Page 90 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

Rental air compressor onsite during the seasonal Crush.
their grapes with a bag, or bladder,” explains Gog- gin. “They also need to chill the juice during the fermentation process, which utilizes our tempera- ture control equipment. We started in 2002 with Fetzer and Sutter Homes, and now we’re in Cha- teau St. John, Wente, Chateau St. Michelle, R. H. Phillips, and many others.”
“All those grapes ripen within a ten- to twelve- week period, which means every grape in the state has to be crushed in that timeframe,” says Roger Wood, who spearheaded the effort back in 2003. “It’s a perfect rental opportunity for us because
Roger Wood, Power rental manager in 1999
we can rent that same compressor for a hundred different things during the rest of the year, from factory air to drill rigs to ski resorts to golf courses and refineries.”
“The Crush uses oil-free air compressors that run a bladder press,” explains Schalk. “They put a blad- der in the center of a large tank and dump all the grapes around it. Then they fill the bladder with compressed air, which crushes the grapes against the sides of the tank and squeezes the juice out the bottom, leaving the cake—or pulp—behind.” When the harvest is larger than expected or more than their equipment can handle, wineries take a portable bladder press out into the field to process the overflow. That’s the kind of outside-the-box collaborative solution that differentiates Peterson from its competitors.
TEMPERATURE CONTROL (TC)
Peterson’s Rental Power group was still young when they entered the temperature control market back in 1996. It was a decision that developed into a significant portion of their annual revenue for over a decade. And it all started with a call from Stanford University, who needed chillers to sup- port their building expansion program. The next job was two 500-ton water-cooled systems for Mi- crosoft in Redmond, Washington to run their data center for a year. “And then the weird and wonder- ful contracts started coming in,” says Matt George, Peterson Power’s temperature control specialist from 1996 to 2005. Today, Peterson’s TC group serves all of California, Oregon and Washington and is a major resource center for Cat dealers in the western half of the United States. The scope of applications Peterson serves as HVAC specialists is both broad and fascinating.
In those first years, the TC Dept. consisted of one dedicated soul: Matt George—a talented, some- what unorthodox HVAC guru. He built a mix- and-match inventory of quick connectors and
88 | PETERSON: 85 YEARS AND GOING STRONG