YOUNGSTOWN — Dan Crouse, who does sales and leasing for the Ohio Commerce Center in Lordstown, wanted executives with Lordstown Motors Corp. to know the railyard at the center is “uniquely set up” to offload material from cars.
It’s a feature, Crouse said, that’s not available at the yard that serviced the former General Motors assembly plant in Lordstown, now owned by Lordstown Motors.
“It’s good to load up cars and ship them out, but our place is uniquely set up for handling product off of a side of a car,” Crouse said. “What we are hoping to do is look at their inbound supply chain and see where we can help them.”
About a mile separates the two properties.
“If you look at getting a shipping container in from Cleveland, off the rail, onto a truck and driving it down then unloading it and sending it back, that’s a four-and-a-half-hour process,” Crouse said. “With us, it’s a four-minute process to drive it down and then whatever the offload time is and then send it back. We think we can more efficiently, cost effectively, handle their freight.”
Crouse was among 450 to 500 people on Wednesday at Stambaugh Auditorium to meet with Lordstown Motors officials, learn about the company and find out what the company needs as it continues to ready itself to begin production later this year of its all-electric Endurance pickup truck.
It was the first of two procurement meetings set up by the Youngstown Warren Regional Chamber to link factory and automotive suppliers to Lordstown Motors. The second for automotive suppliers is 8 to 10 a.m. Tuesday, also at Stambaugh.
“Amazing turnout,” said Sarah Boyarko, chief operating officer for the chamber, which offers the procurement service for all its members. “We sold out the event, so we are looking at probably a similar result or similar picture for next week as well. Today’s event was for the suppliers and service providers for the facility, so those folks that would be working on the equipment and providing services around the building.”
In addition to the firms across the region and Ohio, 10 were from other states and two were international, Boyarko said.
“The chamber has done a phenomenal job. All of our people have been working closely with them. We’ve provided them with lists of people we know, but clearly there is a ton of regional and local people who have been involved with this factory in one way or another over the years and we don’t even know them,” said John LaFleur, Lordstown Motors’ chief operating officer.
“We wanted to introduce ourselves to the Valley and the Valley introduce themselves to us,” he said.
Scott Corum, sales manager with Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Browne Laboratories Inc., said the industrial water treatment company already works with the likes of Kia, Tesla and Volkswagen, and wants to partner with Lordstown Motors.
One of the services is recycling water used in the paint process to catch overspray.
“We remove the paint from the water so you can recycle it … and therefor you can just keep recycling the water,” Corum said. “Take the paint out, make it safe and it goes right into the landfill.”
Another company there was QSS in Youngstown, owned by mechanical engineer by trade Kevin J. Soltis, and David J. Trevas, a liaison for Aptiv who lost his job at Lordstown when General Motors idled the plant.
“We want to be a partner with whoever comes in on issues qualitywise that would come up …,” said Trevas, who now travels to Lansing, Mich., to work as a customer support engineer for Aptiv. “And also provide liaisons for the facility for suppliers that don’t have persons on site, so we could be there eyes.”
