Lufkin To Shut Down Trailer Operations
Jan 15, 2008 5:51 PM
Lufkin Industries, Inc. today announced the Board of Directors has authorized the company to suspend its participation in the commercial trailer markets it serves and to develop a plan to run-out existing inventories, fulfill current contractual obligations and to close all trailer facilities.
Lufkin Trailers is a division of Lufkin Industries Inc, which was founded in 1902 and is a vertically integrated company that designs, engineers, manufactures, sells, installs, and services oil-field equipment and power-transmission products across the globe and highway trailers in the south-central United States and Mexico.
In 1939, Lufkin got into trailers when it purchased Martin Wagon and Trailer Company.
The trailer division thrived during World War II in the form of gasoline transport semi-trailers, ordnance trailers, and mobile laundry units for the Army.
In the early 1960s, the all-aluminum dry freight van was introduced, and high-tensile floats and refrigerated vans were being built. Lufkin's lowboy-type trailers were on the drawing board. In 1969, the trailer division moved into a 345,000 square-foot manufacturing facility that it still uses today.
Lufkin, using 260 of the company's 2,744 employees, manufactures vans, flatbeds, floats, drop frames, dumps, doubles, conventional and spread axles, and specialty trailers.
