Deere distributor selects Beacon

Expansion opens regional office

By Craig Wolf
Poughkeepsie Journal

 

Karl Rabe/Journal Shipping and receiving clerk Dave Parker works in the recently expanded Nortrax building in Beacon. The company distributes John Deere machinery.

BEACON -- A fast-growing distributor of John Deere construction machinery is moving its regional offices to a newly-expanded building here.

Nortrax, the largest John Deere dealer in America, has bought up 56 formerly independent dealerships so far. It bought the 497 Fishkill Ave. property and business of K.C. Canary in June 2000 and enlarged the building by almost 150 percent.

You won't find the famous ''John Deere green'' machines here. That color is limited to farm equipment and lawn mowers. This facility sells and repairs ''yellow iron,'' machines like backhoes and loaders used by the construction, road and forestry industries.

Relocate from N.H.

Chuck Dull, vice president of Nortrax's Northeast region, said the regional management team, including him, will move from Concord, N.H., to Beacon by February. That will add 15 employees to the existing 23, who are in sales and service.

Some hiring has been going on, and Dull expects that growth in the business will create more jobs for salespeople and mechanics.

This site covers eastern New York and Vermont, and Beacon is well-suited to serve that territory, Dull said. But it's also the mid-Hudson market that attracts.

''We wanted to have our regional management team located there given the opportunity that we see,'' Dull said. ''That area of New York is probably the biggest potential market and potential growth area in the northeast states that we cover.''

Construction on the Nortrax facility was handled by Wappingers Falls-based Civil Technologies and Engineering. Eugene D. Ninnie of that company said the $2.35 million project was finished in seven months. About 20,000 square feet of space was built and existing space was renovated.

Dull said 10 service bays were added and parts storage greatly enlarged.

''We want to be able to provide not only a quality product for sale but to provide the support service needed to guarantee our customers up time, which is critical in the construction industry,'' Dull said.

Downtime, when a piece of equipment isn't working, is costly, said Richard O'Beirne, executive director of the Construction Contractors Association of the Hudson Valley in Newburgh. The owner of a bulldozer rented out to contractors stands to lose $700 to $900 an hour if it stops running, O'Beirne said.

Nortrax, formed in 1999, has about $700 million annual revenues and is growing, Dull said.

Frank Manfredi, publisher of the Machinery Outlook newsletter in Mundelein, Ill., said Deere's construction division ranks third or fourth in sales in the United States, with about $2.1 billion last year.

Deere's federal filings show it owns more than 40 percent of Nortrax. Manfredi said Deere aimed to improve efficiency of distribution. From 300 or 400 small dealers 10 years ago, consolidation has left 80 or 90 big ones