Hollis Emerson

At a winter retreat in 2001, Tony and Tim Manatt were given the task of finding a way to centralize our purchasing. On November 14, 2002, a group of owners and managers met at
L.L. Pelling, North Liberty, for a purchasing meeting.

This meeting was to exchange ideas and thoughts. The meeting opened with the question, “Do we or don’t we want centralized purchasing?” It was decided that we would look further into this idea, with Tim taking the chairmanship of the group.

The primary focus was to be on equipment at this time with parts, service, insurance, and supplies a possibility later on. The general consensus was if ordering in quantity would save us money, we would look into this opportunity.

A committee composed of Jim Bim, Chris Dinsdale, Gerry Gaffey, and Hollis Emerson was asked to do research with different dealers and manufacturers into what opportunities might exist. With different dealer territories, program incentives, trade-ins, service, financing, and delivery dates, this project becomes very time consuming. We also wanted to make sure we weren’t costing ourselves money in the long run. We discussed how to have the operator involved with some of these decisions to help eliminate some hurdles.

Another question that was brought up was, “Are we buying our equipment at the right time of year?” It was discussed that we might want to try buying trucks one year and loaders another, which would allow us to have larger numbers at purchase time.

One thing that was accomplished was, we now have a National account with Case and some reduced pricing from our Cat dealers.

Due to a shift in budgets this year, we didn’t have the opportunity to combine companies for many multi-piece purchases. We will be trying this project for next year’s budget, with the goal of having purchase needs from all companies in by October 15.

It was also decided we need to have a better way to dispose of used equipment. Jim is working to get used equipment from all of our companies onto our Internet listing.

We will also be looking for a better way to communicate with each other when we need to rent something, or when we are done with a rental, making sure someone isn’t in need of buying this unit.

Every one’s goal was the same; try to find a way to purchase equipment for less.