Keystone RV Buys Fleetwood Plant

Share

By Kyle Trompeter

Summary

"We want to expand on the west coast. This is the first step towards that. It's logical since we're already in Pendleton to do expansion over here," said Keystone RV Manager Loren Schmucker.

Story Published: Nov 12, 2009 at 6:07 PM PST

"We want to expand on the west coast. This is the first step towards that. It's logical since we're already in Pendleton to do expansion over here," said Keystone RV Manager Loren Schmucker.

That expansion is the purchase of the Fleetwood property. It's been sitting silent since Fleetwood went bankrupt in March. Meanwhile, Keystone has hired over 100 new people over the last three months,
and they are getting new facilities, which is unusal for winter months.

"It's an odd time of year as we've heard for RV's expanding. Currently here in Pendleton, we're working five days a week with full production. Plus with the Fleetwood acquisition, we're still continuing expanding," said Schmucker.

The aggressive expansion has staff smiling about things like job security.

"There is definitely excitement. We've had quite a few people that are happy when we announced that the deal was final. They're excited," said Schmucker.

So for the next several months, it's preparation time.

"Short term we're just going to be retooling, obviously. Our production practices are different than most. We're just going to be getting ready for production in the spring of 2010," said Schmucker.