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New shift rolls at Paccar

By Tricia Duryee
Times Eastside business reporter

JIMI LOTT / THE SEATTLE TIMES, 2000 Workers put all the pieces on a Kenworth truck at the assembly line at Paccar's manufacturing plant in Renton. This month, Paccar added a new shift at the factory, the first night shift there in six years.

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The second shift started the week of June 14. Paccar hired 225 people, for a total of about 800 employees at the plant, company Treasurer Andy Wold said.

Increased truck production is a sign that the economy is rebounding.

When demand for consumer goods — from toilet paper to toothpaste — is strong, companies need more trucks to ship their products around the country.

Rising Kenworth production also means more jobs in Renton, where Boeing has cut 9,000 jobs since Sept. 11, 2001.

"There aren't many stories of job increases like this," said Alex Pietsch, economic-development administrator for Renton. "It's obviously great news for the city."

Paccar, the world's third-largest truck maker, is Renton's second-largest private employer — behind Boeing — with 1,210 employees in the city, Pietsch said. Paccar also has a Kenworth engineering-research center, a parts plant and offices in Renton.

Denis Sullivan, who represents the plant's painters, said the hiring spree has had a huge effect on the number of painters, which has nearly doubled from 50 to about 100.

"If Kenworth is hiring, it's like Christmas morning," Sullivan said. "This is huge."

When the growth is put into perspective, it's still off from the plant's peak in 1998, Sullivan said. At the time, there were three shifts and around 300 painters.

Last year, the company said it was installing automated painting machines at its truck plants, including Renton.
 
"We are closing the gap — we are making it up — but it hasn't been an overnight deal by far," Sullivan said.

The company has hired more than 180 Machinists for the second shift, giving the plant's largest union about 450 members, said Bernie Philips, a business representative with Machinists Local 79.

With the additional shift, Philips said, the plant is making about 30 trucks a day — roughly twice what it was making at the height of the recession.

The company declined to comment on how many trucks the plant builds a day.

The production increase in Renton is similar to those seen by manufacturers across the country, said Bob Costello, chief economist for the American Trucking Association.

In the first five months of this year, freight tonnage being hauled by trucks in the U.S. has increased 6.4 percent compared with a year ago, Costello said.

Truck orders are rising because more goods are being moved by truck and because companies postponed buying new trucks during the recession, Costello said.

That is in line with what Mark Pigott, Paccar's chief executive, said during the company's year-end earnings phone call in February.

He had said he expected a 10 to 15 percent increase in demand this year for heavy-duty trucks in North America.

In March, Paccar announced it had received what might be the largest order in its 98-year history.

The order for 3,000 Kenworths by Phoenix-based Interstate Equipment Leasing is to be filled in the next three years.

Most of the trucks would be built in Renton, a Kenworth spokesman said earlier this year, but some could be built at the Kenworth plant in Chillicothe, Ohio.

That large order was uncommon for Paccar, which is known for dealing with much smaller companies that need only a few trucks at a time.

Orders of all sizes are continuing to be made, Wold said.

Paccar has had to increase production at other facilities across the country and it will continue to monitor assembly rates, he said.

Tricia Duryee: 206-464-3283 or tduryee@seattletimes.com

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