WALNUT — TCI Manufacturing of Walnut has expanded three times in the last decade to 100,000 square feet at the company’s facility located on the west edge of Walnut on Route 92.

“Since we build a variety of items for different industries, the company’s diversity between custom and standard product lines helps, “ said TCI General Manager Jack Ackerman. “It protects us. That is not by accident. It is by design. There has been some strategic planning to get us to that point. We feel we are in a great position because of our diversity.”

In 2000, Mike Maynard started TCI. In 2007, the company had its first major expansion followed by another expansion in 2012. In 2016, it expanded again by 30,000 square feet, consisting of 100,000 square feet of total manufacturing space under one roof.

“We are a little congested right now,” he said. “It will be good to spread out a little.”

The company will move into its latest expansion area in the next few weeks. Walnut got behind the company after its plans to move to Princeton fell through, added Ackerman.

“We want to grow every year and are planning our next expansion on property across the road we bought recently,” he said. “We have added to bookkeeping, engineering and estimator departments plus salesmen, production personnel (welders, assemblers and fabricators).”

TCI has three shifts with the second and third shifts enhancing its first shift capabilities by painting and/or cutting and burning parts to keep fabricators working on the first shift. There are fewer people working the second and third shifts, but the company has plans to grow those shifts as well, reported Ackerman.

“Around 70 people are employed at the facility, a 15 percent increase in one year. We have no intention of stopping that growth,” he said.

“By design, we are very diverse. When Mike first started the company, the primary focus was construction aggregates. That is for limestone quarries and gravel pits making concrete, stone and asphalt. When the country is growing, they are building roads, bridges and stores, housing developments, etc. When those areas are growing, our company builds the equipment for those companies in that industry,” stated Ackerman.

The boom in fracking industry throughout the past four to five years has also helped TCI out after construction aggregate slowed down in 2008. With the fracking industry taking off, the need for silica sand was huge and the companies that extracted the sand from the ground was huge for TCI, added Ackerman.

TCI was able to make the products used to extract the sand for oil fracking companies. The Utica sand plant on Interstate 80 was all done at TCI including the conveyors, silos, bucket elevators and all the structures. Other plants in the area like Fairmount Minerals in Wedron and plants in Ohio, Texas, Michigan, Oklahoma and the Dakotas were all constructed at TCI.

“The fracking industry is going downhill because OPEC has flooded the American market with cheap oil due to fracking making this country the largest exporter of natural gas in the world,” he said. “TCI and its employee are better off when gas prices are higher because more people are being hired, and the company is expanding operations when our company is going well. When the company isn’t doing well, there are layoffs and no investments in expansion. There is a real trade off because gas prices at $3.50 a gallon will be good for the TCI and the local economy. Silica sand companies indicate when crude oil is at $60 a barrel or higher, it becomes profitable for fracking oil companies to drill, he added.”

Ackerman, who has been employed at TCI for eight years in the sales and estimator departments, was promoted to general manager in the last year. Maynard is still president of the company. Ackerman had worked 23 years in construction before started working at TCI Manufacturing Inc. in Walnut.

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