Page 27 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

Together we can do what we couldn’t do alone
(L-R) Duane Doyle, Sr. with Rich Gates/DeSilva-Gates president, and Jerry Lopus/retired Peterson Tractor president
That fall, Peterson spent countless hours and weeks working on a deal with DeSilva that would become the single largest scraper purchase in Peterson’s history. It included twenty-four 657 scrapers and nearly three- dozen support machines, totaling over $40 million. It also tied up Caterpillar’s worldwide production of 657s for that season. At one point, the VP in charge of Caterpillar’s Overseas Division called Jerry Lopus, president of Peterson Tractor Co. at the time. “He told me the king of Saudi Arabia wanted eight 657s for highway construction. And Caterpillar’s Internation- al Group wanted to break our deal. I touched bases with Rich Gates who said, ‘Hell no, we need those ma- chines!’ So, of course, we declined.” Cat’s Decatur plant built and shipped all those machines from October 2003 to June 2004.
For the next three years, DeSilva continued to RPO
(lease-purchase) machines, forty and fifty at a time.
And the partnership between Peterson and DeSilva
continued to grow. “In the past, we’d go to our outside
rental guys, but we didn’t see the need,” says Vandegriff
of the housing boom of 2003–06. “We had plenty of work, we had the staff, and we knew Peterson would support us. That was one of the biggest partnership deals we’ve had with Peterson.”
DeSilva scrapers doing site prep at the old Leona Quarry in Oakland, CA circa 2004
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