H&K Equipment Group brings together a range of businesses

A new forklift dealer group has been established in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. H&K Equipment Group is "an affiliation of eight independent companies united under common ownership".

The H&K Equipment Group brings each of these companies together for the first time to showcase the full reach and scope of their products and services, the company says in a statement.

"We have eight companies operating in overlapping markets," says Peter Cicero, vice-president of H&K Equipment. "Each of our companies has carved out their niche, but we haven't had a good way to talk about how they intersect. Taken together, our companies comprise one of the biggest and fastest-growing material handling businesses in this part of the country."

The group, which includes two materials handling and industrial floor cleaning equipment dealerships, an overhead crane manufacturer, an industrial electromagnet manufacturer, a full-service terminal tractor dealership, a transportation and logistics service, and a granite countertop fabricating company, maintains 10 locations throughout Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Baltimore, upstate New York, and Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley.

Between them, the affiliates employ a combined workforce of 325 and service nearly all the Mid-Atlantic United States.

Kevin Koch, vice-president of Taylor Northeast, which became H&K Equipment's first affiliate company in 1989, adds that the purpose of the H&K Equipment Group is to better communicate how the companies complement each other.

"You might have a customer renting a forklift from me, and that same customer is using a bridge crane that our crane company fabricated to run an electromagnet that our magnet company designed and built," he says. "Plus, everything was delivered to the customer's location by our own transportation team, and that customer has no idea that it all came from us; that together, we provide all these services."

According to Cicero, the structure of H&K Equipment's corporate network is not changing, but the new arrangements will provide valuable cross-promotion.

The affiliated companies of the H&K Equipment Group are H&K Equipment, Taylor Northeast, Yard Truck Specialists, Magnetic Lifting Technologies US, Industrial electromagnets, D&S Hoist and Crane, Premier Granite & Stone, CicKo Transportation and Elwell-Parker.