Monday, October 19, 2009 -Trail King Industries laid off another 32 workers recently in Mitchell, according to a company official. The new round of layoffs raised the total number of publicly announced layoffs at the local plant to 149 since December.
Chuck Noel, vice president of finance, said the most recent layoffs equated to 12 percent of the workforce at the Mitchell plant. That means the plant will be left with about 235 employees.
“It’s a matter of a lack of demand, actually from all markets,” Noel said. “Whether it be construction or any other markets we serve, they’re all pretty much down. So we’re trying to balance out our production staff with customer demand.”
Noel said all of the newly laid off employees will be eligible for recall over the next six months if demand increases.
Trail King is a specialty trailer manufacturer with plants in Mitchell and West Fargo, N.D. It’s a wholly owned subsidiary of Carlisle Companies, which is a publicly traded, global manufacturing company.
Noel said no new layoffs were conducted at the West Fargo plant, but previously imposed furloughs for workers there have been extended.
News of the Mitchell layoffs came just days after South Dakota government officials reported 1,407 jobs have been saved or created by the federal government’s economic stimulus program. At Trail King, the impact from the stimulus has been less than expected.
“We thought that the second half might be a little stronger than the first this year due to the stimulus funds,” he said, “but we really haven’t seen that.”
Trail King is “doing a lot of quoting” around the world, Noel said, and the company remains optimistic about the future.
“We’re thinking that the second half of next year will be stronger,” he said.
