Company profile: Wabash National.

• Author: Mayer, Kathy
• Position: Company Profile

The country's leading trailer manufacturer

If the tale Jerry Ehrlich is currently spinning in Lafayette comes together like others by this tried-and-true entrepreneur, Wabash National will soon have another best seller at the top of the charts.

The newest in The Little Company That Could series is the composite-plate trailer, the company's latest innovation in an 11-year success story of products for the truck and rail industry.

Making it to the top this year will be an exceptional feat, too, because many others in the truck-trailer genre are posting significant losses. But folks in Lafayette - from Wabash National's 3,500 employees to Mike Brooks, president of Greater Lafayette Progress Inc. - are betting on the fortunes of the firm that has grown to become the largest producer of truck trailers in the country.

Last year, in its 10th full year of business, Wabash National posted record revenues and income. Net sales for 1995 topped $734 million, a 31 percent increase over 1994's $562 million. The company rolled 42,000 units off the production lines last year, up from the 35,000 produced in 1994.

Company revenues were down by mid-year 1996, a development that Ehrlich predicted at the end of last year. Second-quarter revenues were off 27 percent from the same period a year earlier, and weak U.S. sales apparently were to blame. But don't expect the bad news to last for long. Ehrlich says the company is sending new products overseas that could yield second-half 1996 European sales of $60 million to $80 million, up dramatically from last year's European sales of $6 million.

The big move into the European market gives watchers reason to hope that the company keep its winning streak intact. "It's a given that they will pull out of the current slump," says Brooks. "Wabash has had a heck of a growth spurt, and it's a heck of a success story," Brooks says.

A part of the story Brooks particularly likes is the effect Wabash National has had on local employment. In 1995 alone, the company increased employment by 1,300. "Stories like Wabash don't come along very often."

The Wabash National story began in 1985, when Jerry Ehrlich, Ron Klimara and Bill Hoover left competitor Monon Corp. in Monon and settled into the former National Homes space in Lafayette. In all, 16 investors got the company rolling.

Their first trailer rolled off the production line in August 1985, and within three years, they had built the business into a $100 million company. In...