Kira and I had a great time this morning joining the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association on two stops along their “Makers on the Move” Tour in honor of Manufacturing Month here in Illinois. Illinois’ manufacturing industry alone supports roughly $580 billion in annual economic impact driving investment, opportunity, and innovation across the state. We appreciate everything the manufacturing folks are doing for Illinois and our nation.
The first stop we made was at Hoffman Transportation in Coal City. In addition to their administrative offices, Coal City houses Hoffman’s full-service warehouse and transload/ packaging distribution facility. With over 420,000 square feet of warehouse dedicated to the packaging and distribution of resins and twenty packaging lines dedicated to specific resin families and colors, this facility features G&D Trucking Inc., Hoffman Transportation’s newest and most state-of-art custom warehouse management system. The Coal City location includes a rail transfer facility featuring an 800 railcar transloading capacity serviced by the Union Pacific Railroad; all railcar spots are accessible for bulk railcar transloading. It is always great to see Kevin Hoffman and Jordan Hoffman!
We then drove to Channahon and rode on the “Makers on the Move” bus a few miles down the road to Lion Electric in Channahon. This innovative manufacturer of zero-emission vehicles designs and manufactures all-electric school buses, midi/minibuses for special needs or urban transit as well as urban trucks. Lion is a leading OEM in transportation electrification in North America! We were able to take a peek at the assembly line of the buses – very neat! They told us that this facility was just a slab of concrete a year and a half ago – amazing!
