Southeast_05_2010

Page 1

Published Nationally ®

Southeast Edition

March 10 2010

$3.00

Vol. XXIII • No. 5

“The Nation’s Best Read Construction Newspaper… Founded 1957.” 470 Maryland Drive • Ft. Washington, PA 19034 • 215/885-2900 • Toll Free 800-523-2200 • Fax 215/885-2910 • www.constructionequipmentguide.com

Inside

National Pavement Expo Comes to Nashville…8

Iconic Caterpillar Celebrates Turning 100 PEORIA, Ill. (AP) The $32 billion company that puts the Peoria area on the world’s financial map got its start 100 years ago with the deed to a bankrupt tractor plant and a dozen employees. Caterpillar, based in East Peoria, is easily the area’s biggest employer with more than 16,000 local workers. But it’s also 44th in the Fortune 500, employs more than 90,000 people around the world and serves as a bellwether for the economy because its construction and mining equipment is so widely used. “Over the years, our first plant along the banks of the Illinois River has been the birthplace for many of the products that have made us the company we are today,” Caterpillar CEOelect and Vice Chairman Doug Oberhelman

said. He has been picked to replace outgoing CEO James Owens. Cat got its start when Holt Manufacturing Company of Stockton, Calif., chose East Peoria and the bankrupt Colean Manufacturing plant as its base east of the Rockies. Holt was looking at Minneapolis but a young Peoria businessman named Murray Baker steered Holt toward a relatively new tractor plant owned by the bankrupt Colean Manufacturing Company, according to Caterpillar archivist Nicole Thaxton. Pliny Holt, the nephew of Holt’s founder, came to the Peoria area to check it out, and loved it. “I spent last Sunday in Peoria, Illinois, invesSteel erection and metal roof installation on one of the classroom buildings.

World of Asphalt Draws Record Crowds…14

tigating the plant of the Colean Manufacturing Company and I must say that I am more than enthused with the location of this plant for our Eastern Manufacturing business,” Pliny Holt wrote in a letter dated July 1, 1909. Holt Manufacturing took the deed to the plant on Feb. 16, 1910, and started work as Holt Caterpillar Company right away. A group of investors bought Holt and another manufacturer, C.L. Best Tractor Co., in 1925, and merged them into Caterpillar Tractor Co. Caterpillar employment reached more than 110,000 and revenue topped $51 billion in 2008 before the recession cut sales and led the company to lay off workers.

The Stim Effect: One Year Later By Giles Lambertson CEG CORRESPONDENT

Optimism Abounds at Auction in Orlando…56

Table of Contents ............4 Business Calendar ........28 Truck & Trailer Section .... ..................................31-33 Crushing, Screening & Recycling Section ....37-44 Parts Section............46-47 Auction Section ......52-65 Advertisers Index ..........66

Snow Days: Weather Puts Crews to the Test in Miss. By Zoie Clift CEG CORRESPONDENT

An onslaught of rain, snow and temperatures down in the teens has caused some hurdles for construction on a new school being built in Columbus, Miss. Work on Columbus Middle School is taking place on about 50 acres of land at the intersection of highways 373 and 45

North. A $22 million bond issue is funding the project. West Brothers Construction, Columbus, Miss., was awarded the $19.1 million bid (the remainder of the bond money, passed in January 2008 to pay for the school, went toward purchasing the property and developing the land for utilities such as sewer and electric) to build see SCHOOL page 26

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) was intended to be an effective antidote to high unemployment and stagnant growth in the construction industry. A year after the Act passed, the consensus is that things would have been worse without it. There is no denying the impact on the industry of billions of earmarked dollars. Yet there is disappointment. While major construction associations continue to voice support for the stimulus package for which they lobbied hard, even they sound a little defensive about it. “To appreciate the success of the Recovery Act’s transportation provisions, it is necessary to sidestep the political rhetoric about ‘outlays’ and jobs created vs. saved,” declared a white paper authored in February by the Transportation Construction Coalition, co-chaired by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association and Associated General Contractors. “The simple facts from the Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration are that, as of Feb. 17: • $16.84 billion in recovery act highway funds are see STIMULUS page 18


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