Page 148 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

CORE VALUE: TEAMWORK
Log Loader rear-entry cabs waiting for installation
As the service supervisor for Peterson’s Forestry shop in Portland, Shawn Cornwall-Brady was tasked with leading the project.“Finning has a very high standard for their new equipment, and that requires a lot of fabrication. Most of their excavators come without catwalks or cabs, so we fab- ricate and install those on their log loaders. And we heavily modify their hydraulics. It’s amazing what they do to their machines.” Finning orders their log loaders without cabs because Canada requires a rear-entry cab and Caterpillar didn’t offer them.2 “Cat and Finning have a deal,” explains Cornwall-Brady. “The machine comes directly to us from
Cat’s factory in LaGrange, Georgia. The cab ships separately from a Canadian company Finning uses. The factory also sends us a huge box of Cat parts with the machine—everything you need to assemble the cab. So when it gets here, we load it all up with the wiring and air-conditioning and everything.”
Above: Peterson & Finning forestry equipment inventory in Portland; Right: Completed Cat 568 LL headed back to Finning in 2015.
Between 2011–16, Peterson prepped
and customized 592 forestry ma-
chines plus another 124 construction
machines for Finning. And Finning
was thrilled with the output. It was
the perfect symbiotic relationship. “We had the facility, a ton of room, and a huge lot outside to store ma- chines,” says Cornwall-Brady. “We can turn their machines around faster than they can because we have ten guys dedicated only to Finning. That’s a cost-benefit to them, besides the cheaper labor rate.” Even with the expense of shipping machines between the two dealerships, it still nets out to big savings.
In October 2013, Peterson started feeding its own machines into the forestry shop to leverage the dedicated technicians and their forestry expertise. “When this first started, we promised Finning that we’d treat them just like one of our traditional customers,”says Cornwall-Brady.“We were not going to just use their machines as fill-in work. We’d focus on whatever they needed, 24/7. And we’ve been able to put out over 170 machines a year. That’s extremely high. These guys have really stepped up in order to make this thing work. They’re a team.”
2 Caterpillar started offering rear-entry cabs on their log loaders in 2017.
146 | PETERSON: 85 YEARS AND GOING STRONG