Results tagged “Harley” from York Common Cents

At 6:30 a.m. today, I was stationed at the entrance of the Harley-Davidson plant in Springettsbury Township.

My goal was to catch workers as they left the plant and ask them what they thought of the company's second-quarter earnings.

I had time to be turned down by one worker before plant security requested that I leave the property.

Undeterred, I visited a host of local businesses in search of the elusive Harley worker.

I even spotted two workers at a gas station on the corner of North Sherman Street and Route 30. Unfortunately, they let the roar of their motorcycle engines voice their opinion.

However, at Denny's in York, I finally had some luck, sort of.

I ran into Jim Booth, a Connecticut resident who rode in town on the back of a Honda VTX 1300 to take a tour of the local Harley-Davidson plant.

Two weeks ago, Booth opted to buy the Honda rather than a Harley. Price, not quality, was the deciding factor.

Booth said people often point to the bike and mistake the Honda for a Harley.

"I tell them it's the Japanese Harley," he said

My phone rang late this morning, and on the other end was Laurie Anne Spagnola, the head of a local nonprofit who had read my story in Sunday's edition about Milwaukee-York ties.

Take a read of the story here. Or, for a short background, suffice it to say York and Milwaukee seem to both have locations of quite a few large companies (Harley, Johnson Controls, Bon-Ton) but no one could give us a smoking gun of a reason why this is the case.

Neither could Spagnola. But she totally agreed that there's something there.

"I've been thinking this forever," she told me.

Spagnola is president of the Children's Home of York and sits on the national board for the Alliance for Children and Families -- based in Milwaukee. Traveling there once per quarter, Spagnola said she could feel something familiar about the city.

It reminds her of York. And with the nonprofit tie, she pointed out something else about the connection.

"It's just not for-profit big guys" around York that end up connected to Milwaukee, she said.

Latest news on Harley is out. They are planning 1,100 job cuts companywide. We are still waiting to hear about the local plant. But so far, this is what we know. Keep checking back with us, we'll let you know as soon as we know it.
Here's the latest news release from Harley too.