Mercedes-Benz Opens Van Marshaling Yard in South Carolina

Mercedes-Benz USA opens a new marshaling yard for its Van Div., adjacent to the Mercedes-Benz van assembly plant outside Charleston, SC, to help streamline deliveries to U.S. dealers.

“The goal is enhanced operations…quality and throughput for our dealers,” says Rich Webber, general manager-marketing and product management at Mercedes-Benz Vans. “At the end of the day, we want to sell more vans and grow our market share.”

For sure, Mercedes-Benz USA is selling more vans since the parent company opened a new, larger and more fully equipped assembly plant in the Charleston area in 2018, to build a new generation of the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van.

Previously, the South Carolina plant performed final assembly only, on so-called SKD units, for semi-knocked-down vans that arrived partially disassembled, as a way to avoid the 25% U.S. “chicken tax” tariff on imported trucks.

In first-quarter 2021, Mercedes-Benz USA van sales were 11,659, an increase of 55% vs. a year ago. The vast majority of those were the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. The company also offers the smaller Metris van.

The new marshaling yard is another phase of the project that began with construction of the new factory, starting in 2016, followed by a paint shop, a body shop and other additions prior to the marshaling yard. The COVID-19 pandemic caused some supplier and contractor delays in its completion.

In the meantime, the plant used a temporary facility that was only partially paved as its marshaling yard. A slide show of the June 25 ribbon-cutting for the new facility shows vans parked in a muddy overflow lot, with tall weeds sticking up between the brand-new vans.

Mercedes-Benz USA says it is spending a total of $53 million on the new marshaling yard and related improvements, such as 30 carrier-loading lanes, three inspection lanes, an all-new workshop with 22 fullsize van inspection and prep stations, a fullsize van wash and an all-new office building.

The facility has 50 electric-vehicle charging stations, in anticipation of the South Carolina plant building the battery-powered eSprinter van starting in the second half of 2023.