WAVELAND, Ind. -- It happens every spring.
Birds chirp. Bees buzz. Skies seem bluer. Grass is greener.
And just like clockwork, it’s time to roll out the lawn mowers ...
For Dixie Chopper that means the start of a new era in distribution this spring. For the first time, all of its zero-turn mowers -- from the new Iron Eagle to the stately Xcaliber -- are rolling out from the new Dixie Chopper Distribution Center in southwestern Montgomery County, Indiana.
"Not only is our new warehouse an investment in the future of Dixie Chopper," General Manager Jeff Haltom said, "but it is an upgrade to our logistical approach to product movement. The addition of this new warehouse enables us to better serve our dealers as we continue to grow. We believe that is money well spent."
The 150,000-square-foot Dixie Chopper Distribution Center sits on a 30-acre site at the northeast corner of State Roads 47 and 59. The Waveland warehouse is a joint venture with Recycled Goods and Trucking Co. (RGT), owned and operated by the father-and-son trucking tandem of Ralph and Shane Jones.
The facility houses the offices of RGT but the majority of its space provides for the logistical staging and distribution of Dixie Chopper mowers.
Dixie Chopper -- known as the “World’s Fastest Lawn Mower” -- builds zero-turn mowers at Greencastle and Coatesville plants in adjacent Putnam County. RGT is the exclusive trucking firm for Dixie Chopper, which has dealerships in all 50 states and Canada.
Currently, 17 semis in RGT’s 24-rig fleet load and transport only Dixie Choppers. Until the new distribution center opened, the mower manufacturing company had been leasing warehouse space in an old auto parts factory on Greencastle’s East Side.
“The trucks now will be able to load and go from a true distribution center,” Ralph Jones said, pointing to a dock area where six bays accommodate semis coming and going.
The distribution center represents a $4 million investment benefiting not only RGT and Dixie Chopper, but the Town of Waveland and even the Montgomery County commissioners, who were aggressive enough to extend tax abatement on the project. The building itself represents a $2.3 million construction job with another $1.2 million in site preparation and other costs involved in concrete, stone, a retention pond and a mammoth propane tank.
The Joneses also see the potential for growth, possibly even receiving and transporting goods for Dixie’s various vendors.
The RGT staff could grow as well with additional employment seen in such areas as warehouse personnel, security and office workers. RGT, which Ralph and Shane Jones started in Greencastle in 1992 while operating Refuse Handling Services as the city’s trash service and waste transfer station, has grown to 25 employees since moving to Waveland in 1994.
The RGT-Dixie Chopper relationship dates back that far as well.
“We started by hauling the trash out there,” Ralph Jones said of the original Dixie Chopper site near Fillmore. “We’ve been the logistical facility for Dixie Chopper in excess of 10 years now. When they sell mowers, we haul them.”
And to do so they use two-level trailers with special hydraulics designed for Dixie Chopper -- and fabricated by RGT in its garage facility in Waveland -- to haul an average of 20 mowers per load (and as many as 38 at one time).
Dixie Chopper, as Shane Jones points out, was the first mower manufacturer to ship and deliver its product uncrated. Mowers are driven off the semi and onto the dealer’s showroom floor, foregoing the need for final assembly as well as the unsightly storage and disposal of wooden crates.
“We ship for Dixie Chopper all over the United States and Canada,” Ralph Jones noted. “We physically ship mowers via RGT and we arrange for anything sent out of the country.”
And as Dixie Chopper has grown -- from its first mowers built in 1980 to nearly 100,000 units now in the field -- so has RGT. Consider it keeping up by the Joneses.
“For every thousand mowers Dixie Chopper grows, we need to add another truck,” the elder Jones said. “So if they experience 10 percent growth, so do we.”
And the Joneses believe in the relationship so much that they have purchased 20 acres of ground off Interstate 75 in Dooley County, Georgia, for development of a future Dixie Chopper distribution center in that area of the country as well.
|
