Area schools participate in building challenge

Five area schools recently participated in an inaugural building event sponsored by Trail King and toured the company's Mitchell plant to learn more about manufacturing.

Participating schools included Montrose, Mitchell Career and Technical Education Academy, Hanson, Armour and Avon, according to a press release from Trail King. On Oct. 3 -- to celebrate Manufacturing Day -- the students and teachers took a tour and had an opportunity for questions and answers.

"Trail King Industries wanted to do a little something different this year to celebrate Manufacturing Day," Trail King Recruiter and Education Specialist Shane Thorstenson said in the release. "Instead of celebrating one day, Trail King decided to celebrate the whole week to focus on the importance of manufacturing and to educate people and students on what manufacturing is and the exciting career opportunities with the company."

In addition to the tour, Trail King decided to have a friendly trailer build-off competition with these schools. Each school left with an erector set, and had to build a trailer using up to 75 percent of the erector set and things lying around the school's shop. The students had three weeks to build this small scale trailer. The trailer could be one that looked like a Trail King trailer, or students could design a new concept trailer.

Once students built the trailer, they had to submit a video to Trail King that showed the trailer they built and narrated what the trailer's functions were.

The videos were submitted and judged and the inaugural competition was won by Montrose's Welding 1 class, which received a grand prize of $500 and a trophy. MCTEA finished as the competition runners-up, followed by Avon in third place, Armour in fourth and Hanson in fifth.

"Congratulations Montrose High School and to all of the other schools for a job well done," Thorstenson said. "Trail King was happy to see the excitement that this competition held with all the schools and hopes to make this competition bigger and better for the future."