PMC acquired substantially all the assets of what was formerly Komatsu Southwest, making it the exclusive distributor of Komatsu in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Southeast Wyoming and Far West Texas.
(Photo courtesy of Power Motive Corp.)
For 63 years, Power Motive Corporation (PMC) has diligently been supporting a large and diversified customer base as the oldest Komatsu dealer west of the Mississippi with continuous ownership.
While the equipment dealer has served the needs of contractors in the confined boundaries of Colorado and southern Wyoming, that is all about to change.
Mac Blount, president
This past June, the company acquired substantially all the assets of what was formerly Komatsu Southwest (or more recently known as Komatsu West). The deal makes PMC the exclusive distributor of Komatsu in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Southeast Wyoming and Far West Texas.
The transaction immediately provided Power Motive five new branches located in Farmington, Carlsbad and Albuquerque in New Mexico, along with El Paso, Texas, and Chandler, Ariz.
And this is only the beginning, according to PMC President Mac Blount.
"We're hard at work," he said of the opportunity the company faces going forward. "We are actively adding more branches in key markets. We are ramping up our product support capabilities and we have restructured and added additional management to fit the needs of a larger company. We are also in discussion with several manufacturers about representing their products in the additional territory. There is much to do, but we are making excellent progress."
Part of a Master Plan
Blount explained the rationale behind the dramatic expansion.
"We feel that the acquisition has many geographic, transportation and customer benefits," he said. "Leveraging the I-25 corridor, which flows through a big part of our territory, we can achieve greater market penetration, stronger customer adoption, better centralized inventory management and expanded serviceability opportunities."
The expansion fits nicely with a larger corporate vision adopted back in 2019.
"This acquisition is very much in line with our vision framework developed several years ago," said Blount. "It started with discovering a sound set of beliefs and establishing meaning towards the type of progress we want to achieve. Our vision framework consists of core ideologies and an envisioned future. We believe the result of this work will have a profound and positive impact on shaping our company culture and contributing to the overall success of the organization."
As part of the core ideologies, Blount identified those core values as "Safety, People, Integrity, Commitment and Service Excellence."
"Once we established our core values and what was truly important to us, we established our core purpose — Champion a productive environment that stimulates unity, balance and growth while upholding a commitment to building successful partnerships and better futures."
According to Blount, everything the company does needs to conform to both its values and purpose.
"Everything centers around our core ideologies and every major business decision must be absolutely aligned," he said. "We all take this very seriously and committed to hiring like-minded people that share our values and passion about serving our customers."
Restructuring Management
The now, much larger company, has required a change in management structure and additional resources, according to Blount.
He said the dealership will be split into three regions:
- The North Region will include all of PMC's original territory of Colorado and Wyoming;
- The Central Region will cover the state of New Mexico and Far West Texas including El Paso area; and
- The South Region encompassing all of Arizona.
Chris Wilkes recently joined PMC as vice president of sales and marketing and will oversee the sales functions in all regions.
Wilkes said he is excited about the challenge, after moving to Power Motive from an East Coast Komatsu dealer.
"This is a dream opportunity for me, to be involved with building Power Motive, Komatsu and all of our other OEM partnerships in this huge territory," he said.
He added that Arizona will be the first to see significant physical changes at the branch facility level.
"We will eventually have a minimum of four branches in Arizona," he said. "Metro Phoenix requires a branch on both the east and west sides to properly serve our customers. Then, we'll also work toward establishing a branch in northern Arizona and the Tucson area."
In addition, regional vice presidents have been appointed for the two new regions. Tim Albright will head up the Central Region from Albuquerque while Dan Burget, based in Phoenix, will be responsible for the Southern Region.
Not Just Komatsu
"The opportunity to grow our footprint with best-in-class manufacturers is something we have always had an interest in doing," Blount said. "And because our entire territory is contiguous, we are confident that we can represent and support these products much more effectively
In addition to Komatsu, PMC will represent Superior Broom, Terramac and JLG over its entire footprint, along with consistent representation of premiere attachment manufacturers.
In New Mexico, PMC has added the Roadtec and Sakai product lines. Bomag paving and compaction equipment will be offered in Arizona.
Blount said PMC is in active discussion with other manufacturers that could further fill out its product lines in one or more regions. As in the case with Komatsu, PMC is interested in partnering with additional manufacturer lines that share in their belief of service excellence.
"We understand our niche," Blount said. "We operate in the utility, construction, mining, roads and aggregates segments. A new line must fit into our niche and have the capacity to provide us with the superb support for our end users."
Deep Colorado Roots
Founded in 1959, Power Motive Corporation went through a couple of ownership changes before full transfer of ownership to Bill Blount in 1980. Blount started out as a sales representative at the company in 1972 but eventually went on to become PMC's third owner. In 2002, the company provided opportunities for ownership to key employees. Currently, the company has 15 active employees that have a personal stake in growing the business and taking care of their customers. Blount credits the company's ownership structure in providing a competitive edge in the marketplace "It has allowed us to recruit talented and hardworking people that are incentivized to make business decisions that allow us to maintain strong and health relationships with our clients," he said.
When the company first started, it only had one location, in Denver, Colo. Over the next few decades, PMC would go on to add five more Colorado locations in Grand Junction, Colorado Springs, Milliken and Durango and another location in Cheyenne, Wyo.
When the company started, it was a Massey Ferguson dealer catering mostly to the agriculture sector. As the Colorado economy diversified, so did Power Motive and evolved into a utility, construction and mining distributor. The company's relationship with Komatsu began in 1975 and it has strategically added complimentary lines ever since.
Mac Blount joined the company in 2001 and served in a variety of roles, spanning all aspects of the business including product support, rental, sales, sales management and eventually vice president. He assumed the president role in 2016.
PMC retained the services of all the employees in the Komatsu Southwest transaction and currently has over 280 employees while rapidly expanding its personnel each week.
Bright Future
"We are extremely excited about our future," he said. "We have a talented and committed team at PMC and are driven to accomplish great things. We have strong relationships with our vendor relationships and looking forward to growing their market presence in the additional territory."
When asked about his thoughts on market share, Blount said, "it's a measurement of what I view to be a company-wide reflection of the collective work that we do, our goal is more focused on doing the right type of activities that lead to long term sustainable market share growth, and that begins with enhancing and expanding our product support capabilities in the new territory."
To demonstrate the company's commitment to support, Blount shared a list of activities consisting of technician hiring, real estate projects and other investments the company is pursuing.
"Our vision framework provides us with an excellent roadmap which will lead us to significant growth, employee fulfillment and customer satisfaction," he said, with a softspoken, yet confident tone. "Acquiring Komatsu Southwest was an excellent opportunity that the company pursued primarily because it was perfectly aligned with our company vision framework and positions us much better to achieve our envisioned future."
Considering his track record of success, there's no reason to think PMC, Blount and his talented, focused team won't reach their ambitious goals and, perhaps, even a few more. CEG
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