School bus maker closing Arkansas plant

By KYLE ARNOLD World Staff Writer - 11/6/2009


School-bus maker IC Corp. is shuttering an Arkansas assembly plant and moving the work to Tulsa, but the closure won’t mean any new jobs here, at least for now.

Management broke the news to workers in Conway, Ark., on Thursday.

A company spokesman cited the economic downturn and tighter budgets at school districts across the nation.

“The market is very, very slow and school districts aren’t ordering many buses,” said Roy Wiley, a spokesman for IC Corp.’s parent company, Warrenville, Ill.-based Navistar Inc.

The closure affects up to 477 employees in Conway, he said, and the plant could start layoffs as early as Jan. 4.

Wiley said the company chose to keep the Tulsa factory open because it is newer, having started operations in 2000.

The Conway plant is more than 40 years old, he said. However, the company has been manufacturing buses in Conway since the 1930s.

Wiley said moving to one assembly facility will help cut duplication, and the newer technology in Tulsa will make production more efficient. The Tulsa plant is also larger, with about 1,000 employees who assemble more than 10,000 buses each year.

IC Corp. has a bus-parts fabrication plant in Conway that it plans to keep open.

While Wiley said the company would not immediately increase its employment at the Tulsa factory, located at 2322 N. Mingo Road, it will be the company’s only school bus assembly facility, so more workers could be hired if orders rise.

“At some point in time when schools get money, we’ll increase production and hire some temporary workers, but not right now,” he said.





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