Trail King sold to Chicago company
One of the largest employers in Mitchell has been sold to a new parent company.Mitchell-based Trail King was sold Monday, the company announced Tuesday morning. Carlisle Companies Inc. sold it to CC Industries Inc., the holding and management firm of Henry Crown and Company.
Trail King President Carol Lowe, who said she will remain, termed the sale “very positive news.”
By: Tom Lawrence, The Daily Republic
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One of the largest employers in Mitchell has been sold to a new parent company.
Mitchell-based Trail King was sold Monday, the company announced Tuesday morning. Carlisle Companies Inc. sold it to CC Industries Inc., the holding and management firm of Henry Crown and Company.
Trail King President Carol Lowe, who said she will remain, termed the sale “very positive news.”
Lowe said both plants, including the Mitchell facility and one in West Fargo, N.D., will remain open. A third plant in Pennsylvania was closed and sold last year.
There are 324 employees at the Mitchell location, 225 in West Fargo and another 19 regional sales managers and support staff. All will be retained, Lowe said, as the company rebuilds its workforce in the wake of layoffs that were made during the recent economic recession. Benefits will remain the same, she said.
Local employees will learn more at two meetings today, one at 10 a.m. and the second at 5:15 p.m. CCI officials, including Bill Crown, the president and CEO, will attend the meetings.
Lowe said the sale was under discussion for a month as Carlisle Companies sought to focus on its core strengths. Trail King was the sole transportationbased firm in the company’s portfolio, Lowe said.
“It happened very quickly,” she said of the sale. “It was just the right time for Carlisle and CCI.”
Paperwork and money changed hands Monday afternoon, Lowe said. Lowe did not disclose the price, although she said that may be available later this month when Carlisle, a publicly traded company, releases required documents.
“This divestiture enables Carlisle management to more fully focus on growing our core businesses and on allocating capital where it will generate the greatest return for our share- holders,” Carlisle Chief Executive David Roberts told the Charlotte, N.C., Business Journal.
Roberts said the company made a profit in the sale but did not disclose any figures. Carlisle focuses on the construction materials, commercial roofing, specialty tire and wheel and power transmission industries.
Henry Crown and Company, based in Chicago, is privately owned. Henry Crown, who died at 94 in 1990, was a billionaire businessman and philanthropist featured in Time magazine in 1950, which referred to him as the “Midwest Midas.”
According to online accounts, Henry Crown and Company is now an investment firm with holdings including pieces of the Chicago Bulls and the New York Yankees, JPMorgan Chase, the Rockefeller Center and General Dynamics.
Mitchell Area Development Corporation Executive Director Bryan Hisel said he is following the transition closely.
“I’m going to read this as positive,” Hisel said. “We had an external owner after the Thomsen family sold, and they weathered the recession well. A lot of firms didn’t.”
He said the new owners seem more interested in Trail King’s line of production.
“I think it fits their core business,” Hisel said. “Carlisle clearly did a divestiture of their division.”
Avera Queen of Peace Health Services is the only business in town with more employees than Trail King, Hisel said. Avera has 725 employees in Mitchell.
Carlisle bought Trail King in 1995. The company was founded by Gordon and Shirley Thomsen, who combined their firm Western Ag Sales with a manufacturing company, Plains Industries, in 1974.
The company offered a trailer it dubbed Trail King and soon expanded the line. By the end of the decade, the firm chose to focus on trailers and in 1983 the name Western Ag Sales was changed to reflect the most successful part of the business: Trail King.
The company expanded and built a new plant in 1987. It was expanded in 1992 and at its peak in 2008, Trail King had about 1,000 employees, including more than 600 at the Mitchell plant.
In 1995, the Thomsen family sold the company to Carlisle, a Charlotte, N.C., firm. Jerry Thomsen, the son of the founders, remained as president until 2008, when he took a position with Carlisle for about two years. Thomsen has since retired from that position and now oversees his family’s other business interests in Mitchell.
“It wasn’t that surprising,” he said Tuesday from Rapid City, where he is coaching the Mitchell Christian School’s golf team in the state tournament. “I knew something was going on.”
Thomsen said since Carlisle didn’t deem trailers “a pillar business,” a sale seemed likely.
“I don’t know a lot about CCI,” he said. “But it’s probably a good step. I don’t view it as a bad thing.”
On Tuesday, Gordon Thomsen said he was aware of the sale but didn’t have an opinion on it. Thomsen said he has had no involvement with Trail King since selling it.
“They have a right to sell it to anybody they want,” he said.
After buying Trail King 15 years ago, Carlisle added a Materials Hauling Division to Trail King to add to the open-deck trailers the company had specialized in.
In 2000, Red River Manufacturing in West Fargo was purchased and made part of the Trail King family.
After more than three decades of growth and success, Trail King took a major hit during the Great Recession of 2007-2009, Lowe said Tuesday.
She said while most trailer businesses saw a 70 percent drop in business, Trail King’s sales dropped more than 50 percent as sales slid from about $200 million to around $65 million. Around 400 employees were laid off as the firm adapted to the slower economy, and a plant in Brookville, Pa., was closed.
But she said it has rebounded well this year, with a 30 percent uptick in sales. Many employees who were laid off were called back to work, Lowe said.
“Sales continue to grow,” Lowe said. “We still have a ways to go.”
Lowe came to Trail King in 2008. She had been a vice president and chief financial officer at Carlisle. Her North Carolina accent hints at her ties to that firm and the South, and she said she may return to Carlisle at some point. But Lowe said she plans to remain with Trail King for a while.
“I got here in 2008,” she said. “I want to be here for some of the good times.”
The ownership change may be especially beneficial, she said, since Henry Crown and Company has other properties that focus on transportation.
Those include the Gillig Corporation of Hayward, Calif., which manufactures municipal transit buses, and Great Dane Trailers of Savannah, Ga., which builds refrigerated, dry freight and platform trailers.
Dean Engelage, of CC Industries Inc., said the company is proud to have obtained Trail King.
“It’s an outstanding brand. They make a wonderful product,” Engelage said. “We’re very familiar and comfortable with cyclical industries and the transportation industry.”
He said while Trail King has endured some tough times, CCI expects it to rebound, describing the downturn as “a natural business cycle that goes anywhere from six to eight years. You have a peak and a valley.”
Engelage said Lowe has done a wonderful job keeping Trail King operating. “We anticipate strong, healthy growth in the future,” he said.
Tags: trail king, carlisle companies, cc industries, news, local, business, fccnetwork
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