JLG to Recall More than 550 Employees

Oshkosh Corp., Oshkosh, Wis., announced it will be hiring between 300 and 500 employees for its defense facilities in Wisconsin and will be recalling 550 to 650 JLG employees, primarily in Pennsylvania, to supply MRAP All Terrain Vehicles (M-ATV) to the U.S. Armed Services.

Last month, Oshkosh received an initial delivery order valued at $1.05 billion from the U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) Life Cycle Management Command (LCMC) for 2,244 M-ATVs. The order followed months of extensive government testing on multiple production-ready vehicles. Due to the urgent need request from the Department of Defense, the first shipments of the Oshkosh M-ATV are scheduled for this month. The vehicles will be used in Afghanistan.

According to Robert Bohn, Oshkosh’s chairman and CEO, “Adding new employees to our Oshkosh Defense employment base and calling back skilled JLG employees at our underutilized JLG facilities will maximize our manufacturing operations and accelerate our M-ATV delivery schedule.”

In order to achieve the off-road mobility that soldiers and Marines need in Afghanistan, Oshkosh integrated its TAK-4 independent suspension system into its M-ATV offering. As further testament to the government’s confidence in this suspension system, Oshkosh recently received a supply order to equip more than 1,500 legacy MRAPs with the TAK-4 system and continues to work with the Army to evaluate using the system on additional legacy MRAP models. More than 120 employees are being deployed to Kuwait to install the TAK-4 suspensions. These positions are being filled with Oshkosh Defense employees, as well as JLG employees and Oshkosh’s McNeilus Truck & Manufacturing employees currently on layoff.

The TAK-4 suspension system is currently used on more than 10,000 Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacements supplied to the Marines and Seabees, as well as on the Marines’ Logistics Vehicle System Replacement and the Army’s next-generation Palletized Load System.