General Equipment Co. Commemorates 50th Anniversary

General Equipment Co. is celebrating two milestones as 2005 winds down. The company celebrated its 50th anniversary in business on Dec. 8 and also recently announced the production of its 50,000th 300 Series Two-Man Hole Digger. General Equipment Co., founded in 1955, manufactures a diverse line of light construction products including portable and mobile hole-digging equipment, confined-space ventilation blowers and surface-preparation products.

To commemorate the company’s benchmarks this year, General Equipment Co. has released a scale model of its 330H Hole Digger. The limited edition, handcrafted scale model is finely detailed, even depicting a scaled-to-size 8-inch-diameter auger. The company produced 360 of the models which will be made available exclusively to customers and associates.

“As a company, we’re very proud that we’ve survived 50 years in business during this age of consolidation and convenience-store mentality,” says Dennis Von Ruden, second-generation company president. “A lot of businesses don’t get to 50 years anymore, but we’ve done that and also survived a transition into a second generation of ownership to keep things going.”

Von Ruden says improvisation has been one of General Equipment Co.’s keys to staying successful for 50 years. “Improvisation is a word I like to use,” he says. “We’ve changed as we’ve needed to, to keep us in business amid changes in the market place. The way we do business now is different than we did 50 years ago and even 5 years ago. We’ve been flexible in the products we manufacture and how we produce them to make sure we’re bringing the products our customers need to market.”

Consolidation in the equipment industry has been a challenge that Von Ruden says General Equipment Co. has worked hard to manage since the early 1990s. “Now, we’ve had to learn how to work with large national equipment rental chains, as opposed to the smaller, independent dealers that used to sell construction equipment,” he explains. “We used to do business with the ‘chief cook and bottle washer,’ but now there’s a different mentality of big business that these larger chains bring to the table.”

Staying flexible will keep the company successful into 2006 and the next 50 years of business. “We have to continue to evaluate what we do best as a company and determine how we can continue to build a higher-quality product for less money,” Von Ruden says. “Manufacturing is attracting fewer younger people, so in order to keep production going well, we may need to look toward using affordable technology, robotics and other means of equipment production, and adapting it to our needs to increase quality.”

Originally a regional company, General Equipment Co. has spent 50 years growing and expanding into an international market that Von Ruden says is exciting for the company, but also a challenge. “The global market is tough to break into – our products sell convenience, but in many parts of the world there are workers standing around waiting to be given something to do. Efficiency may not be the goal in those places yet,” he says. “There’s also a lot good deal of competition coming into the market. The effects of the Chinese ability to build construction equipment is starting to be felt, and we believe India will follow and eventually South America and parts of Africa. As we move into the next generation of the company, we’re going to work hard to remain a leader in our market by continually improvising and changing for the better.”