It has been an eventful couple of months for The Shyft Group, a Novi, Michigan-headquartered company that designs, engineers, and manufactures specialty chassis, specialty vehicles, truck bodies, and aftermarket parts for the recreational vehicle, government services, and delivery and service markets.
In March 2023, the company opened a new service body facility in Lebanon, Tennessee, that would serve truck dealers, distributors, and fleet customers.
The same month, the company also demonstrated an expansion to its electric vehicle (EV) line with a new prototype commercial truck EV, which features a crew cab, a vehicle that could also serve as a unique service truck. The company’s electric vehicle Blue Arc production facility is located in Charlotte, Michigan.
And, there's also news about a shift in company leadership.
New Service Body Facility
Located just east of Nashville, the new 70,000-square-foot building will be a sales branch as well as provide housing upfitting, mounting, fabrication, undercoating, and paint services for the company’s brands, including Royal Truck, Duramag, Magnum, and others.
Daryl Adams, The Shyft Group President and Chief Executive Officer, told Service Truck Magazine that the decision to establish the new facility developed organically and is based on expanding the company’s foothold.
“As we continue to grow our footprint, where should we be?” asked Adams rhetorically. “As Nashville grows, they’re a very large economy—one of the fastest growing—and from there we can touch some of the other states in the area. So, for us, it was almost like a circle that we could put around a few hundred miles of Nashville, where there’s a high percentage of the US population.
“There was a gap in our footprint, and it was important for us to fill that because we are seeing a lot of growth on that site,” Adams noted.
The new facility, which will employ approximately 30 people, will serve as a one-stop-shop for work truck and outfitting solutions, where a customer could get a truck body mounted and then take advantage of other services at the same location.
Adams also stated that the facility was designed to be flexible so that The Shyft Group could nimbly adjust as market changes occurred around it.
“We’re seeing really good customer interest,” Adams said. “We thought it might take a little bit longer, but we are seeing a faster ramp-up than we expected. It’s really exciting, and we’re very happy with the location and how it’s performing so far.”
Blue Arc sees new New Prototype
At the NTEA Truck Show in March 2022, Shyft announced a battery-powered EV line called Blue Arc, with the intention of developing Class 3, 4, and 5 EV (electric vehicle) products. At that trade event, the company showed off a Class 3 model, which was akin to a walk-in delivery van vehicle.
For the 2023 edition of the NTEA Truck Show, the company showcased a prototype Class 5 truck with a dump body, but Adams noted that the vehicle itself had been designed for versatility and the company could also have had more traditional service bodies installed.
“We wanted to show the flexibility [of the vehicle],” Adams explained. “We can have a dump body on it; we can go to a stake-type truck; we could put a box truck on the back. It’d be good for a landscaping crew or a power company crew. It was important to show that we’re thinking about more than [offering] just a walk-in van delivery vehicle.”
The Shyft Group
SG23_BlueArcLandscape_24
The new prototype Class 5 Blue Arc EV work truck could be used for a variety of applications and can house a six-person crew in its large cab.
The most eye-catching feature of the new prototype is its large crew cab—that has four seats across the back and a jump seat, meaning that a total of six people could ride in the vehicle, including the driver.
People-hauling aside, it was under the hood where the unit has features that should serve a variety of functions.
“This one has an electronic PTO (power take-off ) on it,” related Adams. “If you need to run a crane or use it as a dump body, we didn’t want to run off the battery. So, we have an ePTO on it. It’s a very good, solid design by the team.”
Adams acknowledged that, like any EV, the units are restricted in terms of payload and range. The Class 5 model would have an approximate 10,000 pound (4,536 kilogram) payload capacity and a 200-mile (~322 kilometer) range. So, operators would have to plan around charging the unit if traveling to work in a different state, for example, or any long trek.
However, such issues will hopefully be easier to navigate in the future if the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law succeeds in bolstering the proliferation of charging stations across the country (for more on the expansion of EVs in America and the work truck sector, see “EPA introduces new GHG emissions regulations” in the previous issue of Service Truck Magazine).
Adams declined to specify a particular release window for the Class 5 crew cab unit. The company is currently focused on rolling out its EV delivery van models, and whether the new model sees large-scale production will depend on the response that the prototype elicits.
“It was a prototype concept vehicle that we wanted to show our flexibility,” said Adams. “I think that’s something that larger original equipment manufacturers are not comfortable doing. But that’s what we do every day—we create custom vehicles for the market. When people come to us and they have an idea, we can work with them.”
Looking for a new CEO
Another shift for The Shyft Group was announced this past June, as Adams made public that he would be stepping down as President and Chief Executive Officer of the company but only after a successor had been named.
“Serving as the CEO of Shyft has been the highlight of my professional career,” stated Adams via a media release. “I am as confident as ever in our team’s ability to deliver for customers and drive long-term value for shareholders.”
Jacob Farmer was recently named the company’s President, Specialty Vehicles, effective July 17, 2023. Farmer is responsible for all aspects of the business, working with his senior leadership team across seven go-to-market brands to guide the vision of the business unit and oversee its implementation to deliver shareholder value.