Lowe’s Home Improvement Center is shifting their Northern California distribution operations to Manteca.
Penske Logistics – the firm Lowe’s contracts with to handle their distribution system — is now hiring more than 70 workers to man the operations expected to be up and running by September at Roth Road and Airport Way.
Penske is leasing the 551,475 square-foot building nearing completion in the CenterPoint Business Park just north of where 5.11 Tactical opened a 404,657 square-foot distribution center earlier this year.
“It says a lot about Manteca,” Manteca Mayor Steve DeBrum said of Lowe’s decision to shift distribution operations to Manteca. “Manteca has a solid location and a good workforce.”
Manteca sits at the heart of the nation’s second fastest megaregion that also has the highest consumer dollars per capita. The Northern California Megaregion has more than 17.5 million consumers. The major metro areas of the megaregion — San Jose, Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose — are all within 76 miles of Manteca.
The South County triangle of Tracy, Manteca-Lathrop, and Stockton with Penske’s operations for Lowe’s opening will boast of four major distribution centers involving hardware store chains. Home Depot is located in Lathrop while Orchard Supply Hardware and Restoration Hardware are in Tracy.
DeBrum said it is his understanding Penske wants to move forward fairly quickly with a 230,000 square foot addition to the Airport Way/Roth Road location. The site already has preapproval for a footprint as large as 1.2 million square feet.
The mayor said in the coming months Medline will be hiring for its 565,580-square-foot distribution center being built behind the Amazon Prime distribution center that opened last year on Louise Avenue next to the Manteca Unified School District complex.
In additional Lafayette-based Scannel Properties is in the process of selling its 285,215-square-foot building nearing completion in Spreckels Park snuggled against the transition ramp from southbound Highway 99 to the westbound 120 Bypass. The name of the firm buying the structure has not been disclosed.
Penske conducted on-site interviews last week for clamp truck operators, shipping and receiving clerks, as well as inventory clerks.
The firm is hiring forklift and clamp truck operators at up to $17 an hour at the Manteca location. Posted pay for inventory clerks as well as shipping and receiving clerks is $18 an hour. Management jobs such as operations supervisor have a pay scale of $34,000 to $53,000 a year.
Penske Logistics is a wholly owned subsidiary of Penske Truck Leasing. The firm has operations in North America, South America, Europe and Asia to provide supply chain management and logistics services to leading companies around the world
