I responded to a thread about Cat dealers and it made me think of some dealers who have closed for whatever reason. What are some old dealers you can think of?
I bought my New Holland utility tractor from Keats Equipment in Keene New Hampshire. The story goes,,the place was there for over 50 yrs but I guess the owners sons nor his grandsons had any interest in taking it over, so a big box store offered the owner big money for the building and property, and he sold it and closed.
Lots of them have been bought up or otherwise changed names, International/Dresser/Komatsu forced some out, the CNH/FIAT ongoing debacle forced a lot of changes including Kobelco came, went, came back, and anybody remember VME group? In Portland, Oregon the big three used to be Cooper-International (RIP), Hessel-Deere (forced by Deere to sell, backdoor deal that ended up with PAPE as owner) Halton-CAT (another case of the family tree losing branches, and CAT leaned on Ted to sell, now Peterson) As a side note, PAPE was the Southern Oregon CAT dealer forever but they were landlocked and the loss of logging, trucking, fishing, mills, manufacturing put a crimp in their business... CAT basically forced them to buy out Deere dealerships in order to survive. The manufacturers look upon dealers as a necessary evil to insulate them from the customers. As a Deere corporate rep once told me: "I'm the guy Deere pays to make you dealer people think Deere actually cares about you."
I mentioned Highway Eq. In Piketon, they ran afoul of Whayne Supply in Ashland Ky. selling parts deep in Whayne's territory and that kinda ended them. Grimes Eq. was a JD dealer in Chillicothe Oh who disappeared along with Commonwealth Eq in Ashland Ky , just gone. Who can forget Central Ohio Tractor, the Allis Chalmers dealer?
Portland also had Interstate Tractor and Equipment. Terex, Mountain Logger, Poclain, Madill, Champion graders, and a brand of rubber tired log shovels. I moved to Alaska in the 70's and IT&E seemed to vanish in between one of my Oregon visits.
Anyone remember Pacific Hoist and Derek? I worked for Howard Cooper in my early days. McDonald industries bought out the Evans Engine, who was the Terex/Euclid dealer and became a Komatsu dealer later on then was bought and sold several times till Washington Group purchased it. Then there was some kind of upheaval in Washington Group and they sold it again. Case Power and Equipment became Sonsray. Smith Tractor was bought out as part to the deal that put Deere in the Pape Group's hands. Pape also ended up getting the local Hyster dealership as well. Washington Iron just stopped existing. I've forgotten the family that was down in Kent that dealt Blaw Knox and other paving and highway gear. The sons took it over and tried selling converted Hyundai excavators as log loaders. Anyone heard from Coastal Pacific in a while? I'm sure there are many more.
Anyone from the UK will remember H Leverton & Co, Bowmaker, Caledonian Tractor, & Mcormick McNaughton. All now gone to the great Cat dealer in the Sky and replaced by Finning UK.
Kramer ltd has been the Cat dealer in Saskatchewan since 1944. Finning takes over the dealership in July. http://globalnews.ca/news/1983215/finning-buys-kramer-caterpillar-saskatchewan-dealership/
Cantwell Machinery was the VME and later on the Hitachi dealer in Ohio, long gone now.
Darr equipment was the Cat dealer in the north part of Texas and southern Oklahoma. It was a big operation with a lot of branch stores. They sold the Cat equipment portion of their operations to Holt. They kept the Cat forklift division, and now have taken on the JCB equipment.
Does that means that Finning has now got pretty much all of Western Canada..? Big outfit even when I worked for them 10 years ago in Latin America.
Finning will buy Cat one day...
I drive from Alaska to the lower-48 a couple of times each year for the last 10 or so. It is surprising to see how much work is going on. Mines, logging, highway construction, Power lines, oil and especially gas wells in northern BC. There are trucks and heavy equipment all over the place and Finning is everywhere.
Finning had over 3000 employees in Latin America when I left and that was 10 years ago. Apparently they have almost double that now.
Yup. Sucks to run Cat in Western Canada these days. Not that it didn't before... On the other hand, maybe its just some of the local stores.