There’s a lot of history in Marion, N.C.
The town of about 7,000 people is in the western part of the state, touching the Blue Ridge Mountains. It gets its name from Brig. Gen. Francis Marion, the Revolutionary War hero known as the Swamp Fox and played by Mel Gibson in “The Patriot.”
It was home to one of two survivors from the Battle of Little Bighorn and to a member of the third U.S. Congress.
And, for 40 years, it’s been home to Haldex and SAF-Holland’s remanufacturing plant.
Located in former piano factory, the Marion plant turns out reconditioned, like-new core parts for commercial vehicles, including ABS valves, air disc brake calipers, air dryers, compressors, hydraulic brake calipers and water pumps.
Brent Dinger is the remanufacturing product manager for Haldex. He, Director of Operations Nathan Duncan and Plant Manager Jamie Wilkins, along with more than 60 of the plant’s employees, welcomed distributors, customers, partners and local dignitaries to the plant in late May to mark the anniversary.
“I was really unsure when I left the company I’d been with for 15 years, coming on board and starting something totally new,” Dinger says. “The first time I came to Marion and started meeting the people, I knew it was the right decision.”
The Marion workforce remanufactures parts to provide sustainable, affordable solutions for parts and components. It also gives SAF-Holland a leg up when outside threats break supply chains.
“Haldex Reman in Marion is a cornerstone of our company’s success and sustainability efforts,” Duncan says. “We’re incredibly proud of the people, partnerships and progress that have shaped the last 40 years, and we’re excited for the future as we continue to support our customers with the quality and reliability they expect from Haldex.”
Chuck Abernathy is the economic development director for McDowell County, N.C. He says 70% of new job creation comes from companies already in the community, like Haldex in Marion.
“A successful community is one that pays attention to who they already have,” he says. And while he would love to talk to companies about relocating to McDowell County, he celebrates the remanufacturing plant’s 40 years in business. “We are a blue-collar, manufacturing community.”
It’s the employees who make the anniversary possible, Dinger says.
Duncan got emotional when talking about his North Carolina workforce and the challenges it faced during 2024’s Hurricane Helene, which devastated the region. Even though he also oversees Arkansas and South Carolina, Marion is home.
“This storm brought challenges that seemed insurmountable, both in our home lives and our work lives,” he says. “Some of us were without electricity for weeks, drinking water for weeks.”
Duncan himself lives 30 minutes from the plant, but it took him two hours to make it to the facility because of the destruction.
Three days after the storm, a team of Haldex employees gathered at the plant.
“God blessed us that day,” he says. “Because the power came on while we were standing in the parking lot.”
The facility wasn’t damaged. Wilkins, a single mother with two children, was evacuated from her home. From two hours away, she assembled a team to account for everyone on the payroll.
“We’re talking to everyone and they’re like, ‘When can we go back to work?,” Duncan says.
The storm hit on Sept. 26. By Oct. 1, the plant was running again.
“It wasn’t easy,” Duncan says. “We still didn’t have any Internet. We went old-school and started building parts.”
The Marion plant joined forces with the South Carolina plants to get parts out the door. They called it the Pony Express.
“These folks’ story doesn’t end there,” Duncan says. Just a few weeks later, the plant had an ISO audit with zero findings and zero observations. A perfect audit, which Duncan says he had never seen in 21 years. A few weeks after that, they had a full physical inventory with a 99.1% accuracy rate.
“I hope this makes you proud,” Duncan says to local representatives. “This is who you represent. To our customers, I hope this leaves you with a sense of security. We have proven we’ll get the job done.”
The plant isn’t just saving the people of McDowell County. It’s also helping save the planet.
“The circular economy provides us with efficient use of materials,” Duncan says, creating room and resources for innovation.
With the data available, spanning only about half the time the plant has been open, Duncan says it has remanufactured more than 1 million air compressors and more than 2 million air dryers. The process reintroduced at least 36 million lbs., of cast iron, 14 million lbs., of steel and 2 million lbs., of aluminum. That adds up to 50,000 tons of carbon dioxide avoidance.
“We’ve been green before being green was cool,” he says.
Over the last 10-15 years, the plant expanded to specialty OEM equipment, a role the plant and its employees were uniquely qualified to fill, Duncan says.
“Most OE plants don’t want to build them because they’re very customizable,” he says. “These products landed well here because when you work at a remanufacturing site, your mind is basically variable. The world is full of variables.”
