Sarasota-based Cruise Car is adapting to manufacturing under social distancing guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic while handling increased demand for its carts for medical uses. Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, Cruise Car has been building and delivering to Veteran’s Administration facilities nationwide, large medical centers, university campuses and large corporations, such as AMR (American Emergency Response Inc.)

Cruise Car is using its custom-building abilities to create street-legal, low-speed vehicles that can accept and transport ambulance grade OEM stretchers (e.g. Stryker & Ferno). This allows spread-out facilities such as university and medical campuses to quickly and easily transport an injured or ill person. The company builds four varieties of the ambulatory medic carts and is producing up to 100 vehicles per month. “During the last few weeks, our focus has been building critical vehicles for essential government agencies to support their emergency fleet operations,” said Nathan Kalin, President of Cruise Car.

The company has been able to continue manufacturing by splitting its workforce into two isolated shifts, with one half the manufacturing employees working three 10-hour days and then the next half working three 10-hour days. During the day, the crews follow strict social distancing protocols and every night the facility undergoes a full wipe down with sanitizers and cleaning agents before workers leave for the day. Even the company owners, Adam Sulimirski, CEO, and Kalin are assigned to different teams. This allows the company to minimize interaction. If someone tests positive for the virus, that crew self-quarantines, but the other crew can continue working. No inter-team contact is allowed, and the office staff is encouraged to work remotely whenever possible.

“Our top concern is our employees’ health, but our team is really happy to work and to do their part to help mitigate this crisis,” Sulimirski said. “We’ve seen many of them step up big time into leadership roles. They feel empowered and they’re showing up with ‘can do’ attitudes. It’s a great feeling. I couldn’t be more proud of them.” Cruise Car has started offering enrichment programs to employees for their off days — business and self-improvement books and books on audio, online courses, software training, and so on, to allow their people to take advantage of their downtime and sharpen their personal skill sets.

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