Gallaher Inc. Construction & Industrial Equipment has maintained a sterling partnership with several equipment manufacturers over the years.
The relationships you forge in business are almost always the lifeblood of any successful company.
This is especially true in the case of Scott-Gallaher Inc. Construction & Industrial Equipment, a dealership based just outside Roanoke, Va.
The small-town company maintained a sterling partnership with several equipment manufacturers, notably Atlas Copco and Kobelco Cranes, for several years in the 1980s and 1990s before Scott-Gallaher was sold to Stafford Equipment in 2006.
Then, when Stafford decided to get out of the construction equipment business in 2011, Ron Scott Jr. determined the time was right for him to restart Scott-Gallaher and plunge back into running a dealership.
But he never would have made the move, at a time when the market was still recovering from the recession, if it were not for the strong associations he had with various equipment makers.
“Well, we had the good fortune of having some manufacturers that wanted to work with us that had been affiliated with us down through the years, so we just thought that it was a gamble worth taking,” said Scott, owner and president of Scott-Gallaher. “Plus, we had confidence in our customer base.
“People like Atlas Copco and Kobelco Cranes, I think, needed representation at that time and we had always had a long-term relationship with them, as well as others. So when we realized we could secure those lines we figured it was worth the risk.”
Scott and his father, Ron Scott Sr., one of the original founders of Scott-Gallaher, continued to work for Stafford after the buyout and were able to keep those relationships going. Now, after more than two years working again as Scott-Gallaher, that maintenance has made the reconstituted company thrive.
A New Location
Just this past summer, Scott-Gallaher moved into its present location after working for three decades in nearby Cloverdale, Va. The new space includes 22,000 sq. ft. (2,043.9 sq m) of shop space on 5.5 acres on Lee Highway just 5 mi. (8 km) north of the old location.
“The Stafford facility that we had was really nice; it was located in the same place where Scott-Gallaher was located for years,” Scott said. “When we opened our new business again, Stafford wanted to sell us the facility but I thought that it was a little bit too big of a bite to take for a start-up company, so it was decided to lease this new facility.”
Name Recognition Was Key
The Scott-Gallaher name may have been the most important asset that Scott brought to the new company in 2011.
The Gallaher name comes from Charlie Gallaher, who owned Gallaher Equipment back in the 1970s, a company that Ron Scott Sr. joined at that time.
At the time, Gallaher owned a dealership in Richmond before purchasing the location in Cloverdale at the corner of Lee Highway and Gibson Lane. A slow economy eventually caused Gallaher to close its doors, but Ron Scott Sr. took a chance and opened Scott-Gallaher with his son for the first time in 1984.
“The reason we called it that was because we leased and rented the property from Mr. Gallaher and he was a partner in our business when it first started,” Scott said, “and we would exchange equipment because he still had his Richmond location. Somewhere around 1988 he retired and we bought out the facility in Cloverdale and just kept the name.”
The Scott-Gallaher name was used again for the reopening in 2011, he said, purely for the name recognition that it has for so many people in the Southeast.
A Full Range of
Equipment and Services
Customers throughout Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina have come to rely on Scott-Gallaher to provide equipment from a broad spectrum of equipment manufacturers.
Clients in those three states can come to Scott-Gallaher for Atlas Copco machines, while customers in Virginia shop the company for Kobelco cranes and excavators, Kawasaki loaders, Allied Construction Products, Genesis attachments and Terex trucks. The dealership also represents KPI/JCI/Astec screens in Virginia and North Carolina, Scott said.
Those companies provide Scott-Gallaher with a wide assortment of new and used equipment, including crawler cranes, off-road trucks, hydraulic attachments and large excavators.
The firm’s attachment lines are comprised of hydraulic breakers and hammers, shears, pulverizers and grapples. Their aggregate line includes cone, impact and jaw crushers, screens and wash plants in mobile and stationary units.
Both articulated and rigid trucks also can be found in the Scott-Gallaher inventory.
Scott-Gallaher’s 11 employees are trained in providing customers with the full range of services, including sales, rentals, parts and service from their shop — conveniently located close to Interstate 81 in the rolling hills of scenic southwestern Virginia.
The dealership is located at 8071 Lee Highway in Troutville, Va.
For more information call 540/353-6711 or visit www.Scott-Gallaher.net.
Eric Olson
A writer and contributing editor for CEG since 2008, Eric Olson has worked in the business for more than 40 years.
Olson grew up in the small town of Lenoir, NC in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he began covering sports for the local newspaper at age 18. He continued to do that for several other dailies in the area while in college at Appalachian State University. Following his graduation, he moved on to gain experience at two other publications before becoming a real estate and special features writer and editor at the Winston-Salem Journal for 10 years. Since 1999 he has worked as a corporate media liaison and freelance writer, in addition to his time at CEG.
He and his wife, Tara, have been married for 33 years and are the parents of two grown and successful daughters. His hobbies include collecting history books, watching his beloved Green Bay Packers and caring for his three dogs and one cat.
Read more from Eric Olson here.
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