60 set to lose jobs at NLR grader plant
Fifty full-time workers and 10 temporary workers at Caterpillar Inc.'s road grader manufacturing plant in North Little Rock will lose their jobs Aug. 29 because of lower demand, the company said Thursday.
"Caterpillar understands this decision is difficult for the impacted workers and their families, but these actions are necessary to position the company for long-term success," the company said in a statement.
The $140 million plant, at 9201 Faulkner Lake Road, produced its first motor grader in June 2010. It received $3 million from the governor's quick-action closing fund, established by the Arkansas General Assembly in 2007 as a way to bring jobs to the state. The $3 million specifically was used to construct a test track, a storage area and an entrance road. The plant moved into a renovated facility that previously housed an operation that converted videotape into DVDs.
The company said at the time it would employ 600 people with an average wage of $21 an hour.
Pulaski Tech Community College worked with Caterpillar to train its workers.
Based in Peoria, Ill., Caterpillar laid off some 24,000 workers worldwide in 2009 during the global recession.
-- Stephen Steed
J.B. Hunt's founder tapped for induction
The late Johnnie Bryan Hunt is among the inaugural class of inductees into the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals' Hall of Fame.
The hall of fame was established to recognize people who have made important supply-chain contributions. Hunt, the founder of J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. in Lowell, joins Ford Motor Co. founder Henry Ford and shipping-container inventor Malcom McLean in the inaugural class.
Hunt was selected because of his role in pioneering intermodal transportation. J.B. Hunt was one of the first trucking companies to begin moving loads by railroad and now owns the largest fleet of 53-foot containers in the world.
Hunt's wife, Johnelle Hunt, will accept the award on her husband's behalf in Orlando next month.
-- Robbie Neiswanger
State index off, too, as U.S. stocks slip
The Arkansas Index, a price-weighted index that tracks the largest public companies based in the state, slipped 0.59 to 342.35 Thursday.
"U.S. stocks ended lower Thursday after some mixed economic data as the markets await [Federal Reserve Chairman] Janet Yellen's speech [today]," said John Blackwell, senior vice president and managing director of equity trading at Stephens Inc. in Little Rock.
Shares of USA Truck fell 5.3 percent in below-average volume. Shares of Windstream Holdings Inc., rose 1.3 percent, also in below-average volume.
Total volume for the index was 18.6 million shares.
The index was developed by Bloomberg News and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1997.
Business on 08/26/2016