(L-R): Philip Medico, general manager; Cataldo Medico, vice president and treasurer; and Larry Medico, secretary, all of Medico Construction; Charles Philip Medico, president of Louis Cohen & Son; and Tom Medico, president, and Santino Medico, service technician apprentice, both of Medico Construction, cut the ceremonial ribbon to officially open the company's new Wilkes-Barre facility. (CEG photo)
Medico Construction Equipment held a grand opening May 18, 2023, of its new facility in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., just off the Pennsylvania Turnpike/Interstate 81 in the state's northeast corridor.
The company sells, services and supplies parts for Case, Takeuchi and Hitachi Loaders, as well as several tool and attachment makers. And Medico is the nation's oldest Wacker Neuson equipment dealer, a company noted for building light and compact equipment, including machinery for soil compaction as well as excavators, dumpers and wheel loaders.
The dealership's new 18-acre facility also holds other products, including JLG aerial lifts and telehandlers, Schwarze sweepers, Vacall sewer jetters and hydro excavators and Broce Broom products.
The new 41,000-sq.-ft. facility was completed this past September and first opened its doors for business in October, according to Phil Medico, general manager of Medico Construction Equipment, and the third generation of the Medico family to run the distributorship.
His grandfather and great uncles founded the company in 1937, before passing the leadership to the second generation who grew and diversified the business, and later to the third generation including himself.
The full-service dealership is just next door to where it had operated since 1968, but a new facility was needed because the equipment business shared the older structure with a manufacturing branch of its parent company, Medico Industries. Phil Medico explained that the manufacturing division was sold to another business group in August 2020.
Another factor in Medico's decision to build the new dealership adjacent to the older premises was because the company wanted to maintain consistency for its customers, he said.
"Right now, we share the same driveway with our original building, so our customers cannot miss our new facility," he said. "If we moved, they may possibly think that we had closed because we did sell the manufacturing division of the business. We wanted there to be no confusion among our customers that Medico Construction Equipment is still here to service them."
The Wilkes-Barre dealership, at 1510 Pennsylvania Highway 315, joins the Pocono branch of Medico, found at 3647 Shafers Schoolhouse Rd. on the west side of Stroudsburg, as the company's two full-service facilities.
The highlights of the new Wilkes-Barre location came about only after intense research was done to engineer it for maximum efficiency to benefit the company's employees and customers.
Phil Medico explained that it all started with the shop and parts area, which makes up 80 percent of the new dealership's square footage.
"As parts and service is everything in this business, we wanted the best and most well-equipped service facility for our factory trained technicians to work on this equipment," he said. "For instance, we have 10 extra-wide drive-thru bays, along with two 10-ton overhead cranes to service the machines. They can be run individually or in tandem if we must lift something very heavy, such as immobile machines and trailers."
Medico added that the facility employs pressure washers to service the entire building. The remote operated system runs four different stations throughout the building so that at any given time a technician could turn on a pressure washer at his or her bay to thoroughly clean a piece of equipment inside and out, or to wash out their bay after each job. Multiple drains also are installed throughout the service area.
At the rear of the dealership is a separate wash bay for cleaning all the equipment that comes back from being rented, according to Medico.
"Cleanliness and appearance are everything here at Medico and it applies to every piece of equipment we carry," he said.
The care of the dealership's heavy equipment also extends to the service technicians themselves.
"Inside the shop area we have all-heated floors, so when the techs have to roll around on the floor under machines to work, they will always be warm, making for a comfortable environment," Medico said. "We have multiple exhaust fans throughout the building to always keep the shop air clear and clean for our people."
In all, Medico Construction Equipment has 12 service technicians in Wilkes-Barre and five service trucks.
For its service techs, the branch also has several extra amenities for them, including a mini cafeteria that Phil Medico said is part of the dealership's mission to attract and keep the best service personnel. A training room for technicians has space to learn in a clean environment that is air-conditioned and heated. There, they can get away from the noise of the shop to think about how they want to approach the next task.
Among the products they learn to work on are hydraulic hammers made by companies such as Epiroc, Soosan and Indeco.
"In northeast Pennsylvania, there is a lot of rock, so from the hammer pit we have in the rear of the Wilkes-Barre building, we are constantly working on hammers made by the [makers] we carry as well as every other hammer known to man," Medico said. "In our old shop, the guys were up on a ladder torquing with a three-quarter-inch wrench at the top of the hammer to lock these bolts down. In this facility, though, everything is done at ground level utilizing that pit to put the hammer there, slide a piece of heavy steel over it, and hold its position so we can work on it."
To help ease the movement of construction equipment to and from different areas of the building, Medico noted that the new Wilkes-Barre facility was designed with higher and wider doors leading into every room on the floor.
"That way, we can take a machine from the showroom door and drive it through the parts department all the way to the other end of the building where the shop is located," he said. "In our old building, we had to put things on the loading dock as our shop was in an area, which required stairs to reach. We knew that in this building we did not want to have to go through that at all. So, the fact that everything is on the same level and we can move everything with a forklift or a hand truck or whatever it may be, makes it so much easier for the parts personnel or the service team to be more efficient in doing their jobs."
So far, Phil Medico has been pleased with the feedback he has received about the new facility since its opening in October.
"They seem to be unbelievably impressed with it," he said. "We were able to sell our manufacturing division, and our board of directors was kind enough to reinvest in this new facility. That showed that they have a lot of faith in the team we have here at Medico Construction Equipment, and they gave us the ability to construct this building and to equip it the way we did, which is second to none."
For his part, Medico added that he was most proud of the fact that the company moved its Wilkes-Barre dealership from its old facility — which it had occupied for 54 years — into the expanded new building without ever having to close shop for a single day, despite the construction lasting approximately 18 months. CEG
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