{"id":541979,"date":"2010-04-23T12:32:54","date_gmt":"2010-04-23T16:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com\/?p=17188"},"modified":"2010-04-23T12:32:54","modified_gmt":"2010-04-23T16:32:54","slug":"auto-plant-makes-human-body-parts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/541979","title":{"rendered":"Auto Plant Makes Human Body Parts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A once struggling auto parts plant has found new success building body parts\u2014human body parts.<\/p>\n

Turner Medical in Athens, Alabama is a large production facility that makes spinal implants and surgical tools. Employees at Turner take pride in the fact the products they make improve the quality of life for thousands of trauma victims.<\/p>\n

They also know if it weren’t for their bosses, the company wouldn’t be around today to make those products. Formerly Turner Machine, the company used to make parts and tools for cars. But as automotive industry jobs and factories were increasingly outsourced to Mexico and China, the company\u2019s sales declined and Turner almost went under.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe automotive and appliance people were more or less looking for the cheapest price,\u201d said Charlie Tucker, VP of operations at Turner. \u201dYou might do a job for them today and they would drop you tomorrow. The medical customers seem to be a lot more loyal they want to develop a good vendor and they work with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tucker said the road to success hasn\u2019t been an easy one.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the lowest point in our transition we had about 30 to 35 employees,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cOur sales were down [but] once we got into the medical manufacturing, we grew very rapidly. We went from 35 people to about 90 people in less than three or four years.\u201d<\/p>\n

General Manager David Brackeen has been with Turner since the late 70s, when the company started. He was 16-years old at the time and remembers making\u00a0parts for\u00a0carburetors and fenders.\u00a0Brackeen says it’s hard to believe, he can barely hire employees to keep up with the increased demand.\u00a0He manages more than 90 employees who work at the 45,000 sq. foot factory. It\u2019s a 24\/7 operation.<\/p>\n

“We probably doubled our staff in the past two years because of our growth,\u201d said Brackeen. \u201cWe paid our dues to our customers and they rewarded us by putting a lot of work in here. I hired two this morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company plans on adding more than 30 employees before the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Recently, civic and business leaders presented Turner Medical with the Alabama Small Manufacturer of the Year Award.<\/p>\n

“We take pride in what we build because it may be used on one of us one of these days,” Brackeen said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A once struggling auto parts plant has found new success building body parts\u2014human body parts. Turner Medical in Athens, Alabama is a large production facility that makes spinal implants and surgical tools. Employees at Turner take pride in the fact the products they make improve the quality of life for thousands of trauma victims. They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-541979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}