I work for Briggs in Louisiana. It is the greatest company i have worked for. Great retirement plan no one else offers. I use to be a tech at the Hyster dealer here and Briggs is way better. The managers here work with us and dont just holler about stuff. Also Briggs is very profitable and they are part of Sammons a very rich company.

Hey Cowboy,
Do you currently or did you work for Briggs? What are your thoughts of Briggs?

At the time PPC was de-bundled and sold lol i was told by a very senior manager in the uk that it was to forstall a hostile takeover of Barloword to get hold of PPC
I used tp enjoy working at Barlows but the way things got changed around by incompetent managers lol im glad im out. I feel sorry for the techs but will have a good chuckle when Barlows are no more

i was told by the branch operations mgr that barloworld is getting out of the lift business entirely, so keep your ears open , i had wondered why we sold off the core business PPC, now i understand, barloworld is liquidating itself to spite the south african government. apparently, south africa has mandated that all large companies give partial ownership to the population, hence the mad concentration recently on the "stakeholders".

Anybody know if its just happening in the US or should the Barloworld UK techs be starting to get worried this could be happening over here too????

I am willing to bet that bus comes along again soon for the employees of a few of the players in this fiasco.

briggs is getting atlanta branch in ga, all fla branches, dothan,al , little rock, memphis, nashville, lift one gets dalton , macon , savannah, albany, augusta and most of nc and sc, knoxville, chattanooga. the south africans threw us under the bus.

My barlworld contact has told me that the raleigh/fayetteville branch held a meeting this morning and was told that they're branch is being bought by briggs due to lift one not wanting to compete with gregory pool. As far as all the other branch's of barlo, lift one will be taking over and yes lift one is giving up MCFA and it is up for grabs. Looks like G&W Equipment will have the upper hand on the cat line being they are already a mitsi dealer.

Well Briggs run a very lean operation, but from what I can tell they have very good and dedicated employees, and if they lost over 200 engineers in UK it was because they had more than they needed. Briggs has turned the UK operation from a big money loser into a big money maker, you cannot argue with their financial results which is best for everyone.

Not surprised but surprised it took this long. Good news for some of the good people at B'World but I'll bet there's a few in Tampa puckered up a little bit because Florida is a main reason for all of this happening.

Not such good news for the Barlow engineers in the States if what happened in the UK is anything to go by. When Briggs bought the Cat dealer in the UK Briggs proceeded to loose 40% of the fleet to competition which resulted in a reduction of almost 200 technicians in four years. I only hope Briggs US management have learned from the incompetence shown by their UK counterparts.

Wow, I used to work for one of the B branches. Hyster has more to offer ( in my opinion ) also they can offer bigger machines.

yes edwardt that would be correct
we will be procuring the hyster dealership here in charlotte and i assume all thier surrounding branches as well. Basically taking thier territory and customers while maintaining our current customer base as usual (if they decide to stay with us).

As for the previous question posed about what will happen to mcfa? of course we cannot assume both cat and hyster due to conflict of interest due to competiton between the 2 mfgs and they will not allow this. We will be assuming hyster alone and dropping the mcfa line. So it will be up for grabs in the market in our area.

We had a service meeting yesterday morning just before this was publically released so i myself do not know all the details and they will unfold as time goes. At the moment nothing is official, its just in the acquisition/investigation phase. Until ed jr signs the dotted line that is :)

I'm sure there will be more to come.....

The Cat dealer involved here is probably going to drop the line represent Hyster only.

Wow ,will the next step be to joining of Briggs and Barlow in Europe. Then if it is you will see two driftnet product lines Hyster big trucks Yale small trucks and warehouse equipment