Elected officials attended a tour of Scranton Manufacturing/New Way on Thursday. 

US Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Iowa’s Fourth Congressional District Representative Randy Feenstra, along with Iowa District 24 Senator Jesse Green learned about the garbage truck producer that delivers its refuse vehicles globally. Vice President of Sales and Marketing for New Way Trucks and McLaughlin Family Companies Don Ross said they are facing several challenges in today’s business climate, between supply chain issues, to labor force and inflation. He pointed out there is a 2,000 truck backlog that they are waiting on supplies, including computer chips, before production can happen. 

Feenstra said at the federal level, it starts with reducing the amount of inflation by cutting spending.

“That means you can’t continue to spend money time after time and that’s what we’re dealing with right now in Congress is these massive bills coming through, and it’s like, ‘Wait a minute. We shouldn’t be spending all this money because we already have an inflationary crisis.’ Mom and dad and businesses like this are sitting around going, ‘How do we afford all these things? How are we going to afford the inputs and gas, and stuff like that.”

Senator Cotton added that the supply side has been impacted by regulations from the Biden Administration.

“To the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. So rather than spending time working on new truck designs that are going to better serve their customers and bring down rates for homeowners and businesses for waste hauling, they’ve got to spend their time and their energy on trying to figure out on how to comply with new regulations. It’s as bad now as I’ve seen it in Washington, (DC). I thought the Obama Administration was bad in imposing burdensome regulations, but the Biden Administration has been much worse.”    

The stop was part of Feenstra’s second round of the 39-County Tour. He last visited Greene County in May when he toured Power Lift in Jefferson.