On October 31^st, the Manatt owners and Department Managers met in Brooklyn to discuss equipment needs for the up coming 2002 construction season. The Milling Division would like to do some trading of milling equipment, so we scheduled a trip to Wirtgen America in Nashville, Tennessee to see their new facilities and the machines they had to offer for next year.

On November 12^th, Gene Manatt & accompanying pilot flew Brad Manatt, Bob Morton, Jim Dommer, Phil Maddison and myself to Nashville. On arrival we were picked up at the airport and taken to Wirtgen America’s new office and shop facilities. We were fed lunch and shown a video of all the Wirtgen holdings worldwide. After that we toured the new office, shop and parts department. We were all impressed with the amount of parts they keep on hand to support the equipment they have in the field.

After the tour we spent the rest of the day in the equipment yard looking at and operating all of the machines they had for sale. That evening Wirtgen America treated us to a NFL game between the Nashville Titans and the Baltimore Ravens. We did some tailgating before the game and had a very enjoyable evening. We returned home on the 13^th feeling that we were treated very well and accomplished what we wanted to do. Now the task is to make up our minds on a machine and to trade in a way we can all be satisfied with.

As always, we are hoping that the winter and spring IDOT, County and City lettings will be plentiful and that we can be awarded an abundant quantity of work so we can keep all of our people busy in the field next summer and have a profitable year for Manatt’s and everyone involved in our division.

To date we have 13 projects to carry over to the 2002 season. We are getting people enrolled in the training service classes put on by the equipment manufacturers, hoping that our personnel will gain knowledge from these and can trouble shoot, repair and operate our equipment to maximize the machines performance to the ever changing tasks we perform for our valued customers.

As always at this time of year our attention turns to the upcoming Christmas season of spending time with the family and friends. I want to thank all of the wives and families of the Milling Division for keeping the family unit safe and strong for the many weeks that we had your husbands on the road doing their jobs as only they can do.