The National Guard wants more new ambulances made in the Quad Cities. On Arsenal Island this morning, Illinois US Senator Dick Durbin and Congresswoman Cheri Bustos announced the Joint Manufacturing and Technology Center has won a contract to build 658 more ambulance kits for the Army National Guard and Reserve.
For more than a year, about 70 employees have been working on a contract to make 500 of the ambulance kits that sit on the frame of a Humvee.
Program Manager, Scott Young, says his production team delivers the kits on time and under budget.
Engineers and others at the technology center designed the ambulance, working closely with the National Guard. Employees make many parts, such as the aluminum frame and walls. Parts come from suppliers located in the Quad Cities and far from here such as those who supply the Kevlar that protects patients and medics.
The first contract would have run out in September, but now the JMTC will continue making, assembling, and painting the ambulance kits until the fall of 2017.
At the end of last year, the workload for the factory had dropped from $400 million in 2008, to $166 million. And employment was about 1,100, down from 1,700 in 2008.
O'Neill's photos from the initial rollout of the ambulance on 1/28/2014 are HERE.
