General Equipment & Supplies Inc. 40th Anniversary

Celebrating Four Decades

After 40 Years, N.D.’s General Equipment & Supplies Has Plans in Place for Continued Growth

By Eric Olson CEG CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

What is the true worth of an American company? Is it the amount of revenue it generates each fiscal year or is it something that cannot be found on a spreadsheet — something less tangible?

Certainly, the success of most businesses is defined primarily by the bottom line, but in order to generate sizable earnings, particularly among service companies dealing directly with the public, treating people with kindness and respect is a critical component.

And that goes for not only a company’s customers, but its employees as well.

That philosophy is fully embraced at General Equipment & Supplies Inc., headquartered in Fargo, N.D., and recognized as one of the Upper Midwest’s premier dealers of construction and aggregate equipment.

With 10 locations spread across the two Dakotas, Minnesota and Iowa, in addition to a pair of branches in Canada, the full-service distributor is set to celebrate its 40th anniversary in business on April 16. At the same time, General Equipment will officially recognize the retirement of two of its founding members: Don Shilling and Jerry Kern.

Shilling’s son, Jon, today serves the company as its

president and chief executive officer. He said that fostering a culture within General Equipment that focuses on core values and keeping a family-like feel within the large dealership is heavily emphasized as part of the current management style, but it came naturally to his father and Kern when they formed the business in 1984.

“They were always people-focused and did an outstanding job of treating folks fairly, making sure that everybody in the company was taken care of and no one was simply just a number,” Shilling explained. “It was truly a family-run business and that has always been the goal, even as we continue to grow. We have excellent people that love working here and being a part of the culture and our employee retention is outstanding.

“When Don, Jerry and their partners started General Equipment in 1984, they had 22 employees; now we have more than 300, including those in our Canadian companies, and we did almost a quarter of a billion dollars of business in 2023,” he said.

“[Don and Jerry] were always people-focused...”

Jon Shilling

(L-R) are Jon Shilling, president and CEO; Tanya Groft, vice president of finance and IT; Matt Kern, vice president of sales — rolling stock; Steve Stafki, vice president of operations; Sara Frith, vice president of people and culture; and Don Kern, vice president of material processing.

(L-R) are Orvis Stockstad, Jerry Kern, Don Shilling and Gene Hestdalen, the founders of General Equipment.

Measured Expansion Helps Grow Company

General Equipment’s roots go back to 1975, when Don Shilling and Kern began working together at Fargo’s General Diesel & Equipment within weeks of each other. After nine years with that company, Shilling, Kern and two other gentlemen — Orvis Stockstad and Gene Hestdalen — purchased General Diesel’s building and assets following its liquidation and, in its place, founded the new dealership.

Over the years, General Equipment’s lone Fargo location was joined by other North Dakota locations in Bismarck, Minot and Williston, as well as Sioux Falls and Rapid City in South Dakota, the Minnesota cities of Shakopee, Duluth and Hibbing, and Urbana, Iowa.

The company also expanded across the border into Canada in 2007 when it opened branches in Regina, Saskatchewan, and Winnipeg, Manitoba, operating under the name General Aggregate Equipment Sales. As its name implies, that distributorship represents and services strictly aggregate products.

Jon Shilling noted that General Equipment also has plans in the works to set up branches in other areas of the American Midwest.

“In the near future, we will be looking for a new holding yard and a branch in the Omaha area, our first one in Nebraska,” he said. “Although we don’t currently have a location in the state, we do have a sales associate in that market as well as a new product support sales representative [PSSR]. The plan is to eventually look for a building to primarily hold parts and support materials.”

He added that General Equipment has selected Omaha for its new location because it will not only serve eastern Nebraska, but also help the company cover western Iowa.

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The Fargo team celebrates the company’s 20th anniversary in 2004.

The company’s 25-year employees in 2009.

First fleet of WA450 loaders in 1990s

A new fleet of Komatsu WA500 loaders in 2023.

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Top Makers Aligned With General Equipment

One look at General Equipment’s lineup of construction equipment offerings on its website should tell you that many of the top names in the industry have clamored to be aligned with the dealership.

Among the brands represented by the company are Komatsu, Hitachi, JCB and Link-Belt cranes, in addition to many others. For some brands, where they are sold depends on the territories that General Equipment covers, Shilling said.

“For instance, in North Dakota and 11 counties in Minnesota we represent the Komatsu line, while in the rest of Minnesota and South Dakota we market Hitachi — each of which would be the premier rolling stock brands in those areas,” he explained. “Plus, we offer LinkBelt cranes in the states of North Dakota and Minnesota, a premier product line in those areas. JCB is definitely a key partner of ours, too, on the rolling stock throughout North Dakota.”

He added that, on the aggregate equipment side, General Equipment handles Superior Industries’ full

“When Don, Jerry and their partners started General Equipment in 1984, they had 22 employees...”

Jon Shilling

(L-R) are Aaron Van Der Stoep, Sara Frith, Paul Sindt and Dino Dautcehajic at the 2014 Sioux Falls open house.

A Komatsu PC400LC excavator

Today’s Komatsu excavators are equipped with intelligent Machine Control (iMC).

Group picture in front of the sales building in Fargo in the 1990s.

line of crushing, screening, washing and conveying products in North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska.

Shilling noted that his aggregate people also rely on Fab Tec, a fabrication company located in Moscow, Idaho, to build carriers for hauling some Superior-made components.

In South Dakota, the dealership represents KPI-JCI, and Terex-Finlay’s machines are a prominent fixture in the distributor’s showrooms.

For many years, General Equipment’s aggregate equipment offerings represented about 60 percent of its business, with its rolling stock making up 40 percent. But last year, Shilling said, those percentages began to change.

“It started to flip as we added the Hitachi line and I believe that that will be a pretty continuous flip down General Equipment earned the 2003 Top Achiever Award.

A General Equipment service truck in the 90s.

Current service truck ready for all your onsite repairs.

A Komatsu WA475 wheel loader welcomes customers to the General Equipment lot.

the road toward a 50-50 split or even a 60-40 rolling stock to aggregate split,” he elaborated. “Aggregate is still really a niche market for us, but Jerry Kern got interested in that many years ago when he was our used equipment manager for rolling stock. He began buying up crushers at auctions and the more he purchased, the more he learned about that industry. Eventually, if he was not the top guy in the aggregate equipment business, he was certainly one of the best people in the field in terms of knowledge and understanding.”

Shilling said that although most every equipment dealer handle rolling stock,“only a relatively few across the country get into the aggregate side and not all of them have a full understanding of how crushers should work. I would say because of Jerry, and now his son, Donnie, who replaced his dad as vice president of material sales for us, they are the reason General Equipment’s aggregate business is so well known throughout the U.S., especially in this region.”

Efficiencies Keep Products, Parts Inventory Stocked

Due to its efficient management, General Equipment has enabled its 10 locations to remain fully stocked with construction and aggregate equipment, in addition to maintaining an extensive parts department.

In recent years, Shilling explained that the dealership holds upwards of $100 million in equipment inventory and close to $16 million in parts throughout its branches.

“We consider ourselves to be a high-stocking dealer,” he said, “so that we can provide the very best equipment in the timeliest manner to our customers and, in order to do that, we have to carry some pretty significant equipment volumes. The same goes for the parts — we try to stock them at a high level so that our customers do not have to wait on what they need.”

The company does not operate a central or regional warehouse; rather, each branch maintains its own parts department. In fact, the Hibbing, Minn., location functions primarily as a parts store and its sister branch in Shakopee also has a large parts facility.

To help move parts where they are quickly needed, Shilling noted that General Equipment runs regular nightly shuttles between most of its branches as well as makes deliveries to some of its smaller stores a couple times each week.

“The goal is to shuttle parts to the branches where they are needed by 7 a.m. or certainly by noon the next day to have them available to the customer if their equipment happens to be down,” he said.

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“When my father was president, he put an emphasis on workforce development.”

Jon Shilling

General Equipment is ready to show customers its latest machines and technology at Big Iron, Fargo 2023.

The company sets up for a trade show to promote its brands.

The General Equipment booth is set up for a show.

General Equipment offers Superior aggregate equipment for crushing and screening needs.

Two of General Equipment’s Founding Fathers Prepare to Officially Retire

By Eric Olson CEG CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Along with celebrating the 40th anniversary of General Equipment & Supplies first opening its doors to customers, the April 16 event at its Fargo, N.D. headquarters will also recognize two of the gentlemen who helped to shape the company into the industry force it is today.

Don Shilling, and his business partner, Jerry Kern, will officially retire at the open house — 40 years to the day after the company’s founding. Each of them unofficially stepped away from day-to-day duties at General Equipment over the last couple of years, but, as Shilling said, “we pop our heads in the office every once and a while.”

Shilling and Kern had worked for General Diesel & Equipment, the current company’s predecessor, beginning in the 1970s before they, along with two other partners, Orvis Stockstad and Gene Hestdalen, started the new company in April 1984.

Over the next several decades, General Equipment experienced measured growth that began with one location and a handful of employees to what is today — a dealership with 10 locations that serve North and South Dakota, Minnesota and eastern Iowa, in addition to a pair of branches in Canada.

The distributorship also employs close to 300 people, about a third of whom work as service technicians across its territory in the North Country.

In addition, the company showcases some of the finest rolling stock and aggregate machines on the market, including Komatsu, Hitachi, JCB, and Link-Belt cranes on the construction side, and several top aggregate lines such as Superior Industries, KPI-JCI and Terex-Finlay.

When asked to what he attributed General Equipment’s longevity, Shilling said it goes back decades to when there were only a handful of dealers serving that part of the rural Midwest.

“Having a business like ours puts you in a position where you become pretty familiar with all your customers, and they with you, making it a genuine relationship-driven business,” he said. “The fact of the matter is that when General Diesel exited the industry in 1984 and we started our company and rented their building, the customers never really saw much of a transition. They still drove to 4300 Main Ave. in Fargo to pick up their parts or have their equipment serviced, so the relationship remained the same — we have always worked very closely with our customers. The reasons why we have grown are because we have maintained a total customer focus while adding more locations and broadened our product lines as well as acquiring a larger customer base.”

Shilling, Kern Apply Their Own Ideas

Eventually, Shilling became General Equipment’s board chair, and Kern served as vice chair and aggregate sales consultant due to his extensive knowledge of that side of the company.

After completing his sophomore year of high school in Redding, Calif., Shilling moved to North Dakota as a teenager when his father, a

general contractor whose focus was large concrete infrastructure, bid on a project near Minot, N.D. In 1975, while finishing college at North Dakota State University in Fargo, Shilling was hired by General Diesel and after graduation continued in the company’s service department before later moving into sales management.

Kern was born and raised in Wadena, Minn. and educated at the University of Minnesota at Morris. He began working at General Diesel shortly before Shilling, in 1973.

Once General Equipment began operating in 1984, they, along with Stockstad and Hestdalen, steadily built up the distributorship’s profile via their own unique brand of leadership, including fostering a family-like feel within the company and hiring folks they considered to be ideal for their service-based operation.

“Because of the lack of service technicians, we saw the need to begin a program of recruitment of future technicians and partner with local colleges to educate, provide co-op work experiences, and provide tuition assistance to ‘build our own’ future employees,” said Shilling, who was most instrumental in that process, according to his son, Jon, the current president and CEO of the distributorship.

“What we found by doing that is you help them to establish a personal allegiance to the company and a desire to continue working and

Don Shilling Don Shilling

Sara Firth and Don Shilling at the Agg Expo in 2010.

advancing within General Equipment,” Don continued. “We prefer to promote from within as well.When we have a new supervisory or managerial position open up, we look internally to our employees first to fill those roles.”

Kern Became Aggregate Equipment Expert

During a time when Kern was the company’s used construction equipment manager many years ago, he started buying up aggregate machines at auction and eventually became General Equipment’s resident expert on the industry. In fact, Jon Shilling holds the opinion that Kern is one of the aggregate equipment industry’s more knowledgeable people — if not the most.

The younger Shilling also credits Kern for teaching his son, Don Kern, everything he knew about aggregate equipment when they worked together at General Equipment before Jerry took a step back from the business. Today, Don Kern is the company’s vice president of material processing and is well-qualified to continue his father’s legacy of excellence.

“For the last year or two I have been doing a little bit of sales with

customers that are outside of our normal territory, like Atlanta — people that I have done business with forever,” Jerry Kern said.

Kern also helped establish and run the company’s Aggregate Expo, an event held every three years in Fargo to offer a learning experience for its aggregate customers. Attendance each time has exceeded the dealership’s expectations, he said, to where more than 450 customers sign up to learn important industry trends and methods.

The first one began about 20 years ago and was designed to offer customers five or six training classes lasting up to 90 minutes each.

In addition, $10 million to $15 million in equipment is exhibited in the General Equipment yard and heated tents are set up for the company to hold classes or demonstrate the latest features of the machines on display.

Aggregate manufacturers also are allowed to rent booth spaces at the Fargo Holiday Inn so visitors can speak to the equipment makers and get information on their products, although it is not meant to be a sales pitch.

The next Aggregate Expo event will take place in March 2025.

Both Men Proud of What They Accomplished

Kern is proud of the fact General Equipment has been able to stay true to itself in promoting its values and maintain a close-knit atmosphere, despite the changes in the industries it has served over the last four decades.

“Well, it is pretty amazing as I look back on my career,” he explained. “I never would have guessed that we would be as successful as we became, and I don’t mean that solely in terms of revenue. I think we built a company with a tremendous culture even as we have gotten larger, and I am also proud that it has managed to remain family oriented and works to care for its employees.”

For his part, Shilling said the differences he sees between 1984 and 2024 from the General Equipment perspective are the significant changes in the “names of the equipment manufacturers represented by dealers. Some have merged and gotten larger, thereby increasing their influence, while others have gone out of business, and the ones that came in behind them are new entries into the market — all part of the natural evolution of the business.”

But as he and Kern look forward to what Shilling calls their “official hang-your-hat-on-the-peg day” in April, he does carry fond memories of his time operating General Equipment.

“It has been a tremendous opportunity. I have often said where else but in North Dakota could a person with no money and a desire to go into the equipment business build something from scratch and be able to succeed?” Shilling reminisced. “In 1984, our most senior partner, Orvis Stockstad, took Jerry and me under his wing and helped us forge a business into what we have now. His experience and guidance were critical for us.

“If I had moved back to California, where I spent my youth, there would have been no way for me to afford to start an equipment dealership. Living in a rural North Dakota setting with the positive business environment that we enjoy has been very rewarding and was a great place to start.” CEG

Jerry Kern

Jerry Kern

Don Shilling and Jerry Kern, will officially retire at the open house — 40 years to the day after the company’s founding.

Jerry Kern and Don Shilling celebrate General Equipment’s 20th anniversary in 2004.

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Dealership Keeps An Eye Out for Talented Techs

Full-service shops can be found in all but three of General Equipment’s locations, although the ones that do not, in Hibbing, Urbana and Rapid City, operate parts storage and smaller service spaces.

The dealership also employs what Shilling called a “significant” fleet of nimble repair trucks that end up conducting the majority of the company’s service work on site.

Most impressive is the fact that they have more than 100 diesel and aggregate technicians, aggregate apprentices and diesel students as part of the General Equipment team.

Many dealerships across the country struggle to find enough qualified technicians, particularly among young people. Shilling said that his company is no exception, but he does believe that General Equipment has found solutions to keep it ahead of the curve.

“When my father was president, he put an emphasis on workforce development. He understood, I think before a lot of other people did, that there was going to be a technician shortage one day, so he worked to get a program set up at North Dakota State College of Science [NDSCS], a two-year tech school in Wahpeton,” Jon explained. “They have a diesel technology program there and he helped set up a partnership program between us, the college and Komatsu America. NDSCS has one of the best diesel facilities – if not the best – in the country for a two-year technical school.”

In addition, General Equipment employs two recruiters to traverse the Dakotas and Minnesota to identify young people for the diesel technology curriculum.

“Our goal each year, and we haven’t quite hit it yet, is to get 20 kids into that program,” he noted, “and last year, I believe we attracted 17. That constant feed of technicians is what has really kept us ahead of the eight ball. It may be a Komatsu program, but when those kids finish, they have learned diesel technology, and can work on any of our equipment. It not only provides us a pipeline to new talent, but our retention rate is excellent.”

Shilling said that when good people graduate from the program with a broad knowledge base, most look to advance within the company by going into foreman positions, service manager jobs or PSSR roles, “because they have earned our customers’ trust by working on

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A team-building exercise in Shakopee involved putting a bike together. Gary Johnson (L) was blindfolded while Greg Rosario helped with instructions.

Team members of General Equipment’s Fargo location take part in the ALS ice bucket challenge.

General Equipment expanded into Canada in 2007.

General Equipment’s heavy haul team, transporting your equipment right to your site.

A Finlay J-1170 mobile jaw crusher

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their equipment and, if they have a good personality and are outgoing, they become the best PSSRs we could put out in the field.”

General Equipment’s strategy includes reimbursing 100 percent of a student’s college tuition once he or she completes the program and comes to work for the company.

“All of this helps them to get ingrained in our culture and get to know our people,” Shilling explained.

In selecting individuals to work at General Equipment, the company specifically looks for people that it believes will match

its culture and share its values.

“There was always a thought process in the construction side of this industry that you are better off hiring someone who knows what they are talking about even if you have to deal with a bad attitude, but at General Equipment, we have slowly, over the course of time, changed that thought process,” Shilling said. “The fact is it is hard to change attitudes as well as train people, but if you have someone with a good attitude, is personable with customers and wants to take care of things for them, and is excited and passionate about the business, you can always train them on how to do the job even if they don’t have much industry knowledge.”

First graduating class of the GES diesel technician intern program in 2016. The 2023 graduating class of the GES diesel technician intern program.

Customer Satisfaction Is High Priority

Of course, any service company as well managed as General Equipment has a strategy devised to maintain lofty standards in its customer satisfaction.

Shilling explained that the dealership’s customer experience philosophy, or CEP, helped develop a training program for all of its employees. Fine-tuned over a period of years, it was rolled out in early 2023, he said, and utilizes the company’s set of values to guide its employees on how best to treat customers.

As part of the CEP, they gained valuable feedback and insights from key external stakeholders. Shilling added that the feedback was designed to “help develop our training philosophy, but sometimes, it ends up being a counseling service for those folks who had stopped working with us because of something we had done wrong.

“In the end, we learned that most customers were impressed that we were willing to come out and talk to them, but it also gave them an opportunity to vent their frustrations with us. Since then, many of those companies have started to return once they were able to get off their chests what frustrated them about us. They just wanted to be heard.”

It is just another example of how General Equipment has continually reshaped and tailored itself to grow in popularity among its customers and its employees over the last four decades, and all indications are that the dealership is well on its way to many more years of prosperity. CEG

(All photographs are courtesy of General Equipment & Supplies, Inc.)

The General Equipment team gathers at Agg Expo 2022. (L-R) are Grant Davis, Aaron Van Der Steop and Dave Grandalen at Agg Expo 2022.

The team effort is always great when we register visitors to Agg Expo 2022.