Belton back in mobile home business

BELTON – Clayton Homes will hire 150 to 200 workers to make a new line of mobile homes in 2013. Hiring will start in December, according to Rick Boyd, Clayton Homes’ president of manufacturing operations.

Clayton’s facility at Sparta Rd. and Loop 121 had been vacant until a few weeks ago, when a handful of workers began preparing the site for new operations.

The facility will assemble a line of “very high value mobile homes” starting as early as January 2013.

Formerly part of Clayton’s “Trendsetter” brand, the Belton plant was used to produce multistory buildings for government and commercial customers. The largest project was a five-building barracks complex for 4,800 military medical trainees at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.

Clayton has 34 plants nationwide, but shuttered the Belton facility in February 2011 after a contract to build a Waco apartment complex fell through. The loss cost 282 employees’ jobs.

Read more at the Temple Daily Telegram.