Mercedes-Benz U.S. International is hiring hundreds of full-time employees as the automotive manufacturer continues to grow and invest in West Alabama.

In a Tuesday morning interview with the Tuscaloosa Thread, MBUSI's President and CEO Michael Goebel said the company's need for workers is multi-faceted and likely to continue for months and years to come.

"Really this is not just a one-time hiring event right now, it's a more long-term plan for the next two years," Goebel said. "The plant has a tremendous demand to build more cars, the electric cars are coming up now and of course we are wrapping up the battery plant next year as well which will mark the first time for us building batteries here in Alabama."

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Goebel was referring to the massive new facility under construction now in neighboring Bibb County, where around 600 employees will eventually build battery packs to power electric vehicles built at the main campus in Tuscaloosa.

The CEO also said some senior team members at MBUSI have been around since the plant first opened in 1997 and will likely leave the workforce sooner rather than later.

"On the other side, after 25 years of being here in Tuscaloosa, you see more and more guys getting ready now for their retirement," Goebel said. "We really need to balance that out and look at getting our next generation of team members into the facility and preparing ourselves for the next 25 years."

Goebel said AIDT is processing applications now and helping MBUSI fill hundreds of jobs -- if not more than 1,000 -- in the next year.

So what does it take to land a job at the second-largest employer in Tuscaloosa County behind only the University of Alabama? Goebel said the answer is twofold.

"First, do you have the skills to build cars, which is a more hands-on job than people realize? Second, what is your attitude? Because building cars, specifically in the luxury sector, it requires discipline," he said. "It starts with getting up and getting to work on time. There really is a one-team mindset over there and it's about your skills, your personality, your work ethic -- that is really what we are looking for to keep this momentum and to keep the one-team system we have over here."

 

To learn more and apply now for positions starting at $20 an hour with Day One eligibility for all of MBUSI's benefit programs, visit AIDT here. 

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

 

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