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Manufacturing isn't the first thing that comes to mind when talking about Las Vegas. Tourism and gaming are the city's major employers, with gaming directly responsible for 24% of the area's jobs.

It's difficult to ignore the city's success. Las Vegas was a remote desert oasis when Montana's William Andrews Clark created a railroad town there in 1905 to support the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake line (Clark's railroad would shave 663 miles off the route between a seaport and his wealthy mines in Montana). Legalized gambling put the city on the tourism map in 1931, and the ribbon cutting for the first megaresort casino in 1989 ushered in an era when slot machines were only part of the Vegas experience.

Nearly 40 million people visit Las Vegas annually, and more than 6 million of those attend trade shows. Many stay there. Las Vegas is one of the fastest growing cities in the country with nearly 7,000 new residents moving to the valley each month. The metropolitan area's population should exceed 2 million by 2010.

Las Vegas may not be known for manufacturing, but it is an important city for mobile off-highway equipment businesses. Tourism-sector projects under way total more than $25 billion. The city has also become a destination for engineers and end-users due to the expositions located there.

Hometown pride

Of all the machinery displayed at shows, such as the annual World of Concrete or the triennial ConExpo-Con/Agg, only the bright orange and green Xtreme-branded telehandlers are manufactured in The Entertainment Capital of the World.

Xtreme Mfg. LLC was founded and is owned by Don Ahern, president and CEO of Ahern Rentals, the manufacturer's largest single customer. Xtreme telehandlers are also sold to individual contractors. Sales to the latter group have been climbing.

Development work began in secrecy seven years ago when the odds on the telehandler market were not good. It was Lee Kramer, now Xtreme Mfg.'s Las Vegas-based vice president of engineering, who was hired to open Ahern's skunk works in 2000. A former engineer for then-defunct lift manufacturer UpRight, Kramer was living in Fresno, CA, at the time. One of the biggest challenges for his Fresno Engineering and Design (FED) group, Kramer says, was convincing suppliers to get involved with the development of a new rough-terrain forklift.

"I had to convince them this was different," says Kramer, "and that I understood what was happening in the market. We had a completely different way to sell the equipment." The link to Don Ahern was kept silent.

Xtreme had a rare opportunity for a new manufacturer — with Ahern it was guaranteed a strong customer and a proven distribution network. Founded in Las Vegas in 1953 by Don Ahern's parents, Ahern Rentals is the largest independently-owned rental business in the country. With 41 primary locations, it is one of the leading equipment rental firms in the Southwest.

After extensive field testing of 14 prototype units, production started in fall 2003 with model XRM945. In 2004 two more models were added. Offering new models to meet customer demand was relatively easy due to the design and the use of common components, intended to make stocking parts easier for rental customers.