NEWS Project Manager - Wrecker Builds

NEWS PROJECT MANAGER — WRECKER BUILDS

New England Wrecker Sales (NEWS) | a NETC Fleet Services company | Exeter, NH

Full-Time, On‑Site, Monday - Friday | $70,000 – $100,000 | Full Benefits + 401(k) + PTO

NEWS builds heavy‑, medium‑, and light‑duty wreckers and carriers for the towing and recovery operators who keep New England moving. We are the NRC dealer for the region and build roughly 80 trucks a year across four build bays. We are privately held, PE‑backed, and growing both organically and through acquisition across the NETC Fleet Services family of brands (New England Truck Center, Interstate Towing, Matt Brown’s Truck Repair, Ray’s Truck Service, Alan’s Diesel, and NEWS).

What the build shop needs now is someone to run the production plan like a project portfolio and bring lean discipline to how material and information move through the shop. That is this seat: the connective tissue between sales, the build floor, parts, vendors, finance, and the customer. Done well, the shop never waits on a part or a piece of information, the salesman always has a price he can quote, and every build has a date everyone can trust.

Own the NEWS build plan and the flow of every wrecker build from body order through customer delivery. Turn the data that arrives from NRC, the chassis manufacturers, and parts vendors — order lists, delivery dates, spec changes, confirmations — into one actionable production schedule in Grist that the whole team runs on. Keep the rolling three‑month build plan current, quote builds for the salesman, coordinate payment and delivery with customers and their banks, and lead the NEWS Parts Associate.

Apply lean manufacturing principles — standard work, point‑of‑need kitting, visual management, and measured continuous improvement — so the build shop increases throughput without adding headcount.

• The build plan is yours and it is always current. A rolling three‑month build schedule — by week, by build track, by unit — is developed, updated weekly, and loaded into Grist so that Grist is the single source of truth for every active and planned build. Every build carries a current status, its gate dates (body order, chassis order, sales order, kit checks, build start), and a projected completion date.
  
  Any slip of more than three working days is flagged to the Build Shop Manager, Sales, and the COO within one business day
• Vendor data becomes production data. NRC order‑list updates, chassis manufacturer delivery changes, and parts vendor confirmations are reconciled into Grist within two business days of receipt, with a written change summary of what moved and what it does to the build sequence. No one in the shop plans off a stale date or an unread vendor email
• Zero build days lost to missing material. Every build passes its 30‑day and 10‑day kit checks on time; body, chassis, and parts shortages are surfaced to the Build Shop Manager before build start, not after. Build‑days lost to material shortages are tracked monthly and driven to zero
• Schedule attainment of 90% or better: builds start within three working days of body and chassis arrival and finish within the published build‑day standard for their class (carrier, Quick Swap, rotator). A six‑month build‑load forecast is published monthly so the Build Shop Manager can staff ahead of demand
• You can quote a build. By day 90 you price standard carrier and wrecker builds for the salesman from Grist pricing without assistance, turn quotes within one business day, and have a standard‑build quick‑reference (bodies, chassis, common options, install pricing) in place so quoting is consistent and fast
• No truck leaves without funds confirmed and paperwork closed. For every delivery you coordinate payment…