Photo by Karin Elton Action Manufacturing General Manager Jim Swenson operates a trackchair in the parking lot of Action Sports.

MARSHALL — Perhaps one of these days Marshall won’t be known for just being the hometown of Schwan’s, but of Action Trackchair. The makers of all-terrain wheelchairs are expanding their headquarters in the Industrial Park just four years after building a new factory.

Ten years ago Tim and Donna Swenson of Marshall started Action Trackchair which manufactures all-terrain wheelchairs with tracks. The Swensons sold their previous business, Action Sports, a motorsports and marine dealership, to their son, Jim and his wife, Teah.

Tim Swenson wanted to concentrate on making the outdoors accessible to all. He was inspired by their son, Jeff, who was paralyzed in an automobile accident in 1998. In 2009, Tim Swenson built the first prototype in his hobby shop on the property of Action Sports on Minnesota Highway 23.

Action Manufacturing Inc. was established in 2009, and his hobby shop was transformed into a manufacturing shop. By 2014, 1900 trackchairs had been built. With more orders than the shop could handle, the company needed bigger quarters.

In 2015, Tim Swenson and his employees designed an “efficient, modern factory” in the Industrial Park in Marshall, according to http://actiontrackchair.com/.

Today, 4,000 trackchairs have been built and distributed throughout the U.S. and has distribution in many other countries as well, said Jim Swenson, Action Manufacturing’s general manager.

The plant expansion will give Action Trackchair “more office space and a little more storage on the south side,” said Jim Swenson. “To the west, 3,750 square feet, we’re going to put the paint department.”

The current one is “too congested” and is “super hot,” he said, because of the oven used to bake the chairs is set at 400 degrees.

Think of using your oven on a hot summer day in a kitchen with no air conditioning.

“If it’s 90 degrees out, it can get pretty hot inside,” he said. The rest of the plant has air conditioning, but it’s not practical for the paint room because of the oven.

The addition will have a “cross flow ventilation system which will take the air from the north side of the building and suck it through to the south,” he said.

“It’s just going to be a better work environment,” Swenson said. “And that’s what we strive for at Action Manufacturing — making sure our employees are comfortable.”

With the expanded office space, the company is “gearing up for more sales” and more sales employees.

“We don’t know how many we’re going to add,” he said.

They do know they “want to grow, we want to get a good product out there to ‘enable the disabled,'” Swenson said, paraphrasing the company’s motto.