The U.S. Is Running Low On The Machines Needed To Avoid Blackouts And Quit Fossil Fuels

The U.S. Is Running Low On The Machines Needed To Avoid Blackouts And Quit Fossil Fuels

As COVID-19 ripped through the global economy in 2020, Ford stopped assembly lines at automotive factories from Michigan to Mexico. The old textile mill in the central Pennsylvania town of Sunbury that had survived the country’s last big wave of fabric plant closures shut down for good. The Texas oil fields that had made the United States a rival to Saudi Arabia in crude exports halted production.

At ERMCO Inc., a Tennessee-based manufacturer of electrical transformers, the factory floors were humming. Orders were coming in faster than ever before from the rural electric cooperatives ERMCO serves. The pandemic may have mangled many manufacturers’ supply chains, but ERMCO’s 10 facilities in states like Illinois, Indiana and Georgia kept pace with the record sales.

“In 2020, we produced more transformers than in the history of our company,” said ERMCO chief executive Tim Mills. “2021 topped that record year.”