Henderson-based Pittsburg Tank & Tower Group is investing some $5 million in its operations here and adding employees, and has gotten support from the Henderson City Commission in that pursuit.
“It’s a multitude of things that we fully anticipate over the next 12 to 24 months will be in that $5 million range,” said Ben Johnston, PTTG’s chairman of the board and chief technology officer.
Pittsburg designs, fabricates, erects, maintains and repairs municipal, utility and industrial water tanks (as well as tanks for storing an array of other materials) and communication towers, among other steel structures. It has two fabrication plants here—the Pittsburg Tank & Tower plant on Commonwealth Drive in Henderson Corporate Park, where its headquarters is also located, and the Allstate Tower plant in Heilman Avenue.
“We’ve been so blessed with the amazing quality of people and employees that allowed us to have some growth,” which Johnston said has prompted PTTG to hire additional employees and expand its manufacturing capabilities.
“At the Pittsburg facility, we’re just busting at seams,” he said.
“We asked the city fathers for additional parking and additional laydown area for (storing) raw and finished product,” Johnston said.
Restrictive covenants in Henderson Corporate Park required a 50-foot front-yard setback that would have prevented using that space for parking and storage.
On May 28, the Henderson Corporate Park Development Committee—comprised of the mayor and the four city commissioners—met to consider the request and voted 5-0 to remove that covenant, subject to approval by the board of the Henderson Water Utility, whose headquarters and systems operations center is PTTG’s nearest neighbor in Henderson Corporate Park.
Securing the approvals would clear the way for PTTG to go before the Henderson City-County Planning Commission to seek approval for revisions to its site plan.
Local officials commended Pittsburg for its growth here.
“When businesses succeed, expand and grow, Henderson wins,” Mayor Brad Staton said via email. “Over the years, our city commission has made every effort to take care of organizations like Pittsburg Tank & Tower. Whether it’s expanding the width of Commonwealth Drive or now removing some covenants to allow Pittsburg to expand, we appreciate their continued presence in our community and will do everything we can to remain a great partner with them every step of the way.”
Missy Vanderpool, executive director of Henderson Economic Development, expressed similar sentiments.
“Whitney (Risley, HED’s director of existing industry & workforce development) worked closely with them during that, with all the covenants and the project,” Vanderpool said. “We’re always grateful when an existing industry continues to invest in our community. They’ve been (in business) 100 years and we hope they’ll be here 100 more.”
One factor for PTTG’s growth is that it has re-entered the business of building elevated water tanks, commonly referred to as water towers. It exited that business in 2006, then returned to it several years ago.
“We have moved back into the elevated tank (fabrication business), which takes up a lot of space in the plant,” Johnston said.
PTTG will be building legs, rods and struts for elevated tanks at the Heilman Avenue location, Johnston said.
To make room, it has converted a 46,000-square-foot space previously leased to another industry and is converting it to manufacturing space.
“We’re in the process of putting some overhead cranes in the facility to allow us to move product around,” he said.
The company is also taking steps to partially automate its production operations.
“We took receipt of our first robot and it’s set up and we’re in the testing phase of that,” Johnston said. “That’s $1 million just in itself.
“All of us (in industry) are struggling to find the type and quantity of employees we need, so we’re including some automation equipment in this (capital expansion) to allow us to produce more with the same amount of people.
“We still need drafters and engineers and project management (personnel),” he said. “We’re really looking” for those kinds of new hires.
PTTG anticipates growth in its workforce, but Johnston said it’s “hard to say” at this point the precise number of people it will add.
To accommodate the growth in business, the company is also tweaking its operations.
“The Allstate plant is starting working seven days a week,” he said. “We’ve added people there on the production side,” with one shift working Monday through Thursday and another working Friday through Sunday.
Further, PTTG has begun outsourcing the fabrication of steel ladders for tanks, which Johnston said is relatively tedious and repetitive work. That will free up its welders to perform more specialized work.
PTTG, which employs about 325 people in Henderson or in crews working around the country, is a 105-year-old company with roots in Kansas. Johnston’s father, Don, purchased Pittsburg Tank & Tower in 1983 and relocated it to Henderson, where he and his family already operated a tank maintenance company.
In 2021, PTTG introduced an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), so the company today is 100% employee-owned.
