TELL CITY, IN (Mar. 30, 2005) – Webb Wheel Products has opened a new 100,000-sq-ft plant in southwestern Indiana dedicated to manufacturing and assembling high-volume hubs and brake drums for tractor and trailer OE manufacturers.

It will also house the headquarters of the company’s recently formed OEM Business Unit, led by general manager Kent Finkbiner. Limited production has started at the highly automated new facility, which will ramp up to full capacity in the next few weeks.

Finkbiner says the plant came from ground-breaking to production in just nine months, and the training of its 48 employees only began last November. All but a handful of them were hired locally and had no prior experience in a machining environment. The factory will employ 82 people when it’s up to full production levels.

Manufacturing vice president David Link, a 22-year Webb veteran, notes that the plant is equipped with the very latest machining technology to provide consistently precise tolerances. Uniquely, hubs produced in Tell City are powder-coated to improve corrosion resistance. Drums are painted with a new environmentally benign process that produces a very finished looking product, and they’re automatically balanced during the machining process.

The presence of the Waupaca foundry right next door means castings arrive at the plant at the end of a very short supply chain.

The OEM business focus is new to Webb, based in Cullman, Alabama, which has traditionally had an aftermarket concentration. The company has been reorganized into three separate units to target OEM business and the transit industry as well as the aftermarket. Finkbiner says he and his group have been building not just a plant but also the OE business unit from scratch. The only resource it shares with other Webb divisions is the engineering department.

Finkbiner is also president of the OE trailer enterprise, while Ed Wentz has the same position on the OE truck side of the fence. Planning is underway for a separate, stand-alone truck facility to open in 2006. At that point the Tell City factory will be dedicated to trailer products.