Equipment Report

Morbark Honors Top Dealers
Morbark Inc., Winn, Mich., has recognized its top dealers. The equipment manufacturer has named Columbus Equipment Co., Columbus, Ohio, its Industrial Dealer of the Year for the second straight year. Additionally, Morbark has recognized Alexander Equipment Co., Lisle, Ill; Nortrax Northeast, Westbrook, Maine; and Schmidt Equipment Inc., North Oxford, Mass., with the company’s Gold Tier Dealer status for their tree care products divisions.

“Morbark’s dealers are instrumental to our customers’ success,” says John Foote, vice president of sales and marketing for Morbark. “They provide more than just our high-performance equipment; they give our customers local knowledge and support to help them grow and maintain their businesses. We’re honored to recognize these dealers who are as devoted to continuous improvement as Morbark is. We’re proud to have them in the Morbark family.”

Columbus Equipment, established in 1952, earned the Morbark Industrial Dealer of the Year Award for its 2012 sales of industrial equipment. Columbus Equipment operates in 10 locations in Ohio and serves customers in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia.

Morbark rates its dealers on customer service, business plans, equipment and parts sales, service and warranty processes and marketing efforts. Dealers are reviewed and scored annually. As a result of the 2012 review, Alexander Equipment and Nortrax Northeast retained Tree Care Product Gold Dealer status, while Schmidt Equipment earned its first Gold Tier ranking.

Krause Manufacturing Celebrates 50 Years of Business
Krause Manufacturing of Bellingham, Wash., established in 1963, celebrates its 50th year of business this year. Krause manufactures heavy-duty recycling systems for construction and demolition, municipal solid waste, single-stream recyclables and electronic scrap as well as front-end system solutions for waste conversion technologies.

Jay Edmonds, Krause sales engineer, says, “As a long-time Krause employee of 24 years, I’m proud to say that after 50 years, Krause is still operating under the same principles that the company was founded on—we keep the customer’s needs in the forefront. Operating with integrity and providing the best value for the dollar are at the center of every project we take on.”

Krause built its reputation for manufacturing heavy-duty equipment starting off as a manufacturer of custom agricultural equipment. Krause began serving the recycling industry in 1985 and entered the C&D (construction and demolition) market in the mid-1990s. “Company founder Herb Krause’s philosophy was if you could build a machine that a farmer couldn’t tear apart, you did well,” says Edmonds.

Mike Whitney, Krause vice president and general manager, says, “The company’s history in farming equipment made the transition to manufacturing recycling equipment smooth. The industry demands strong standards of its equipment, and Krause was there to answer the need. Over 25 years later, much of the equipment produced is still up and running today.”

Stanley Girard, COO of Portland, Ore.-based Far West Fibers Inc., says, “Over the years, Krause has always been known for building the ‘stoutest’ equipment in the industry and for providing outstanding customer service.” He adds, “It may sound cliché, but working with them felt like you were working with family. Herb and his staff always made you feel like nothing else mattered to them but the job they were doing for you.”

Krause joined the CP Group in 2004 as a way for the CP Group to offer a broader solution to its customers and to better serve the needs of the C&D market.

By joining the CP Team, Krause says it expanded its own decades of experience in equipment design and engineering by drawing on the experience and ability of CP, which has been an industry pioneer in separation technology for the recycling industry since its incorporation in 1977.

For more information on Krause’s history, visit www.krausemanufacturing.com/company/history.

Liebherr Construction Equipment Names President
Liebherr Construction Equipment Co., with U.S. headquarters in Newport News, Va., has appointed Peter Mayr president. Mayr has held a number of executive positions with Liebherr, including his most recent position as managing director for Liebherr-Great Britain Ltd. and Liebherr Rental Ltd. He began his career with Liebherr in 2001.

“I am excited to be joining the Liebherr Construction Equipment Co. as president,” Mayr says. “Together with the core management team, I look forward to driving the company’s strategic initiatives, strengthening and growing our distribution and promoting the Liebherr brand.”

Allied-Gator Offers New Blade Design
Allied-Gator, Youngstown, Ohio, is now offering what it calls an innovative new blade design made exclusively for the company’s MT mobile shear line. Allied-Gator says its new Serrated Gator Blades have undergone extensive field testing that has “proven Serrated Gator Blades outlast traditional shear blades by up to 50 percent longer when processing general scrap and up to 90 percent longer when shearing steel wire and cable.”

The new technology is an option that is available to any current Allied-Gator MT customer regardless of tool size and without product modification, says the company.

“The serrations of the MT’s new blades are designed to progressively pass through material like a saw blade, rather than forcing the shear to chop through a large mass of material like an axe,” says Mike Ramun, Allied-Gator sales and marketing manager. “This new blade design does not rely solely on sharp shear blade edges to achieve the cut. Instead of a snipping effect, these blades generate a tearing action. This allows the MT shear to grip and tear scrap materials, which is a far more efficient cutting method than the traditional ‘scissoring effect’ utilized by all other mobile shear blades.”

As the MT’s dual moving shear jaws close on structural steel, each serration is designed to systematically yield and tear scrap material along the blades’ cutting path. “This new method of shearing greatly reduces the overall wear and tear to the tool. It’s like perforating a sheet of paper as you tear it,” says Ramun.

Traditional blades force steel wire and cable to the throat of the jaw and can cause severe uneven wear and damage to that specific blade area, says Ramun, and uneven blade wear has caused many recyclers to dread cutting steel wire and cable with their mobile shears. With Serrated Gator Blades in the MT, the serrations trap steel wire and cable along the blades as the jaws close. This allows the blades to progressively rip and tear the cable apart on its way to the throat, according to Allied-Gator.

Ramun says the new technology also is effective in processing notoriously troublesome materials, such as stainless steel and thin sheeting.

Company Wrench Introduces Hammer Machine
Company Wrench Ltd., Carroll, Ohio, has announced that its CW Machine Worx manufacturing division has introduced what it is calling a breakthrough in engineering and design with the release of a patent-pending second member hammer machine.

The second member hammer setup allows users to mount a 16,000-pound-per-foot hammer on a 108,000-pound machine, instead of using the same hammer on a 193,000-pound machine, according to the company.

Company Wrench says that when working on a job site that calls for breaking oversized material, trenching through rock or breaking concrete, the second member hammer machine can bring substantial savings in fuel and shipping costs amounting to as much as $392 per machine.

Company Wrench also has been named a dealer for Kobelco Excavators in North Carolina and South Carolina. The company’s new dealership in Smithfield, N.C., will feature a number of brand-specific equipment lines to service the Raleigh, N.C., metro area along with the Kobelco excavator line.

GE Capital and Slate Roadshow Features Gibson Machinery
Gibson Machinery was recently nominated and selected to be part of GE Capital and Slate’s 2013 Roadshow for Growth as part of a six-month, 20-city tour that will address the issues of middle-market businesses, a sector that reportedly generates $9 trillion in annual revenue and accounts for nearly 34 percent of total U.S. employment.

Middle-market companies have revenues between $10 million and $1 billion per year.

Traveling on a bus, the Roadshow for Growth visited middle-market businesses in Cleveland; Detroit; Charlotte, N.C.; Dallas; Atlanta; and Los Angeles, among other cities.

On June 13, Gibson Machinery, with locations in Oakwood Village, Ohio, and Oakdale, Pa., was chosen to be interviewed and filmed as a stop on the tour.

In the video on the Roadshow for Growth website, “Selling Construction Equipment—and Breaking the Glass Ceiling,” Lee Gibson, Larysa Gibson and Meredith Gibson share their insights on Gibson Machinery’s success during the economic downturn.

Larysa also explains how she meets the challenges of being a female owner in a heavily male-dominated industry.

Gibson Machinery serves the material handling, scrap processing, excavation and demolition markets. Since 2003, Gibson Machinery has provided sales, rentals, parts and service of equipment lines available to the markets served, including Sennebogen, Doosan and Genesis. Learn more at www.gibsonmachinery.com.