This Indiana company just cracked the Fortune 500 list for the first time
Andrew Clark
Eight companies headquartered in Indiana made Fortune magazine's updated list of the 500 businesses with the most revenue in the U.S.
Seven of the Hoosier companies on the list had previously cracked the top 500 at least once. But a manufacturer of recreational vehicles based in Elkhart, Indiana cracked the list for the first time this year.
Thor Industries jumped from No. 540 in 2017 to No. 392 in 2018. Fortune says the company has surpassed $7.2 billion in revenues, and that its profits have increased by more than 58 percent year over year.
Elkhart's economy relies almost entirely on the RV industry, with nearly 90 percent of RVs built there. And right now, the RV business is booming — manufacturers last year shipped a record 504,600 RVs, an increase of 17.2 percent. That boom has also caused Elkhart's unemployment rate to plunge to an absurdly low 2.2 percent.
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Indianapolis-based health insurance company Anthem is listed in the Fortune 500 as the top Indiana-based business, with more than $90 billion in revenue. The company was ranked 29th overall on the 2018 list, the same as in 2017. Anthem's profits have also surpassed $3.8 billion, according to Fortune.
Here's where other Indiana-headquartered companies rank on the list:
- 129th: Eli Lilly and Co. ($22.9 billion in revenues)
- 149th: Cummins ($20.4 billion in revenues)
- 312th: Steel Dynamics ($9.5 billion in revenues)
- 361st: Zimmer Biomet Holdings ($7.8 billion in revenues)
- 399th: Berry Global Group ($7.1 billion in revenues)
- 493rd: Simon Property Group ($5.5 billion in revenues)
Companies that aren't headquartered in Indiana but have strong ties to the Hoosier State also made the list. San Francisco-based Salesforce jumped from 326th on the 2017 list to 285 on the 2018 list. Fortune reports that Salesforce's revenues now top $10.4 billion.
Fortune also named Salesforce the best company in America to work for earlier this year.
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Seattle-based Amazon is ranked 8th on the list. The company's sales have jumped nearly $70 billion in two years, and it now has more than $177.8 billion in revenues, Fortune says. Amazon has fulfillment center locations in Indianapolis, Whitestown, Plainfield and Jeffersonville. It's also considering Indianapolis as the location for its second headquarters.
Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx, which also has a large footprint in Indianapolis, was ranked 50th this year. The world's second-largest package-shipper has surpassed $60.3 billion in revenues, according to Fortune.
The company has a 2 million-square-foot hub at the Indianapolis International Airport. FedEx also planned to build a distribution center in Greenwood that would have employed 455 people, but abruptly canceled those plans in March.
The top five companies nationwide on this year's Fortune 500 list are Walmart, Exxon Mobil, Berkshire Hathaway, Apple and UnitedHealth Group. Other notable rankings are General Motors at No. 10, Kroger at No. 17 and Boeing at No. 27.
Click here to see the full list.
Andrew Clark is Facebook editor for IndyStar. Follow him on Twitter @Clarky_Tweets. Like IndyStar on Facebook by clicking here.