Nice story in the Seattle Times this morning about Genie Industries in Moses Lake.
MOSES LAKE — There are no 18- or 20-story buildings in this Central Washington flatlands town.
To get 180 feet above ground level, you could
board one of the Boeing 787s or Air Force C-17s that fly out of Grant County
International Airport.
Or you could just hop onto the work platform
of the SX-180 telescopic boom lift that Genie Industries builds here and ride
straight up into the sky. The self-propelled boom, billed as the
farthest-reaching such machine in the world, will smoothly carry you nearly
twice as high as the airport’s control tower.
If Genie is Moses Lake’s Boeing — and in many
ways it is — then the SX-180 is Genie’s Dreamliner.
The company’s engineers began designing the
machine more than three years ago to leapfrog the competition’s 150-foot boom
lift by a decisive margin. Innovations developed along the way are already
being incorporated into other equipment painted in Genie’s signature baby-blue.
The first SX-180 will be delivered next month,
say executives at Genie, which forms the Aerial Work Platforms unit of
heavy-equipment builder Terex. Despite the price tag of $631,580, Genie says it
has a full order book from around the globe and plans to build one SX-180 a
day, four days a week.
The Moses Lake plant, which builds the SX-180
and other boom lifts, surged back to life with the economy’s rebound. It now
employs 1,200 employees, up from 250 workers during the recession’s depths.
For the rest of the article, click here.
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