Update: The Utility Trailer Manufacturing Company reopened its Glade Spring, Virginia plant on May 10, 2011. Read the full article on the reopening here.
Utility Trailer’s plant in Glade Spring, Virginia, is working hard to recover from Thursday’s devastating tornado and could start producing trailers again in four months, plant manager Jack Washburn said.
The tornado damaged the facility and 250 trailers, turning them into stacks of mangled metal and tires. Some reefers in the overflow yard also were damaged. The reefer plant up the road sustained no damage. An insurance adjuster is expected to determine the extent of the loss this week.
Washburn said some of the 340 employees will be moved to the company’s plant in Atkins, about 25 miles from Glade Spring, which is in need of more workers. The rest will remain at the Glade Spring plant to help with the cleanup. The company also is willing to pay some employees to help with the community’s recovery effort in the form of repairs and rebuilding.
The Glade Spring plant is one of the company’s five trailer manufacturing facilities across the United States. The 4000D and 4000D-X Composite dry vans are manufactured at the Glade Spring and Paragould, Arkansas, plants.
Three people in Washington County died and another 50 went to the emergency room when an EF3 tornado—blasting a 140-mph wind—passed through Glade Spring.
Washburn said he arrived at the plant at 2:30 a.m. – about 90 minutes after the EF3 tornado swept through. He said a security guard suffered a minor injury to his leg. Further injury was spared because everyone else had been sent home early at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday because of the threat of severe weather.
Washburn told TriCities.com that the damage is “really bad.”
“We have a lot of trailers that are (not) repairable, and it tossed them around like toys actually,” he said. “They were stacked three and four high with the wheels off, some of them broke in half.
“It was a hard blow, and I’m sure it was hard to all the industries around here, but Utility Trailer, the upper management, the owners, are dedicated to getting us back in production as soon as possible. This kind of is just a bump in the road for us.”