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Sometimes, business is too good Photo by Jim Craven Ray Wernli, a painter at Highway Products, puts a coating on metal sheets used in the construction of the company's tool boxes. The company is building a new plant that will bring separate operations together and allow it to grow. Highway Products has outgrown its truck toolbox plant By DAVID PRESZLER CENTRAL POINT -- Highway Products owner Gene Gros has one of those pleasant problems. Gros Sales at his tool box manufacturing company are so strong that its 50 employees can hardly keep up. "Right now, we are having a hard time providing the product," he says. "Sales are coming in faster than we can make them." And the two buildings the company now fills aren't big enough to expand operations much. "We just don't have any room for more people," he says. "We don't have a place to put new machinery." So Gros is building a 50,000-square-foot plant on 8 acres at 7905 Agate Road that he hopes to move the company into in June. He's acting as the general contractor on the project, which began in November. The building will allow the company to bring its operations under one roof and grow. The manufacturing floors at its Crater Lake Highway headquarters and the White City building it's leasing are about 34,000 square feet. Having operations split has made for a lot of trips between the two and redundancies such as two foremen and extra shipping and handling clerks. Once the new building is complete, those workers will return to other tasks and the company can hire a half dozen or so new employees. The new plant will allow the company to make better use of space because it will have an open design. "It'll allow us to be a lot more efficient," says Gros, motioning to the multi-room floor of the Crater Lake Highway building. ``All these walls screw up your flow." Between the land and new building, Gros expects to spend about $1.2 million on the plant. He also plans to buy several hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment. "I've been trying to do it for about five years," Gros says of the expansion, adding that finding the right piece of land was difficult. Gros founded the company in 1980 in Central Point. Sales have grown steadily at 5 to 10 percent a year to about $3 million annually, he says. The company's staple product is a line of heavy-duty aluminum tool boxes for everything from pickups to semi trucks. It made about 7,000 tool boxes last year, 40 to 50 percent of which were custom-designed -- a service that distinguishes the company from competitors. It also makes guards that fit behind the cabs of semis to protect drivers in case of load shifts as well as recreational vehicle tow bodies that are attached to pickups. Highway Products is launching two new products in conjunction with the expanded plant: aluminum "flatbeds" and utility bodies. Both take the place of traditional beds on pickups and trucks. The company's products are sold nationwide and in Canada. Locally, they are available at Advanced Truck Body and Equipment in Central Point. Gros says a third of sales are to pickup owners, a third to semi-truck owners and a third to truck manufacturers, who incorporate the products into their own. As for the existing headquarters at 6241 Crater Lake Highway, Gros says his company has already agreed to sell the property to Bolton Powerboats, a White City company formerly known as Eagle Powerboats. Mike Bolton, who owns Bolton Powerboats, says his nine-employee company also plans to expand after the move. He says being right on the highway will help the company get more exposure. Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA Budget Website Hosting Medford Cars for Sale Cheap Website Templates Ashland Daily Tidings Reservationstogo Hotel Reservations Free Home-Loan Referrals Southern Oregon Homes Realestate Showcase Southern Oregon Jobs Online Classifieds Search Rogue Valley Entertainment Guide