Walking through the eerily quiet Reliance Trailer Co. office building on Geiger Boulevard two weeks ago while looking for someone who could tell me about a looming auction of the shuttered company's assets, I half-expected to encounter some ghosts of profits past.

"Hello! Is anyone here?"

My shout echoed unanswered through two floors of dust-gathering rooms that had been emptied of everything except for a handful of well-used desks and matching file cabinets. As I meandered from room to room looking for a human, I couldn't help but visualize the clamor of activity that had made these same quarters seem so alive and purposeful a few short years ago, nor suppress a twinge of sadness at the silent evidence of a longtime Spokane-area business's passing.

It wasn't until I stepped through a doorway into the large adjoining manufacturing space that I found signs of activity, but the scene there wasn't any more uplifting. A handful of workers, one on a forklift, were busy grouping thousands of items—ladders, welders, air tools, hoses, clamps, and such—into lots, or organized piles, for auction-bidding purposes.

There, I pondered what had happened to the men who had used that equipment to turn out hundreds of big over-the-road truck trailers, giving rise to the operation's claim years ago to have built one of every four such trailers operating in the Northwest.

In fairness, and before becoming too maudlin, it's important to note that this manufacturing enterprise had been ailing long before it expired. The California-based founders of Reliance, after all, had bought the assets of previously fast-growing Alloy Trailers Inc. out of bankruptcy 12 years ago. They appeared to give resuscitation of the business a valiant effort, boosting the operation's employment to around 230 workers as recently as four years ago. Reliance, though, never seemed close to gaining the prominence that Alloy and its civic-activist chairman and CEO, J. Kingsley "King" Novell, had enjoyed over the previous couple of decades.

Even so, the closure of any sizable manufacturing operation here just adds to a long, troubling trend. Spokane County has lost 4,000 manufacturing jobs over the last three years, and more than 7,000 over the last decade, not counting the thousands of jobs impacted indirectly by that decline. Replacing many of those lost jobs, of course, have been lower-paying service-industry positions.

On the brighter side, though, Doug Tweedy, Spokane County labor economist with the Washington state Employment Security Department, says the manufacturing sector looks to be emerging strongly from the recession, as typically occurs.

"The jobs that are there seem to be more secure because they (surviving manufacturers) are more efficient, more competitive in their markets," plus the nature and breadth of that sector has changed a lot from generations past, Tweedy says.

As for the Reliance auction two weeks ago, an impressive crowd of about 600 registered bidders and 1,200 people overall showed up for it, helping it exceed projected gross revenues, says Garry Montague, owner of Garry Montague Auctioneers, of Spokane, which conducted the sale.

Cozad Trailer Sales LLC, of Stockton, Calif., which had bought the assets of Reliance, hired Montague to sell all that remained after it reportedly hauled off 20 truck loads of new steel and aluminum, specialized parts, and other items it believed it could use. It also took with it schematics for trailers that Montague says he was told it expects to begin producing as soon as later this year.

The longtime trailer maker will be missed here, but it's nice to know that its legacy might still live on out on the open road.