Sixty years after its inception, Allied Construction Products Inc., of Cleveland, OH, has seen a variety of owners but has stayed true to customer support and quality of equipment, making it an even stronger entity as the company celebrates this milestone.
With its current owners Allied has pushed forward over the past nine years with new technology and products, while keeping its strong and dedicated work force busy manufacturing attachments crucial to the construction industry.
The current team of owners, including Leo Matthews, president, Dick Hojnacki, COO, and John O’ Brien, chairman of the board, has done much to update and expand the company’s ongoing product lines as well as expand them with newer, safer and more technological items.
Allied was started as a small steel business in 1942 by H. S. Meshorer, who named the company Amalgamated Steel. Meshorer started the company’s dynasty by introducing the Grip-Lug, a rolled steel bar, which was used to rebuild worn crawler tracks, helping to conserve steel during World War II.
Since then, the company has brought many innovative products - mostly attachments and other safety-enhancing equipment - to the market. In 1961, the Roto-Cut, a rotary asphalt cutter was introduced, and three years later Allied started marketing the Tren-Shore, an aluminum shoring system. Over the next few years, a variety of attachments were released including the Ho-Pac, a backhoe-mounted vibratory compactor; the Ho-Ram, an air hammer; the Hy-Ram, a backhoe-mounted hydraulic impact hammer; the Pedestal Breaker System and the Hole Hog, an underground piercing tool.
From the early 1970s to the present Allied has seen many changes and has introduced a gamut of tools for the growing industry. During this time, the company became a subsidiary of Chicago Pneumatic Tool Co., and then became a part of Danaher Corp. and Westinghouse Credit Corp. Finally, in 1993, the company was bought by its current owners. The buyout was a well thought-out plan to keep customers and employees believing in Allied. “We put together the ownership team with new equity and then reassured customers and employees that we would be here for the long run,” said O’Brien. “The first six or seven years showed a great deal of growth and profit.” In 1999, as with most companies, downsizing started. Lately, “we’ve been on the cost-cutting side of things, but we are still doing pretty well,” he noted.
O’Brien added that even in downsizing times, the company has kept up its customer service promises. “We have as many or more service people in the field now as in our best year,” he said.
Throughout these buyouts and acquisitions, the company had expanded its line to include a variety of products. These include the Auto-Bore, the Rapid-Ram, the Pedestal Breaker System Transfer Booms, the Contractor’s Mechanical Grapple, the Red-Hog Express, the CaSHEAR, the AS Series street hammer, the AR Series hammer, the NT Series Ho-Pac, and in 2002, the Variable Mounting System and the AutoLube 3.
Sixty Years and Counting
Allied recently celebrated its 60th anniversary with an all-out press event, complete with a tour of the plant and office space, with demonstrations by employees and a lunch held to say thanks to its long-term employees and retirees.
According to Matthews, who worked for the company from 1969 to 1983, then came back in 1993, “Our customers are involved in a variety of activities and we are sometimes surprised at the many applications identified for the use of Allied’s products.”
With the company’s core concentration in trench work, demolition and rock work, Allied focuses on product availability and support to rise above other attachment manufacturers in the industry. “We certainly intend to continue our tradition of providing the best possible product availability and support and those objectives are part of our corporate culture. Our value-added engineering and technical service groups are vital to supporting our dealers and end customers and keeping downtime to a minimum,” Matthews added.
Hojnacki agreed that quality and service are the main goals of the company and that it has tried to keep standards high especially with its customers. Allied offers same-day and next-day delivery with the last shipments leaving the factory at 7 p.m. to be on the job site the next day.
“We are forecast driven, not order driven. The input is what is important,” Hojnacki said. The company has good inventory management planning, which keeps the plant equipped with products so when they are needed, they can be shipped to customers with no delay.
Like any manufacturer, it is the dealer that is the main source of getting the products to customers. Allied has more than 100 dealers in the United States, according to Matthews. Foreign accounts make up 10 percent of Allied’s overall business. “We continue to work with a broad network of independent dealers throughout North American and in other world markets. We also serve the equipment rental market, which clearly is growing in importance,” he said.
And although big rental houses are becoming more commonplace in the market, Allied still relies on the “Mom and Pop” dealerships to get its product out to the end user. “The dealer is still the hub of the wheel,” Jim Brown, market development manager, said. Although many rent-to-rent houses are starting to bypass the smaller dealers, Allied “wants to keep our focus on a regional basis,” he said. Allied has run with the times, offering more rental equipment for customers, including municipalities, who are renting more and more equipment rather than buying, Brown said.
The company’s main focus is to build relationships. Allied supports rent-to-rent and rent-to-purchase options. “We try to be flexible for all our means of distribution,” Brown explained.
“With our distributor organization, we give our customers local sales and service support. We do this with a top-notch sales team. Distributors who have been with Allied for 20 to 30 years are the real testament to our successful distributor network,” Matthews said.
As a testament to its dealer network, Allied honored some of its distributors at its Born to be Wild Rally held during ConExpo-Con/AGG 2002 at the Harley-Davidson Cafe. Five of the dealers – Scott-Gallagher Inc., Michigan Cat, Highway Equipment Co., Elliot & Frantz Co., and Eagle Power and Equipment Corp. – were singled out for their continuous and outstanding sales and service performance as an Allied Distributor from 1995-2001.
Technology Spurs Better Engineering
Technology has done a lot for the construction equipment industry and for Allied Construction Products, it has done wonders. The company has integrated a variety of software tools to help with the inception, the building, the testing and the record keeping of its products. Allied uses CadKey to make 3-D designs as well as Hi-Techniques for CIMA testing and Easy Data, which records testing results.
Training Remains Key
Training, both inside the factory, and at the dealership remains a key part of Allied’s focus.
According to Duane Preston, engineering at Allied, “Training and cross training is a big focus for the company,” and it’s beneficial too when an order comes in that needs to be filled right away - more are able to do it than just one on staff.
Training outside the company is handled with equal importance. Allied offers nine trained outside sales personnel with three internal. Also, there are four field service specialists in locations throughout the country to “better cover territory and respond quickly,” said Kevin Loomis, training and technical service manager.
Allied also makes sure its dealers are equipped to know the machines inside and out. “We make sure the people selling our products are comfortable with service aspects and have knowledge of the products,” he added.
The company also adds a personal touch. It offers on-site operator training, on-site maintenance training and on-site product line schools as well as in-house seminars. The on-site training is done at the dealer level. “Dealers and customers will have a bad experience with our product and company if they ignore the training,” Loomis said.
In 2001, Allied featured 34 product line schools. “We use the tools available at the dealerships. Then they know what to do when Allied is not there,” Loomis said. He estimates that the company will hold more than 35 schools this year.
In addition, all products are shipped with the proper operator, repair and maintenance manuals. The company also leaves CDs of repair tips at dealer locations, publishes service information letters for dealers and gives operating tips when a unit is used for a different application, Lumas noted.
Looking Ahead
According to Matthews, the company’s focus for the immediate future is to upgrade and refresh existing product lines. “There will be nothing new for the next couple of quarters,” he said.
Right now, he said, the company’s greatest opportunity for growth is in its distributors. “The distributors really are more diverse,” he said. He added that Allied will keep looking for products that relate to what it currently does. “We are not driven by growth, but we like it. We have no shareholder expectations so our strength is the distribution and adding new products to it.”
As of now, Allied has 73 employees and runs smoothly with that number as the company outsources much of the work. “We do some here but most of the work is done by vendors because we don’t want to be fixed-cost intensive,” he said.
Allied also performs remanufactures of machines. The company teaches dealers the process so remanufactures can be done by them. When a dealer is overburdened, Allied picks up the load. According to Philip Paranic, sales support manager, “New product features can be incorporated into rebuilds. The rebuilds life are like new machines…It’s an exciting program. We can turn a unit around in approximately three days.”
“At Allied, we concentrate on what we do best, looking for changes in the marketplace and the industry,” Matthews said. “The industry is constantly changing. We need to change along with it, which we are doing with our entire line.”
He added, “While our products, markets and customers are ever evolving and changing, we expect to be around to celebrate other anniversaries in the future.”
For more information, call 216/431-2600 or visit www.AlliedCP.com.
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