Grande West partners to expand U.S. manufacturing

Grande West Transportation entered into a vehicle assembly agreement with Spartan Specialty Chassis and Vehicles, a business unit of Spartan Motors Inc., a specialty vehicle manufacturing and assembly for the commercial and retail vehicle industries, as well as for the emergency response and recreational vehicle markets.

Under terms of the agreement, Spartan will manufacture Grande West’s Vicinity model buses, which will continue to satisfy the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Buy America requirements and reduce potential tariff exposures. The Grande West Vicinity bus achieved best-in-class results from the FTA Model Bus Testing Program, which measures structural durability and integrity, reliability, performance, maintainability, safety, noise, and fuel economy.

“We are proud to partner with Spartan, the North American leader in specialty vehicle manufacturing and assembly,” “Through this agreement, we now have the production capacity and partnerships in place to accelerate our U.S. and Canadian market growth initiatives,” said Jean-Marc Landry, CEO of Grande West. “The combination of Spartan’s well-established and skilled manufacturing team along with its competitive production cost profile enables us to streamline our assembly processes and leverage purchasing efficiencies.”