Crown shows off added space to touring Chamber members

Speaking to a Greater Greencastle Chamber of Commerce luncheon tour group, Crown Equipment Corp. Plant Manager Scott Spear explains some of the products and facilities at the firm's Indianapolis Road facility that has more than doubled in physical size over the past year.

Some 40 members of the Greater Greencastle Chamber of Commerce got a glimpse of Crown Equipment Corp.'s expanded facilities Tuesday during a luncheon program at the East Side manufacturing plant.

Crown Plant Manager Scott Spear pointed out that the building was originally 180,000 square feet when Crown acquired the former Sherwin-Williams facility on Indianapolis Road.

The recent plant expansion "has nearly doubled the size of the facility," he said.

The focus now until 2014 will be rearranging operations inside the plant to best maximize the current space, he said.

Crown, which is headquartered in New Bremen, Ohio, is a privately held company that produces electric and internal combustion (propane-powered) forklift trucks and small stock pickers.

The Crown workforce in Greencastle has grown to 445 employees during 2012 after opening in 1996 with a mere 24 employees.

"Mainly it was transplants from New Bremen, and June," Spear said in reference to HR Director June Pickens who has been with the Greencastle plant since its beginning.

By the year 2000, two years after introducing the Wave small stock picker as a Greencastle-made product, the Crown employment ranks had swelled to 235.

In 2001, manufacture of the high-volume SC series, a three-wheel electric counterbalance sit-down truck, was transferred from New Bremen to Greencastle. With that on site, by 2008, the Crown workforce had jumped to 300 employees.

Today, the C5 product series, featuring an internal combustion propane-powered John Deere engine, has driven much of the growth of the facility, Spear noted.

The C5 is a sit-down forklift used worldwide that has helped Crown grow its market and necessitated the Greencastle expansion effort.

Also currently being built in the local plant is the four-wheel sit-down counterbalance truck, known as the FC series.

In leading one of three Chamber of Commerce tours Tuesday, Crown official Dan Boatright said when he started with the company, he thought "a fork truck is a fork truck is a fork truck."

However, Crown offers any number of variations to its models.

"Comfort, ergonomics, and the speed at which they work are all important to somebody," he said.

As Chamber officials toured the plant, Boatright said interior changes to the sparkling-clean facility are on the horizon.

"Everything you're looking at today is all going to move in the next 24-36 months," he said.