Terex Crafts Success-Formula with Strong Distributors
40 Construction Equipment Distribution www.cedmag.com December 2009 OEM Perspective Let's begin with something most people have seen Terex in the news about: Its intentions to sell certain construction equip-ment product lines to help the company become more profitable. What's the status of that plan? Ron DeFeo, our chairman, has on several occasions, made some pretty candid assess-ments of the challenges that we face at Terex in construction with the current economic climate. While I'm really not in a position to elaborate on Ron's comments, speaking for myself and my team, we're hard at work every day making the division better, stronger and more profitable. How? We've taken some steps to restruc-ture our Americas operations to consolidate all the distribution functions into Southhaven (the Memphis, Tenn., area) and that's resulted in very focused operations in the U.S.: Southhaven concentrates on distribution and interfacing with the customer; and then our Grand Rapids factory (which manufactures our compact track loader line) is very focused on manufacturing and product development. This not only resulted in benefits to the customer now you have only one place to go, whether you're buying a track loader, miniexcavator, or a truck but it also allowed us to take some cost out of the operation and streamline things. What is Terex Construction potentially going to look like by mid-2010? My area of focus is the Americas, and for the Americas we're going to contin-ue to get more focused on the customer, and more focused on our operations along the lines of the restructuring I spoke of, and we're going to continue to build out our distribution network. And we see evidence of this in your press releases quite frequently this year. What are the strategy and objectives behind the expan-sion of your distributor network? Bob Desel, Vice President Americas, Terex Construction Emphasizing Compact and Rental, Terex Crafts Success-Formula with Strong Distributors In an interview with CED, Bob Desel, Vice President Americas, Terex Construction, discusses how the company is preparing for market turnaround. By KIm PhElAn