturers anywhere else in the world.

The plant is building Great Dane’s Everest TL refrigerated trailer for truckload carriers and the Everest CL for foodservice companies that require multi-temperature trailers to permit mixed loads of perishables.

Crown reminded the attendees at the ribbon-cutting ceremony in Statesboro that its first refrigerated trailers in the 1940s used gas-powered blowers pushing air over ice to keep loads chilled, a far cry from current technology.

The development of such refrigerated trailers permitted the long-distance shipping of fruits and vegetables.

Great Dane also produces dry vans, reefers and platform trailers at its eight other plants in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin.