Dunlap parachute maker to hire 100
Dunlap company to hire 100
Precision Aerodynamics to operate out of former Tecumseh lawnmower plant
DUNLAP, Tenn. — Years ago, when George Galloway told his mother he wanted to design, manufacture and sell parachutes all over the world, she said, “Why can’t you just get a regular job?”
But she prayed for him, anyway, and thanks to “God’s grace channelled through a mother’s love,” the 67-year-old Galloway said his Dunlap-based business, Precision Aerodynamics, is growing fast.
“I truly believe, in a few short years, we’ll be the largest parachute manufacturer on the planet,” Galloway told a crowd of people who gathered Friday afternoon for a ceremony in Harris Park in the heart of Dunlap.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam was there to praise Galloway’s company for adding 100 new full-time jobs and investing $1.8 million to relocate its operations from a 15,000-squarefoot building into Dunlap’s former Tecumseh lawnmower engine plant, a 200,000-square-foot facility that’s been empty since Tecumseh closed it in 2008.
“They’re now distributing parachutes worldwide,” Haslam said. “Thanks for growing in Tennessee.”
Precision Aerodynamics is booming, Galloway said after the ceremony, because it’s making round-shaped military parachutes
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for a foreign country that he declined to disclose.
“We’re in an explosive growth phase,” he said.
Until now, Galloway’s company, which has about 60 employees, has mainly made wing-style parachutes for enthusiasts of the sport and for military special forces. Round parachutes are less steerable than wing-style parachutes, which makes round parachutes better-suited to placing paratroopers all in the same landing spot.
The new jobs will pay $12 to $15 an hour for top producers, Galloway said, and his company will train women and men how to sew, if they don’t already know.
“We’re processing applicants as we speak,” he said. “We will teach the skill to anyone who is ready, willing and able.”
Galloway was born at Erlanger hospital in Chattanooga, grew up on Signal Mountain and chose Dunlap in 1980 as the place to base what he said was then a “little cottage business” because of the talented workers in Dunlap’s sewing industry — and because of their work ethic.
“My jobs will never be off-sourced overseas,” Galloway said. “I like the work ethic and the [work] quality and the people of Sequatchie Valley, Tennessee.”
Galloway said he’s made about 4,000 parachute jumps in his lifetime, and he’s assisted in parachute jumps by former President H. W. George Bush and by Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner, who in 2012 plunged some 24 miles, a record height, from a helium balloon at the edge of outer space in the Red Bull Stratos mission. Precision Aerodynamics made the parachute that Baumgartner used.
Dunlap Mayor Dwain Land told the crowd, “He’s a hometown boy, and he’s come a long ways.”
Haslam also announced that Dunlap will get a $200,350 Appalachian Regional Commission Grant to construct an access road and upgrade the water pumping station at the industrial park where Precision Aerodynamics is located and a $500,000 Local Park and Recreation Grant to fund improvements, including a children’s “splash pad” at Harris Park.