Hyster / Yale is so huge in the Nat'l Accounts business the average dealer really doesn't even compete with the NACCO products. Out of 100% of your quote portfolio how many competitive bids calling for Hyster / Yale equipment will your customer bring up in the sales process? Very insignificant compared to "heart of the line" quotes I would imagine. Compare that number to Toyota, Cat, and Mitsubishi quotes in those files. When Hyster / Yale lose a significant amount of that Nat'l Account busines, which they will due to their continuing loss of quality and profitability. This will wipe the smiles off their faces and teach them a new game for sure.
Posted by: Marengo

I would credit GPLS for being proactive and expanding their MHE footprint. If any split from Cat construction and power systems does eventually happen, you can rest assured it is coming from the banking, finance and leverage perspective of Cat and the GPEC credit lines.

Might be real tough sledding for Dougherty employees in the acquired markets next 90 days. The word synergy will be tossed around but consolidation is more accurate

Marengo you have got this right the manufactures Mistubshi has now got all the problems Unicarrier had trying to put together the Nissan TCM merger with the dealer network , Add to this the Cat and Misti dealer network and you have even bigger problems. There will be some type of consolidation in manufacturing and the use of the same parts effectively equalling the same trucks , so like you pointed out your biggest competitor now has the same trucks as you sell and at the moment there is not all lot of capital to be made is small forklifts most make their money on service offerings but your biggest competitor can now have access to the same spares as you forcing down prices. this might be seen as good for the customer but for how long as the end result will mean less competition as dealers either sell out merge or go out of business.

jth3guy makes an excellent point when discussing surplus employees, spare buildings, etc resulting from what looks certainly to be a quagmire.

Then the point of trying to re-sell his customer on a piece of even higher quality equipment than he sold them last year. Especially when they are both identical in manufacture. Yet this is just one isolated geographical region of the United States.

But what's the end result when the Cat & Mitsubishi dealers that share territories right down the street from the Unicarriers store, Nissan and TCM? hmmmmm..... How about that loyal dealer that has been faithful to a manufacturer for years and now finds himself in bed with the same parent as his former arch rival? hmmmmmm?.... Of course, in the beginning, there will all kinds of hype about infringing on the other guys APR, but how long will that hush lipped agreement last? You have all witnessed that since you borrowed four first dollar from the bank to get in to this very lucrative business.

This Kerfuffle is going to resonate throughout the country, not just in a few southern states. "Oh, don't worry about that, that will not have any impact on our dealer network." Right. In a pigs ear.

It looks to me that these short sighted manufacturers are setting themselves up for a real catastrophe down the road. But alas, no one ever said these guys are the sharpest marketing guys on the street.

GPEC has always been a strong dealer. Just because they changed brands to NACCO/Hyster/Yale doesn't mean that the Lift Truck dealership was not profitable. Maybe not profitable in the same way that construction equiopment can be. They will continue to be a strong and profitable dealership.

What I'm wondering is how GPLT will handle all these extra people they just purchased, and all the extra buildings. They can't use all of these people and buildings. Then they have to go to their customers and say "You know that brand we used to sell? It's not as good as this new one. YEs, we know we told you it was great, but we lied!" That is a rough sales pitch.

It's probably going to take time to sell that story. While they're stumbling over all that, how is their customer base going to handle it? Some Yale/Hyster customers might not like the change. Then the Caterpillar customers have to be won over. And you have to get all the employees telling the same story. This is going to be a difficult transition.

So who's going to end up selling Caterpillar when the dust settles? Will MCFA bring in some outside dealers, someone not in Virginia? That would take time to get customers on-board also. That dealer could have as much up-hill battle as Gregory Poole is going to have.

Yes I know. Cat get paid a royalty. the agreement gets redone every 5 years or so. At which time the CEO of cat inc could pull the plug or MCFA could not want to pay the money for the branding any more.

hb_1911 Cat Inc is not involved in the MCFA joint venture anymore. The name is licensed by Cat Inc to MCFA.

Yes there is a lot of "reconfiguring" going on all over. Does anyone else agree that the folks at Raymond are doing a better job??

Yes it was a great move for GPEC. WIth there being so few Cat heavy Iron dealers left in the MCFA network. Cat inc will at sometime drop out of the deal with MITSI. Leaving only mitsi and jung with mcfa. THe jung product is great but very pricey and only certain customer will/can pay 20% premium for a lift.

NACCO has a solid product, shorter lead time for trucks, better pricing, 3x the market share as mcfa.

I don't see a reason why gpec would split off lift systems into it own company. I know lift one did it but when they did that but they split all the companys out as separate under one umbrella. There are reasons to do that I don't think that ownership at Poole want to do that. just a guess

Gregory Poole is dropping MCFA and Crown, mostly because GPEC feels like they are holding the company down. MCFA put GPEC right up against a competing dealer, G&W Equipment. MCFA also didn't like GPEC not pushing their Electric line of trucks and selling Crown truck instead. Crown... They have been wanting the area for a while and from what I understand they don't like to pay their bills and a few other things...

As for the future of GPEC, we will have to see! There are lots of rumors. GPLS(Gregory Pool Lift Systems) will be moving from the main GPEC location, possibly splitting from GPEC? They did purchase 3 other competing company's with this move closing some of the competition.

You guys think GPEC's move was a good one?

As John said Cat Inc already has. Essentially Cat Inc licences the Cat brand name to MCFA.

Hi Johnr j do you think Cat will drop the hole forklift line to concentrate more on Construction and mining equipment.Cat have had a couple of bad years lately and have to re group

exalt,

Caterpillar did drop the Caterpillar lift truck line in 1992. They basically closed Caterpillar Industial Inc. (CII) which built/marketed the Caterpillar Lift Trucks and entered into a 80/20 joint venture called Mitisubishi Caterpillar.

As far as I know Mitusbishi Heavy Industriels still builds private labled small horsepower (under 100 hp) diesel engines for Caterpillar construction products.

NMHG allowing Gregory Poole to purchase the Hyster Yale dealership might be a opening to a more interesting question.

Gregory Poole is a very big CAT dealer and will still be a big CAT dealer but are CAT looking to drop the forklift line.


It has been said that CAT are looking to concentrate more on their construction equipment business and Having a forklift range dose hurt CAT's Perkins engine business so will CAT drop the forklift line and leave Mitsubishi to go on it own on this side of the of the business

Raymond = Toyota

good or bad, NMHG has allowed Gregory poole to purchase the hyster and yale dealerships in Virginia,parts of north Carolina and south Carolina to become another duel dealer. it will be interesting to see how this works out.

I have never seen a class 5 Raymond.

Maybe the people at Raymond Corporation are just doing a better job in all classes of material handling??

In the past year and a half, I worked at a dual dealer in North Kansas City, MO.
Worked as a Field Service Tech, over 12 years experience.
Never enough work to go around. Shop Service Techs were asked to go home early on a daily basis.
Worked there for 8 months and decided to move on.

I don't see it getting any better in the future.... Dual Dealerships in my opinion has been a blunder and costly mistake for NMHG. I would like to see some real hard data on how dual brands around the country are doing. The one by me has been stagnate and so so. The competition is changing with better products

DJ