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By Giles Lambertson

The company began in 1929 in Portland, Maine, as the Portland Tractor Company. It principally was a dealer for Oliver tractors and allwheel-drive Walters trucks. While neither line has survived, both were preeminent products in their day. Thirty years after Portland Tractor’s launching, company namesakes Richard Chadwick and Robert P. BaRoss bought and renamed the firm.

The Chadwick-BaRoss early customer base was split between municipal departments and logging companies. The forestry component grew tremendously beginning in 1985 with the purchase of Timberland Machines, a dealership with a popular line of logging equipment that included Timberjack skidders.

Chadwick-BaRoss eventually became a shareholder company. In 2011, Strongco, a Canadian Volvo dealer, purchased it. In 2016, IKO Group, a privately owned Canadian manufacturing and investment company, acquired it. IKO has infused the firm with capital and strategic leadership that has Chadwick-BaRoss growing its presence in new markets across the region.

In the years since 1959 when Chadwick and BaRoss took over, a succession of company leaders has occupied the executive suite. Today, Randy Mace is president. He joined the firm in 2012 as general manager of the Concord, N.H., branch after 40 years in the industry. His father was an equipment operator, so Mace “grew up around the stuff” before advancing in his career from mechanic to management positions with Caterpillar,

CEG Correspondent

Be it a company or a person, reaching 90 years is widely regarded as an achievement. Equipment dealer Chadwick-BaRoss Inc. has reached that stage of life with newfound vigor that has leadership already looking well past the next round figure — 100 years in business.

“Will the company be around 90 more years? I’d say, yes,” said Gary Thebarge, Chadwick-BaRoss vice president of operations.

Thebarge brings perspective to the question because he has worked at Chadwick for nearly half of its existence — 42 years, to be precise. “There will be a lot of challenges, of course. The industry is changing so fast that some days it is all we can do to keep up with it.”

The company is more than keeping up. It is aggressively expanding its footprint across six New England states, including a new store in Rhode Island, and invigorating all its dealerships with new products. Furthermore, in 2016, a long-established equipment company in Maine was brought into the company and gives Chadwick-BaRoss a heavyweight presence in the aggregate equipment business.

Not bad work for a 90-year-old. **

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Cummins, a Komatsu dealer and on to the presidency of ChadwickBaRoss.

“What that all adds up to is, I’m an old guy,” Mace quipped. An old man, that is, who rides a Harley-Davidson Street Glide, one of several motorcycles in his garage, and presides over the ambitious expansion of a 140-employee company. A self-professed “Maineiac,” the Maine native is helping move the company from an established regional equipment dealer to a dominant one in the region.

Here are a few of the many moving parts: • From a six-store operation in 2018, Chadwick-BaRoss has become a seven-store group in five states: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maine. The newest store is a 30,000-sq.-ft.

facility in West Warwick, R.I. By the end of 2019, an eighth store will be operating in Oxford, Conn. In addition, Chadwick-BaRoss serves Vermont customers from offices in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

• Because of competing dealership territories, the Chadwick-BaRoss product mix varies from state to state. It’s a complex mix. Example: The company offers the Volvo construction equipment line in Maine and New Hampshire and the SANY equipment line in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and Rhode Island. Link-Belt products are available from Chadwick-BaRoss in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Takeuchi compact equipment is offered in Rhode Island, eastern Massachusetts and eastern Connecticut. And so on.

“Management continues to value its employees because we understand employees are the backbone of the company’s success.”

Randy Mace

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• Aggregate handling equipment is being introduced in a big way after IKO purchased a Lewiston, Maine, company, Thompson Equipment. Thompson is the sole New England distributor of Astec Industries machinery, including Astec, JCI and KPI-branded screens, crushers, conveyors and recycling machinery.

• Two other relatively new lines of equipment the company acquired since IKO took over will be offered in all six states in partnership with local stores. Bell Trucks (a South African manufacturer) and SANY excavators, motorgraders and wheel loaders (out of China) will be sold under the Thompson Equipment banner in some locations and under the Chadwick-BaRoss banner elsewhere.

The aforementioned Thompson Equipment, which will continue to operate under that name, is seen as a real door-opener for Chadwick-BaRoss. Mace calls it “one of the biggest opportunities we see going forward. A real growth opportunity.”

Dan Doyle is general manager of the dealership. He was one of a trio of owners before IKO Group acquired it. He, too, saw the acquisition as an opportunity.

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“I didn’t have any family coming up in the business and had no exit strategy,” he said. “So, six months after IKO bought Chadwick, it bought us. They wanted to get into the recycling and aggregate equipment business and that’s what we do. We do it well.”

Thompson formerly sold its equipment across New England, but in relatively low volume because management wasn’t interested in leaving Maine.

“We never wanted to have a store out of state,” Doyle said. “We always have had almost more business than we could take care of. We just keep growing our customer base year after year, never losing customers out the back door. This year is the biggest year we’ve had in business.”

But after IKO bought Chadwick-BaRoss, the markers moved for Doyle.

“We thought, well, why don’t we clone ourselves into all of the other stores as Thompson aggregate equipment, offering equipment and service at each dealership? It makes it a lot easier for us to bring our business to those states.”

A new salesperson, Walter Moyse, will be responsible for the SANY and Bell lines for Thompson.

Thompson exclusively represents American-made aggregate equipment,

a decision made in 1994 when the company dropped 14 other aggregate-handling machinery manufacturers in favor of three lines made in this country.

“That’s been our focus ever since,” Doyle said. “We think that’s the way to go. Everybody understands that our products are designed and built right here in the U.S. We have $20 million in inventory, all made here. I just love America.” ** Chadwick-BaRoss has been a Maine-centric organization, serving other parts of New England from its home base in Westbrook. As it began to expand its operation across the region, it reworked its administrative lines of authority and created a new position — Southern New England Regional Manager — and hired Don Masley for the position.

Masley started a year ago, overseeing company dealerships in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. He brought with him 34 years working at a Massachusetts Deere, Hitachi and Wirtgen dealership, from which he had retired a little early.

“We just keep growing our customer base year after year, never losing customers out the back door.

This year is the biggest year we’ve had in business.”

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Dan Doyle

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“I had a friend at Chadwick who persisted in trying to get me into the company and I finally decided I wasn’t ready to retire just yet,” he said.

Whereas Volvo equipment is the flagship product line in northern New England, the triumvirate of Takeuchi, Link-Belt and SANY will dominate sales in the south. Customers are in construction and landscaping industries and municipal grounds work.

“With these products, we give customers some excellent choices,” Masley said. “These are all high-value lines and with the company’s expansion it can do a much better job of covering the area.”

“The business path is littered with companies that once dominated and then lost sight of customers and products and failed. We always need to be sensitive to the things our customers need.”

Don Masley 10

Besides industry experience, Masley brought to the company a focus on improving interaction between customers and company reps, as well as improving internal communication, a program he developed and managed for 12 years at his previous job.

“We’re implementing a company-wide customer relations management tool to help communicate between people and branches and improve efficiency and service. It features more timely resolution of problems and reaction to opportunities.”

Like Oliver tractors and Walters trucks, Masley said “the business path is littered with companies that once dominated and then lost sight of customers and products and failed. We always need to be sensitive to the things our customers need.”

He said IKO Group’s expansion strategy “is a classic move. The company now has a long-term plan, buying facilities and improving them and staffing them with good people.”

business, according to Jordan.

“We sell a lot more of them and what an excavator does is a lot tougher than, say, a wheel loader. The excavator is digging all the time, so the RPMs are up, where a loader will dig some and then run down the road a ways, then do some more digging. The life expectancy of an excavator is much shorter.”

The new lines of equipment bring new challenges for sales and service personnel — as well as new business.

“We are pretty much in the infancy on the aggregate side,” Jordan said.

“That’s just being implemented. The SANY part up in Lewiston is going to be double what we expected, not a huge number, but it’s coming. We’re doing business with a lot of people we never would have heard from before.”

Equipment rental also is growing, though Jordan said it isn’t easy in the company’s northern states.

“There are three independent rental companies within 50 miles of each other up here, so it’s not like it was before when they weren’t there.

** Back in Maine, Jeremy Jordan manages the company’s Westbrook home store. He worked up to the position after starting with the company 27 years ago as a mechanic, moving up to sales and then equipment and rental management before becoming general manager at Westbrook in 2015.

Jordan oversees the work of 25 employees, including eight technicians.

Each dealership has three to five field techs working from trucks and both shop and field technicians have their hands full staying knowledgeable about a variety of products. Volvo provides its own training modules and Jordan’s techs travel once or twice a year to factory training events. To augment that, Chadwick-BaRoss now has an in-house trainer.

Excavator sales and subsequent service are a big piece of Westbrook’s

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But we’re digging and scraping and we’ve grown our footprint.

This year we’re going to do more rental at this store than we ever have before.”

In the south where Masley tracks rentals, he credits a Chadwick-BaRoss philosophy for generating rental activity.

“The company is quite liberal in renting to customers, quite willing to try renting out more products, things that might not be rented by traditional equipment dealers. This creates synergy with customers and develops the customer relationships.” ** In his 42 years with the company, Gary Thebarge has seen many changes, as a shop technician, a field tech, product support manager and executive officer. Now, as vice president of operations, he has an even broader perspective — overseeing elements of customer service, rental, ordering, IT and assorted other management functions. He likes what he sees.

“Under new ownership, the company is changing,” he said.

“I would say that it has created a lot of opportunities for new people coming on, new locations, new companies, new branches. There are lots of opportunities for advancement, especially if people are willing to relocate.”

Evolution of the product line has been constant during Thebarge’s tenure. When he started, Clark forestry equipment and Komatsu were the two major lines. When Clark was swallowed up by Volvo, Chadwick-BaRoss opted to go with Volvo instead of Komatsu. When Volvo brought out a fuller line of equipment, the company’s competing Link-Belt franchise was relegated to its southern offices.

The absorption of the Timberjack logging equipment into Deere impacted the company in a way it still feels.

“Construction absolutely is our largest piece of business only because our forestry market is so restricted. With Timberjack, we were about 50-50 construction and forestry. Now it’s about 90-10 construction, but we are a lot bigger company now.”

With the addition of Ponsse forest machines in 2007 and other logging lines, the company is continuing to build back its presence in the market.

“This year we’re going to do more rental at this store than we ever have before.”

Jeremy Jordan 14

“Under new ownership, the company is changing.

I would say that it has created a lot of opportunities for new people coming on, new locations, new companies, new branches.”

Gary Thebarge The company is benefiting from the compact equipment revolution of the past two decades. In its northern territory, the Volvo line of compact machinery leads the way. In the south — Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut — Takeuchi is a popular compact product, and a brand that Chadwick-BaRoss has represented for more than 15 years.

“If you split the company north and south, compact equipment probably is 30 percent of the business down there, and perhaps 10 percent up here, but it’s growing in both areas,” Thebarge said. “We always wish it were more, but I think it will continue to grow because of the general labor shortage — no one wants to run a shovel anymore — and attachments have become the name of the game.”

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Perkins | Thompson

Congratulations to o Chadwick-BaRoss on 90 years s!

Congratulations

Chadwick-BaRoss

on Your 90th Anniversary

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Congratulations on 90 years.

We Can sEE tomorrow from here.

Project to Project. Community to Community. Generation to Generation.

Congratulations to Chadwick-BaRoss on 90 years in business. Together, we see a tomorrow where the tools and processes used to build our world are more intelligent, more connected and safer than ever before. And where gains in the power, efficiency and uptime of our equipment drive our customers’ work to new heights. Here’s to your past and to your future. We look forward to many more years of partnership.

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** Another member of the Thebarge family has worked with the company a long time — John Thebarge, Gary’s brother. After earning a forestry degree at the University of Maine in 1988, he couldn’t find a job to match his education, so he signed on with Chadwick-BaRoss as a mechanic. In the intervening 31 years, he steadily advanced and today is general manager of the Bangor, Maine, store.

With his background in forestry, John Thebarge is keenly aware of the challenge to regain market share in the industry. “That’s going to be the big challenge here, but we are working our way back.”

He credited the new ownership with sparking needed changes.

“They are putting money in the business, working with people to learn what we need to get the job done. The Bangor store, for example, was an older facility designed to handle smaller machines. They have invested in capital improvements here that had to be done for us to compete. If they keep doing what they’re doing, it will really support our work in Bangor and up in Caribou.”

John Thebarge has stayed at Chadwick-BaRoss all this time because, he said, “it’s a great company to work for. They always have been employee-oriented, paid their employees well and generally taken care of us.”

Company President Randy Mace may be a johnny-come-lately compared to some of the old hands at Chadwick-BaRoss, but he sees the same loyalty to employees.

“Chadwick is very loyal. It offers a very good working environment and its pay and benefits package is very good for our industry.

Management continues to value its employees because we understand employees are the backbone of the company’s success.”

John Thebarge believes that another 90 years in business is possible.

Enduring success, he said, will be built on customer support more than anything else.

“From the outside looking in, the company looks like it’s bigger than it is. We’re still old school. When an owner comes in to buy equipment, we sit down and talk and make a decision together and they like that.

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That’s the style we’ve always had. Chadwick-BaRoss is not like a lot of corporate places where they’ve lost that personal connection with customers.”

Doyle at Thompson Equipment calls the IKO Group “top shelf people” who value relationships. “It’s a great company with great roots and values.

When we were approached to join Chadwick-BaRoss, we knew it would be a great fit.”

Another person of note who likes partnering with Chadwick-BaRoss is

Stephen Roy, president of Volvo Construction Equipment’s Americas sales region. The executive also expresses confidence in the future.

“Volvo CE couldn’t be successful without the hard work, expertise and customer service provided by our dealers,” said Roy. “Chadwick-BaRoss exemplifies all these qualities — and its 90 years of service in New England shows that its customers agree. Congratulations to Chadwick-BaRoss from everyone at Volvo. We look forward to many more years of partnership.” 

“Chadwick-BaRoss is not like a lot of corporate places where they’ve lost that personal connection with customers.”

John Thebarge 19

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