Manufacturing companies in Tennessee: autos, appliances and chemicals across three regions

This report is for buyers looking for Tennessee suppliers, people comparing manufacturing employers in the state, and B2B sellers covering Tennessee plants. It covers the federal count, the automotive supply chain, the three regions and their counties, the public companies headquartered here, where to find names and a prospecting plan for Middle Tennessee.

Tennessee manufacturing in numbers

The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP) for 2023 gives these totals for NAICS 31 to 33 in Tennessee:

Ranking the CBP state file ourselves, Tennessee is 13th by manufacturing employees, and manufacturing is 12.0% of its private-sector jobs (13th among states; the US share is 8.8%). Plants average 61.8 employees against 43.4 nationally.

The automotive supply chain

The Census Bureau published an employee total for Tennessee's nine vehicle assembly plants but flagged it as high-noise, meaning the noise it adds to protect confidentiality changed the figure by 5% or more, so we don't report it. The parts plants alone average 216 employees.

The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD) gives a broader count: more than 900 automotive companies in 88 of the state's 95 counties and more than 144,700 people employed in automotive, with four automakers (it names Nissan, GM and Volkswagen). TNECD doesn't say how it defines an automotive company, so its count isn't comparable with the Census figures, which classify each plant by its main product.

What else Tennessee makes

Average pay divides payroll by employees; the arithmetic is ours. Three groups are unusually large:

• Household appliances: 23 plants, 8,160 employees, an average of 355 per plant.
• Basic chemicals: 68 plants, 12,074 employees, average pay $110,038.
• Beverages (soft drinks, breweries, wineries and distilleries): 236 plants with 7,584 employees.

Three regions

Hamilton County has the most manufacturing jobs in the state, just ahead of Shelby. In Middle Tennessee, Davidson has more plants but Rutherford's are bigger. In East Tennessee, Anderson County's 83 plants average 186 employees, the highest of any county in the table. These twelve counties hold 2,891 of the state's plants (50%).

Plant size

Summed into bands, that's 3,588 small plants (under 20 employees), 1,419 with 20 to 99 and 780 with 100 or more. CBP counts establishments with paid employees, not companies: each plant counts where it is, head offices are offices, and owner-only shops are excluded. Headcounts refer to mid-March 2023.

Public manufacturers headquartered in Tennessee

Twenty-three listed companies with manufacturing SIC codes give Tennessee business addresses in SEC EDGAR. We checked the ten largest against the cover page and income statement of each one's latest 10-K:

Revenue is company-wide. The automakers and many of the large parts and appliance plants don't appear here because their owners don't file 10-Ks from a Tennessee address.

Where to find Tennessee manufacturers by name

Prospecting Tennessee manufacturers

The auto supply chain sets the rhythm for a large share of the state's plants. Suppliers plan around their customers' model launches and production schedules, so the best signals are new program awards, expansions announced through TNECD and hiring for new shifts. For the freight side of the same supply chain, see trucking companies in Tennessee. Large plants buy local services through the plant manager and maintenance, safety and quality leads; materials and equipment are often bought by a parent company elsewhere.

Worked example: a material handling dealer in Middle Tennessee

Illustrative example. A made-up dealer with made-up rates, applied to real Census plant counts.

Cumberland Lift & Rack (cumberlandlift.example) sells and services forklifts and installs racking for plants and warehouses.

• Plants in the 50 to 99, 100 to 249 and 250 to 499 employee classes: 505 + 469 + 189 = 1,163 statewide.
• Transportation equipment, plastics and rubber, and fabricated metal are 328 + 317 + 1,036 = 1,681 of 5,787 plants (29%), so about 338 fit by size and industry.
• Cumberland covers Davidson, Rutherford, Sumner, Wilson, Williamson and Putnam counties, which hold 1,272 of the state's plants (22%): about 74 accounts to start, a floor because Rutherford's plants run large.

The useful signal is a plant adding space or a shift. Bebop can search for "Middle Tennessee auto parts and plastics plants with 50 to 499 employees that announced an expansion or are hiring forklift operators" and write a playbook for each.

Subject: Forklift capacity for [Company]'s [town] expansion

Hi [first name],

Congratulations on the [town] [expansion / new shift] at [Company]. Extra volume tends to show up first as forklifts that are always in use and racking that's full by Wednesday.

We do fleet and layout reviews for Middle Tennessee plants and can usually have rental units on site within a week while you decide. Would a walk-through in [month] help?

[Your name], Cumberland Lift & Rack

Next step: use how to build a prospect list to turn a county and industry filter into named accounts.