While I trained 3 new sales people today, I told them a story about when I was looking for a new dealer in theCincinnatiarea and it went something like this:

I was looking for a new dealer in the Cincinnati area several years ago.  Not knowing anyone in the area I called on several of the larger underground construction contractors in the area.  One contractor, who will remain nameless, when asked who he used for his trench shoring needs replied “well this is really rocky ground around here and we don’t really need trench shoring.”  I thought about it for a minute and asked if he was concerned about OSHA catching them doing something illegal.  His reply was that OSHA didn’t have much of a presence in that particular region of the country.  I then said “so you never have any cave-ins in this area”?  He replied with…”Oh no, we have several deaths a year due to cave-ins”.  I just looked at him and he turned red and said “well, maybe we do need to start using trench boxes”.

Just because a tragedy has never happened to you or your company doesn’t mean that it can’t or won’t.

Going “back to basics” is a simple sounding concept, but it gets harder to do the more a person is indoctrinated into a system.  This is even true when it comes to businesses, and especially true when it comes to Pro-Tec Equipment.
With the core of Pro-Tec’s staff having around 10 years of time on the job, more or less, we have been able to go through the whole learning curve.  Starting with the basics (how to size a trench shield) and going all the way to the advanced classes (custom shields and Slide Rail Systems).  However, the more and more a person deals with the advanced classes, some of the basics start to fade away.  Once you’ve mastered a calculator, it’s tough to do division, long hand, with a paper and pencil. Read the rest of this entry »

As a manufacturer and a rental house, Pro-Tec Equipment has the luxury of sometimes instantly adding new equipment to our rental fleet.  We are able to solve problems quickly that a normal shoring rental operation may not.  Of course with this blessing comes a curse.  There will come a time when we don’t have most of our eighteen 28’ or longer trench shields rented.  When that happens, there will be a hungry, smelly, 800 lb gorilla in the controller’s office wondering how such a thing happened.

In Michigan, we have faced the struggles that the rest of the nation is now experiencing for the better part of this decade.   Read the rest of this entry »