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The senior leadership of Heavy Machines LLC. (L-R) is Jay Nelson, president and CEO; Gus Wilson, CFO; and Eric Hinshaw, vice president of sales.
For more than five decades, Tenn.-based Heavy Machines LLC has carried a diversified line of machines to serve a variety of industries, including construction, forestry, landscaping, mining, utilities, material and scrap handling, and drilling and boring, among others.
From its headquarters just outside Memphis, Heavy Machines operates 10 other branches in Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia, as well as two locations in Maine. In all, the dealership works closely with customers in 17 states.
Jay Nelson, president of Heavy Machines, said plans are currently under way to soon open an 11th dealership in Pensacola, Fla.
However, that is but one new addition that was slated to occur for the company in 2024, he said.
Earlier this summer, Heavy Machines consolidated several of its Memphis-area operations into one facility, southeast of downtown, in Piperton, Tenn.
"We actually had one building acting as both our corporate headquarters and our Memphis parts branch, and our service facility in Memphis was formerly at a different address," he said. "We have since pulled everything together into one location and given the Memphis branch a new home that brings those employees together and moves the corporate folks upstairs."
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The new location is conveniently located at 120 Mann Drive in Piperton, Tenn.
By relocating the service operation to the new site, Nelson said that Heavy Machines' shop capacities and service capabilities have greatly increased.
"We grew from four shop bays to eight, so we doubled our capacity there," he said. "At the same time, we downsized our corporate footprint in an effort to recognize the fact that we try to put our overhead assets at the branches and not at the corporate office."
Also, the move made it easier for Heavy Machines' local customers and contractors — from western Tennessee, northern Mississippi and eastern Arkansas — to reach the Memphis dealership as well as offering a more efficient location for loading and unloading machines.
"By opening the dealership here in Piperton, we are in a completely different neighborhood in Memphis on the periphery of the city at the intersection of two major thoroughfares: U.S. Highway 72 and Interstate 269," Nelson said. "It also allowed us to have more space to increase our inventory. We went from approximately 3 acres before to over 6 acres, so now we have much more room for equipment and to work on machines."
Although the new Memphis dealership has only been open for a few weeks, he said the reaction from its customers has been very warm and positive. Many of their comments, he added, concerned the ease with which they could get to the dealership and its proximity to the major highways in that part of Memphis.
With last year's opening of its Decatur, Ala., branch, and the new Memphis headquarters of Heavy Machines firmly in place, company executives have now turned their attention to the south to unveil the latest dealership in Pensacola along the Gulf Coast.
"That will be our first entry into Florida, and it was designed to be complimentary to our Mobile, Ala. branch," Nelson said. "We have people in Pensacola now, and we are getting ready to begin painting, cleaning up, moving in equipment, and getting computer, data, and phone lines installed. We are just a few weeks away from officially opening that store."
Heavy Machines' other branches can be found in the Tennessee cities of Murfreesboro and Gray, in addition to Shreveport, La., Birmingham, Ala., and Covington, Ga. Its Maine customers utilize the dealership's locations in Portland and Skowhegan, which primarily serve the forestry industry in that region.
The dealership carries Liebherr, Hitachi, Link-Belt, LeTourneau, Hydrema, Kato, Fecon, ASV, Diamond Z, Yanmar, Dynapac and more. CEG
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