Great Dane announced Wednesday its Jonesboro, Ark., and Huntsville, Tenn., manufacturing facilities have won 2021 Plant Safety Awards from the Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association (TTMA).
Great Dane Jonesboro is the winning trailer manufacturing plant in Category A, over 750,000-man hours; Great Dane Huntsville won in Category B, 350,000-750,000-man hours.
“We are very thankful to TTMA in recognizing our two plants as the safest large and medium-sizedtrailer plants in the country. This takes the commitment of the entire team,” says Brian Sage, Great Dane executive vice president, Manufacturing.“Everyone has to be bought in and working together to create this culture. Jonesboro has won thisaward three times and Huntsville four times, which reflects the sustainability of the culture thathas been created.”
Great Dane Jonesboro employs more than 400 people and went nearly 200 days without a recordable injury in 2021. Great Dane Huntsville employs more than 350 people and went 365 days without a recordable injury or lost time incident in 2021.
“I could not be prouder of our teams for the commitment to our safety culture. In all the uncertainty brought on by the pandemic, the rapid increase in sales, significant hiring, and a highly constrained supply base, we have never taken our eye off our most important priority: the safety of our team,” Sage says.
The Jonesboro plant manufactures Great Dane’s Champion dry freight van, while the Huntsville plant manufactures Great Dane’s Freedom flatbed series. This is the third TTMA Plant Safety Award for Great Dane Jonesboro and the fourth award for Great Dane Huntsville.
Like all of Great Dane’s facilities, the company says these plants have implemented many programs in an effort to keep safety as the top priority, including strong Behavioral Based Safety (BBS) programs and GreatDane’s company-wide safety initiative, the “Think Safety First” program. This program focuses on safe working behaviors for individuals by teaching employees about the negative impacts an injury can have not only on the individual, but also on their family members and friends.
The TTMA recognizes the importance of safety and desires to acknowledge organizations that areachieving excellence in this area. Since the competition began in 1971, Great Dane has received nearly 45 awards in various categories. The Plant Safety Contest is a competition among all trailer manufacturers who are members of theTTMA. Plants are scored on the number of recordable injury rates, lost workday cases, and Days Away, Days Restricted or Days Transferred (DART) due to injuries per 100 employees. The award determinations are based on direct comparison of injury data from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Annual Summary Form 300A, TTMA says.
