Tessco plans to hire for expanded center

Now that Tessco Technologies Inc.

completed its move into a major new facility in southeast Reno, the distributor of wireless products is gearing up for employment growth.

The company last week said it's finished its move into approximately 500,000 square feet of warehouse and office space it purchased on Aircenter Circle.

The building previously was a Porsche distribution center.

Tessco's new Americas Logistics Center will serve the western United States, Canada and Mexico.

Robert Barnhill Jr., chairman, president and chief executive officer of the company based in Hunt Valley, Md., said Tessco chose Reno partly because of its proximity to major western markets.

He said the company was also attracted by the skills in logistics and sales it found in the northern Nevada labor force.

The logistics center employs the equivalent of 38.5 fulltime workers, and Tessco added 11 to its staff in this quarter.

Molly Hughes, a spokeswoman for the company, said Tessco expects to be hiring "pretty aggressively" if sales performance meets the company's expectations.

Tessco previously operated regional distribution centers at several leased locations in Reno, and Hughes said, "It's been a positive experience for us." The company founded in 1982 carries more than 34,000 items for network infrastructure, mobile communications and installation and test applications.

It handles inventory from 450 manufacturers.

The Tessco distribution centers run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Reno facility is designed to provide full backup to the company's primary distribution center in Maryland.

Leading the management team at the Reno center are James deProsse and James de Jong.

DeProsse spent 15 years with Porsche as its national distribution manager and has worked two years to establish the new Americas Logistics Center for Tessco.

De Jong previously worked with iGo, a distributor of wireless communications products that was based in Reno.