One business in Greene County recently shared some of the obstacles they are facing and how it’s keeping them from delivering their product to their customers globally.
Scranton Manufacturing/New Way is a garbage truck manufacturer and during a visit from Iowa’s Fourth Congressional District Representative Randy Feenstra and Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton learned about the company’s issues with high inflation, labor shortage, and their biggest problem is with supply chain disruptions. Vice President of Sales and Marketing for New Way Trucks and McLaughlin Family Companies Don Ross says specifically it’s the truck chassis they aren’t able to get and it’s mostly caused them to have a 2,000 truck production backlog.
“That’s the biggest part component that we receive that really allows us to kick off the manufacturer of the body that we put on that chassis. We see some hydraulic parts disruptions at times, we see electronic disruption supply chain at times, but it all comes together in a truck chassis and that’s probably the biggest impact for us right now.”
The largest refuse manufacturer in North America that also has clients in Mexico and Canada, Ross would also like the federal government to repeal the excise tax, which is a 12-percent tax on heavy equipment to private companies.
“That would just free up more capital for those companies to buy more trucks and be able to replace their fleets quicker, which ultimately gets us to cleaner burning diesel trucks (and) more efficient things, which I think at the end of the day is really what the mission is, is to try to get to newer fleets on the road from an air quality perspective.”
Both Feenstra and Cotton are working to curb federal spending to try and drive down the high rates of inflation and they want the Biden Administration to help lower energy costs as well.
