Stoughton Trailers has announced its plan for expanded intermodal chassis production. In 2022, Stoughton will begin manufacturing chassis products in Waco, Texas. The new Waco facility will add additional chassis capacity to Stoughton’s already expanding chassis production capacity in Wisconsin, the company says. In December of 2021, Stoughton installed a new chassis production line at its Stoughton, Wis., facility.
As part of its future chassis production plan, Stoughton purchased a parcel of land in Waco and is building a new manufacturing facility to further expand chassis production capacity and tap into alternative labor markets.
The company says the construction of the Waco facility is already underway and expected to be completed quickly. Stoughton anticipates moving equipment into the new facility by March and beginning chassis manufacturing by early second quarter. The new production facility is expected to employ up to 125 people.
In addition, the company has recently added a new chassis production line in the Stoughton, Wis., facility. Once ramped up to full production, the company expects to employ an additional 150 people in the Stoughton plant assembling chassis and manufacturing components to feed the other chassis production lines.
When the Waco, Stoughton and Evansville facilities are operating at capacity, the collective output of all three facilities will increase the run rate to approximately 20,000 to 25,000 chassis per year, hitting that rate by September 2022.
“The new Waco facility and Stoughton production line will help fulfill our customer production commitments for 2022 and beyond,” says Stoughton President and CEO Bob Wahlin. “By the end of 2022, the company will have invested $25 million dollars expanding our chassis production capacity. These investments would not have been possible without the remedial relief provided by the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on chassis from China. I would like to thank our facilities, operations and chassis team members for their hard work to date on these important projects.”
The new Waco location provides Stoughton Trailers with convenient access to the many seaports, railyards and chassis customer locations in the southern tier of the United States, the company says.
