Published Nationally
$3.00
®
Western Edition
March 13 2010 Vol. VI • No. 6
“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
Record Breaking Visitors at the World of Asphalt...14
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 CEO-elect 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, investigating 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
Paving Professionals Meet at NPE...34
By Giles Lambertson CEG CORRESPONDENT
Optimism Abounds at Orlando Auction...54
Table of Contents ........4 Skid Steers ..........21-29 Paving Section......33-38 Parts Section ............40 Business Calendar ....47 Auction Section....52-57 Advertisers Index ......58
The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), and the cities of Ontario and Rancho Cucamonga are cooperating to fix Interstate 15 from state Route 60 in Ontario north to 6th Street in Rancho Cucamonga.
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 SLAB page 12
see STIMULUS page 18
Super-Slab will be placed on I-15 at night, similar to this I-95 project in New Rochelle, N.Y.
Super-Slab Debuts on I-15 in San Bernardino, Calif. Jennifer Rupp CEG CORRESPONDENT
When a road is traveled on by 216,000 vehicles per day, it can’t afford to be “closed for repairs.” The 4.7 mi. (7.56 km) stretch of I-15 in San Bernardino County will see a quick turn-around with the use of Super-Slab.