The Ironpeddlers, a Southeast equipment dealer, marks its 50th year by emphasizing customer service, strategic expansions, and partnerships with SANY and Gehl. The company’s recent growth includes opening new branches and diversifying its equipment lineup, with a focus on OEM parts and service excellence.
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(L-R) are Kim Myers and Anthony Broome, co-owners; Ben Miller, COO; and Paul Stokey, CFO, all with The Ironpeddlers.
As The Ironpeddlers, a Southeast equipment dealer, celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2024, officers of the company, headquartered in Monroe, N.C., can easily identify the markers of its success.
Being a family-run operation, a dedication to personal customer attention is one of its attributes, along with maintaining parts and service departments staffed by talented professionals, according to the company. In addition, the executive team of The Ironpeddlers located the best places to open branch dealerships in the Carolinas, Kentucky and Georgia to grow the business and support its customers.
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The company has made its two most important moves in the past several years; the first of which has led The Ironpeddlers to unparalleled growth by partnering with SANY America, a manufacturer of heavy construction products, including excavators, wheel loaders and motor graders.
The decision to bring on SANY in 2017 transformed The Ironpeddlers into a successful original equipment manufacturer (OEM) dealership, according to co-owners Anthony Broome and Kim Myers. Broome also is The Ironpeddlers' president and vice president of used sales, and Myers serves as the company's secretary and vice president of parts sales.
The second and most recent decision made by The Ironpeddlers was hiring Ben Miller to be its chief operating officer in January 2023. A former SANY executive, he has helped the dealership enhance its SANY business as well as bring fresh ideas to the distributorship.
"I met Ben for the first time at a SANY dealer meeting and I thought, ‘This young man is really smart and is going somewhere,'" Myers said. "He quickly went up through the ranks at SANY. I just remember being impressed with him because he was confident and knowledgeable and knew a lot about the industry at such a young age."
At about the same time, Myers, Broome and Paul Stokey, The Ironpeddlers' chief financial officer, came to realize that they were having a tough time managing the company's rapid growth and keeping it under control, and the decision was reached to find a new executive with a fresh perspective on their industry.
"Paul and I had specifically prayed about finding somebody, and then, right out of the blue, Ben called me," Myers said. "He asked, ‘Do you think there would be an opportunity for us to work together at The Ironpeddlers?' and Anthony, Paul and I all agreed."
The Ironpeddlers Transforms Itself
Founded in 1974 by Anthony Broome's dad, Tommy, and Art Cates, the distributorship started as a used equipment and parts business with the help of Jim Birchfield, Myers' father, as its service manager.
"Back then, not many businesses sold used parts, so that is what gave my dad the opportunity to manage the parts company and become an equal partner with them in the new business, Iron Peddlers Parts Division Inc.," she said. "Then, over time, The Ironpeddlers Inc. and Ironpeddlers Parts Division Inc., which were separate, were brought together as one company, Iron Peddlers Parts Division Inc., dba The Ironpeddlers, and we began to provide equipment and tire service, as well."
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The founders of The Ironpeddlers (L-R) are Art Cates, Jim Birchfield and Tommy Broome.
Through the decades, as The Ironpeddlers built its reputation among grading and construction professionals, the company also began to attract attention from various OEMs looking for new dealers. Anthony Broome had already been thinking about adding a new heavy construction equipment line to expand beyond the dealership's lineup of used machines and parts, which led him to begin researching different OEMs around 2016.
What he learned was that SANY was well regarded among several independent dealers he knew and offered excellent product warranties and outstanding components, including engines made by Cummins, Yanmar, Deutz and Isuzu. As a result, to better support the SANY brand, The Ironpeddlers has since received certification to be a dealer for those manufacturers.
It also was able to get some customers to try SANY equipment despite the fact they "had diehard allegiances to other manufacturers," Myers said.
"SANY wasn't very well known, but we found that some of our customers tried the product because they trusted us," she said. "For some people it took us a couple of years to get them to try, but we just never gave up. Sometimes, we were waiting for customers to become unhappy with their OEM. Of course, SANY's warranty program and price points were what sold them on the equipment."
New Branches Designed to Be Hubs
The Ironpeddlers was somewhat limited in where it could represent SANY, including its own home territory of Charlotte and Monroe. As a result, the company initially opened its first full-service SANY dealership in the Upstate South Carolina market, off Interstate 385 in the community of Fountain Inn before moving it north to Duncan, located between Greenville and Spartanburg.
Later, The Ironpeddlers secured SANY's North Carolina territory, as well, beginning with an expansion of its flagship store in Monroe, east of Charlotte off the U.S. Highway 74/Monroe Bypass, and the unveiling of a full-service SANY branch in Raleigh to serve the ever-expanding Triangle market.
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The dealership broke into the Myrtle Beach, S.C., area by temporarily leasing a small laydown yard with a shop. It is currently building a new SANY facility in Florence, off I-95's Exit 169, where, Miller said, the company plans to move the Myrtle Beach operation to a temporary location soon.
He added that The Ironpeddlers envisions the Florence facility as its eastern hub, one of four such stores, including the Greenville/Spartanburg, Raleigh (which includes the Greensboro and Winston-Salem market), and Monroe/Charlotte branches. The latter facility serves customers across the entirety of western North Carolina.
"Florence will be our coastal hub and we are looking for it to be a much larger parts storage facility than what our average store would have," Miller said. "It will also have a bigger yard, more equipment and attachments, and, as a hub, we will use that facility to push out future locations in places like Myrtle Beach, Columbia, S.C., and Wilmington, N.C."
He described the 8-acre Florence hub as being a full, six-bay shop with overhead cranes and a wash bay, in addition to full rental and parts departments, and roughly 15,000 sq. ft. of space within the main building.
"We really hang our hats on service," he added. "The Ironpeddlers is brand-neutral when it comes to service, meaning that if we need to work on a Cat, a Komatsu, or whatever it may be, we will do so. That is one of the things that sets us apart from other typical mainline OEM dealers who want to work only on their products, meaning we are a good fit for mixed fleet operations."
To improve its service capabilities, according to Miller, the company recently invested in a full-time lube truck for preventive maintenance and added road technicians over the past 18 months with the goal of providing the best service in North and South Carolina.
As part of its commitment to the Carolinas' market, SANY America itself recently moved into a facility in Wilmington that it primarily uses for attachment storage and shipping.
"I believe that SANY's future plans there include adding a manufacturing element within that building," Miller said. "That's exciting news for us. It is a 700,000-sq.-ft. facility, making it bigger than the SANY factory they have in Peachtree City, Ga., where the OEM's North American headquarters are located. A lot of people don't know that the SANY SY215 excavators are built in Georgia. That is our 20-ton machine, roughly about a 50,000-lb. excavator. Peachtree City is also where they manufacture the SY225 and the SY265 models."
Gehl Broadens The Ironpeddlers' Equipment Lineup
Most contractors prefer to work with one trusted dealership that can meet most — if not all — their needs, Miller said.
With that in mind, in late 2023, The Ironpeddlers officially partnered with Gehl, a manufacturer of compact equipment, such as skid, track and articulated loaders (plus their attachments) as well as telehandlers. Gehl's machines are aimed at smaller contractors, an entirely different market than SANY's.
Because the dealership needed to broaden, mature and fill holes in its product offerings, Gehl was regarded as a perfect fit for The Ironpeddlers.
"This is especially so for our landscaping customers or folks who run smaller grading operations," Miller said. "If they need a mini-excavator and a skid steer, we can provide both for them.
"We were losing the ability to chase that business because contractors wanted to deal with one distributor," he added. "Before I worked for SANY, I had also worked for Gehl, and I knew the product well. Gehl had not had a strong construction dealer network in the Carolinas for quite a while, but after The Ironpeddlers talked with the manufacturer at ConExpo last year, we signed with them in December. Now, for construction, we are the official Gehl dealer in the Carolinas."
The Ironpeddlers also has teamed with a few independent rental companies that have bought both the SANY excavators and Gehl track loaders to sell as packages.
"Our focus is on doing a complete package with a customer, but we also have Gehl skid steers available for paving operations or agricultural use, and our compact articulated loaders," Miller said. "Additionally, we have added Iron Bull Trailers, meaning that if a contractor wants to buy an excavator or a skid steer, we can also finance a trailer with those other pieces into one package for them to make us a one-stop shop for our customers."
The Ironpeddlers Invests in Growth
Before coming to The Ironpeddlers, the big question for Miller was whether its owners were going to invest its profits back into the company to expand its capabilities.
He got his answer shortly after joining the dealership.
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"All I can say is that Kim and Anthony have been completely on board in reinvesting every dime right back into The Ironpeddlers, whether it be for tooling, company vehicles that are needed, like service trucks, trailers or more inventory. We are also redoing our entire Monroe warehouse and investing significantly in parts on the shelves."
As a result, The Ironpeddlers recently became the Black Cat Wear Parts distributor for cutting edges, teeth and bucket wear items, and proposes to begin stocking those components at a level that it had not previously.
Miller also noted that the distributor has introduced other lines such as Ammann compaction machines "that our everyday customers are buying but with which we have not been able to supply them. We are just continuing to round out our offerings to be serious players in the construction equipment industry."
Dealership Puts Focus On Late Model OEM Parts
Today, The Ironpeddlers is still a big player in the aftermarket industry, but the company has largely moved on from handling parts for older machines, Myers said.
"We are now buying later used parts machines and concentrating on those parts we can sell quickly" she said. "In the past, we had offered a 5-to-10-year return on a parts machine, but now we like to see a quicker return on our investment and try to make more strategic purchases based on market trends in parts sales. The thing that is exciting to me is when we purchase a parts machine and have parts already pre-sold before a machine hits the yard."
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Among the machines The Ironpeddlers is targeting for parts are Cat excavators, track loaders and wheel loaders because, Myers said, "there are a lot more Cats out there, we know how to sell those parts best because of our historical experience, and we want to stick with the main OEM companies like Cat, SANY, John Deere, Volvo and Komatsu."
"Even if a customer's SANY machine hits a bridge, we are the people that will reach out to the owner to purchase it, bring it into our parts yard, and pull the usable components for resale," added Miller.
"We can offer people new machines, used machines or new or used parts for many different machines customers are running," he said. "That's the beauty of The Ironpeddlers: we offer many options to allow for folks to do business with us and strive to provide a pleasant experience at the same time."
For more information call 800/438-1933 or visit www.ironpeddlers.com. CEG
Eric Olson
A writer and contributing editor for CEG since 2008, Eric Olson has worked in the business for more than 40 years.
Olson grew up in the small town of Lenoir, NC in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he began covering sports for the local newspaper at age 18. He continued to do that for several other dailies in the area while in college at Appalachian State University. Following his graduation, he moved on to gain experience at two other publications before becoming a real estate and special features writer and editor at the Winston-Salem Journal for 10 years. Since 1999 he has worked as a corporate media liaison and freelance writer, in addition to his time at CEG.
He and his wife, Tara, have been married for 33 years and are the parents of two grown and successful daughters. His hobbies include collecting history books, watching his beloved Green Bay Packers and caring for his three dogs and one cat.
Read more from Eric Olson here.
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