Maverick Arms to double its size in Eagle Pass

November 14, 2006
By Bill Sontag
Feature Writer

It’s been 17 years since Maverick Arms opened a 40,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in the Eagle Pass Industrial Park where virtually all O.F. Mossberg & Sons shotguns and rifles are produced.

Now, with outstanding response from a world firearms market, Maverick Arms is more than doubling the size of company operations here. It will doubtless increase the Eagle Pass workforce, according to Maverick Arms Controller Refugio “Cuco” Reyes, though he says the company has not announced details and numbers of anticipated employment plans.

Maverick Arms currently has 200 employees, and just last year it was 155, so the cadre is sure to climb when the new plant addition brings square footage to 85,000. With the current workforce, Maverick Arms produces approximately 245,000 shotguns and rifles each year, explained Gerardo Arturo Lopez, Maverick Arms director of operations, Friday (Oct. 27). That equates to about 1,600 guns built each workday.

But one unique trait of Maverick Arms is its standing as a “reverse maquila.” Whereas most maquiladora (“twin plant”) industries send small parts or components to Mexico for assembly, and return to the United States as completed products, Mossberg guns must reverse the process.

“In Mexico, it is not allowed to produce or buy guns,” said Lopez. So, for the Mossberg guns, parts – receivers, barrels, and stocks, for example – are produced in North Haven, Conn. and Torreon, Coah., Mexico, then shipped to Eagle Pass for assembly. The Maverick Arms plant also serves as the company’s primary shipping and distribution center.

The company is an exemplar of international trade, sending raw steel on flatbed trucks to Torreon, and receiving sealed containers of barrels, triggers and bolt assemblies on pallets in return. Receivers and stocks are produced in North Haven, and shipped to Eagle Pass to be married with parts from Mexico.

Two Mossberg guns are not produced in Eagle Pass. An upper end 12 gauge over-and-under shotgun is made in Turkey with a fine-grained stock made from walnut in that country. And a .22 rifle is produced in Brazil. Both products are shipped to Maverick Arms for shipment from Eagle Pass.

Unfinished wood stocks are stained, varnished and polished in the Eagle Pass plant, but what Gutierrez calls a “high definition” treatment is applied, with film in a flotation chemical process, to plastic composition stocks. Essentially a wide variety of camouflage patterns in muted colors of grey, tan, brown and green, high definition is in high demand from customers with personal choices in mind. A simulated wood grain may also be applied with film in the same process.

Shotgun calibers produced here run the gamut from .410 gauge to 20 gauge, 12 gauge and 12 gauge magnum. Rifles produced in Eagle Pass include all calibers from a bolt-action .243 to 7mm. In addition, an estimate 18,000 guns each year are produced to satisfy Army and Navy contracts.

“There are a lot of our guns in Afghanistan and Iraq,” said Jesus Gutierrez, Maverick Arms manufacturing engineer and quality control manager. The armed forces shotguns are designed to handle high-capacity loads, all are pump action and finished with magnesium phosphate-treated steel. In addition, Maverick Arms also produces several lines of short-barreled guns for law enforcement contracts only.

Leadership team members at Maverick Arms are outwardly proud of their products. “‘More Gun For The Money’ is our company motto,” said Gutierrez. “We produce a very reliable product, but at an affordable price.”

The Mossberg Company marks its origin to 1919 with roots in tiny, palm-sized pistols before moving into long gun manufacture. A native of Sweden, Oscar Frederick Mossberg was born in 1866, and came to the United States 20 years later. The company has flourished, with tight requirements for precision and quality.

According to Gutierrez, all Mossberg and Maverick Arms guns feature a 10-year warranty, but Maverick Arms in Eagle Pass also manages a small group of gunsmiths who can perform all repairs to the company’s shotguns and rifles. They also customize guns to suit Mossberg patrons’ specifications.

In Del Rio, Mossberg guns may be examined and ordered at Humphreys Gun Shop, 124 E. Garfield Avenue, Russell True Value Hardware, 506 E. Gibbs St., and Wal-Mart Supercenter, 2410 Dodson Avenue.

Russell Hardware Sporting Goods Manager Jeff Maley said the camouflage treatment on guns is far less popular than traditional, solid wood stocks, and that’s confirmed by Gary Humphreys, owner manager of Humphreys Gun Shop, and Ike Billings, sporting goods sales associate at Wal-Mart. “Most of what we sell are the natural wood stocks,” said Maley, Thursday (Nov. 2).

Humphreys reported, Thursday, that Maverick Arms is participating with support for the famous Wild Game Dinner, December 2, and the tempting firearms raffle there in support of the Del Rio Chamber of Commerce, held annually at the Del Rio Civic Center.

For more information about Maverick Arms guns and rifles, see the Mossberg Web site at www.mossberg.com.