LOADMASTER SALES MANAGER Ethan Brisson alongside a refuse truck similar to the trucks used by the city of Chicago, which recently placed an order for 24 new trucks with the Norway-based company. (Jim Paul/Daily News photo)

NORWAY — With orders on the rise, refuse truck manufacturer Loadmaster of Norway is adding production capabilities with a 12,500-square-foot expansion to its Ninth Avenue facilities and bringing in 40 more employees.

The $2 million expansion will house the painting department and allow them to reconfigure the rest of the operation for efficiency.

The company now produces 320 trucks a year but has orders for 430, Sales Manager Ethan Brisson said.

Chicago recently ordered 24 more rear-loading trucks over the next two years to add to the city’s fleet of 600. Chicago uses Loadmaster trucks exclusively for its trash collection.

In addition to Chicago, Loadmaster is building trucks for Minneapolis; Tampa, Fla.; Buffalo, N.Y.; and Charlotte, N.C.

Brisson credits Loadmaster’s reliability, along with a large hopper capacity, with making them a popular choice for many companies across the country.

“A lot of our competitors are using more technology, and stuff like that tends to fail,” Brisson said. “So a lot of people are coming to us because it is more reliable. Reliability is the biggest thing in the waste industry — if the garbage doesn’t get picked up, it is an issue.”

Although the traditional rear-loading model of trucks remains Loadmaster’s mainstay, the industry is moving toward automated side-loading trucks for safety reasons, Brisson said, explaining that refuse collection can be a dangerous job due to inattentive drivers crashing into the rear of refuse trucks.

Brisson said while Loadmaster lagged a bit in producing side-loading trucks, they are gaining ground.

In 2013, Loadmaster built the first all-electric class 8 refuse truck in the nation and continues to manufacture electric models as cities set zero-emission goals for the not-so-distant future.

However, Brisson said there is one big problem with the move to electric — the power grid.

“I do not think the power grid is ready, (that is) probably the biggest thing,” Brisson said. “There is a story about a hauler in Illinois who is talking about converting his entire fleet to electric and he went to the city to get more power for the charging station and they thought he was joking because it was more power required than for the whole city.”

To round out its fleet, Loadmaster is also developing a front-loading model.

Loadmaster started in 1957 in Culpepper, Virginia, when the Old Dominion Manufacturing Corp. was formed to produce the Loadmaster line, using the rear-load packing system first developed in 1961. In 1990, Loadmaster was purchased by Waste Disposal Equipment Acquisition Corp., but according to Loadmaster’s website the new owners “lacked knowledge and experience in the refuse industry” and ended up going out of business.

David Brisson, the founder of Great American Disposal, purchased Loadmaster out of foreclosure in 1992 and set up operations in Norway at the former Inger-Teco facility that had been making hand carts, benches and also parts for Lodal Inc. in Kingsford.

Loadmaster has been steadily expanding its Norway facility. In 2016, the business purchased the neighboring former Multi-Color building.

It takes Loadmaster about 420 manhours to build each truck and Ethan Brisson said they now produce about six trucks a week but hope to bump that to 10 trucks a week with the expansion and adding more people.

But those plans hinge on finding 40 more employees, Ethan Brisson said, adding Loadmaster has been working on hiring for more than three years.

“That is probably the biggest challenge, trying to get all those people in here,” he said.

Assemblers, fabricators, painters and welders are all needed. About 100 now work at Loadmaster, he said.