New Travis Body & Trailer expansion eases capacity concerns

When the market demands more than your plant can produce, it’s like sitting down for a big meal. You see more than you can possibly eat, but that doesn’t keep you from wanting dessert. After years of tight capacity, Travis Body & Trailer is ready to gobble up more—as much as 50% more.

That’s because the Houston, Texas, trailer manufacturer has completed a multi-phase expansion program that will enable the company to more effectively meet demand. With both Phase 1 and Phase 2 now in operation, Travis has increased capacity from 800 specialty trailers a year to 1,200.

“We have increased our production footprint by 50%,” says C K “Bud” Hughes, president. “Our goal, then, is to use that space to build 50% more trailers.”

Travis has made two moves that make the entire plant more productive. The first is a 70-ft x 330-ft finishing building, a structure that centralizes multiple operations that had been scattered throughout the company’s campus. The new building has been operational since the middle of 2015. With the emphasis on fabrication and major assembly at the company’s main production building, the finishing building plays a key role in turning a large metal structure into a trailer by adding electrical, hydraulics, and even wheels and tires.

The second phase of the expansion project was a 150-ft extension of its main production building, creating an additional 18,000 square feet of production space that Travis has been using since the first of this year.

The net effect of the two expansion projects is like loosening your belt after eating a big meal. It’s not just the immediate tight spot that gets relief. Everything around it feels more comfortable.

“Adding on to the end of our building enabled us to add to our entire production lines,” Hughes says. “We generally allow 15 feet by 50 feet for our stations. That gives us three feet to work on either side of an eight-foot-wide trailer. So depending on the specific assembly line, we can add three stations as a result of this extension.”

The Travis plant produces multiple types of trailers and employs multiple assembly lines to do so. The company has dedicated lines to build aluminum bottom dump trailers, another for transfer trailers, and a third for its Alumatech half-round end dump trailers. Everything else—primarily aluminum frameless and frame-style end dumps—can flow down the company’s primary assembly lines.

“The expansion had added more than capacity, it also made the plant more flexible,” Hughes says. “In the subassembly and floors departments, we added six more stations in each area. In the floors department, we centralized common floor types and located materials typical to those types, facilitating continuous work flow and reducing movement of materials.

Travis also added two robotic welders to help boost production.