(L-R): Brothers Bruce, Brett and Brad Bowman celebrate Brett’s retirement.
(Star Equipment photo)
After 50 years of employment in the family businesses, Brett Bowman retired on Sept. 29, 2023. To celebrate, Star Equipment held a retirement party for him in his shop. Friends, customers, vendors and employees were all invited to wish him well.
Although he officially started working for the business after his graduation in the spring of 1973, he had been helping his parents, Max and Beverly Bowman, after school, weekends and during the summers since September 1968. Brett also helped at Max's previous employer, All Wheel Drive, remnants of which is now part of Titan Machinery.
Over the years Brett has had to rise to the challenges as the company grew. In the beginning he was "boy Friday" — cleaning bathrooms, floors, trucks and equipment. As Brett got old enough, additional duties were placed on his plate — painting, diagnosing and repairing equipment; field repairs; running deliveries; and loading and unloading equipment.
Somewhere in there Brett found time to teach his brothers, Brad and Bruce, how to drive a stick shift so they could be of more help around the shop. Brett was part of the sweat equity team when the original service building was built, the north 1/3 of the current rental building.
"Brett helped Dad and Mom start a concrete pumping company, Planet Enterprises, in the 1970s and eventually ran the pumping company, until the farm crisis and construction downturn of the 1980s forced us to sell the pumps," said Bruce. "Brett went to Texas to help run a small company we had down there called Planit Industries, which was shut down when the oil companies stopped producing oil in the early to mid 1980s. Brett liked the concrete pumping industry and left Star to go to work for Schwing American until the end of 1992 when he returned to run Star's service department, where he has been for the last 31 years."
Prior to Star divesting its pumps in the late 1970s and early 1980s due to the economy and interest rates at 21 percent, Brett and Max pioneered pumping concrete in Iowa. Traveling late at night and early in the morning to get to jobs and be ready to pump concrete along with Roger Bacon, Walt McPhee and several others, they were a part of the early history of building the vertical infrastructure of Iowa. Brett pumped concrete on the Historical Building, the Wallace Building, the Iowa Department of Revenue Building, several grain elevators in Iowa including Bondurant, Rolfe, Cargill and others. Brett pumped concrete on bridges all over Iowa for Herberger, Rasmussen, Jensen and others as well as for virtually every major contractor in Iowa and those that visited from out of state.
While with Schwing he was a final tester, a mobile mechanic and a branch mechanic. Some of that doesn't sound glamorous but the concrete pumping industry was in its infancy at that point and the very thought of pushing a sticky substance made with rock, sand, water and cement dust though 500 ft. of pipeline was not entirely unheard of but largely untested.
Brett has been to Wyoming and helped pump concrete into a 70-ft. deep base of one of the first wind generators; he has been at the great dig in New York; a subterranean tunnel system resembling more of an underground mine than a subway system; he has been to Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where he helped install some of the first 52-meter placing booms brought into the United States.
Placing booms mount on a structure such as a skyscraper and ride up with the building as its built. In the early days the electronics in the booms were not as good as they are today, and Brett was tasked with trouble shooting the problem and fixing them while they were on top of the building. Brett worked alongside most of the pioneers of the pumping industry in the United States and has been to Germany many times to Schwing's world headquarters for training and collaboration. Brett developed the respect of the people that pioneered the industry engineered the pumps and became friends with almost all of them and later was appointed service manager for Schwing's western United States' branch.
"In late 1992 we were looking for a service manager and Brett saw this and decided to leave San Francisco and Schwing and return to Star," said Brad. "Over the years he introduced many of the modern techniques we use today and has continued to stand vigil over the service department as general service manager, growing as the company added more products. Brett came in after the south addition to the service department was completed and took over."
Early on as the service department continued to grow, Brett was always looking for up-and-coming mechanics and found out his best friend Tom Burkhalter's son, Kenny, was going to diesel tech school at DMACC and was looking to be a mechanic. Shortly after Kenny was brought on — mentored by Brett — he expanded his knowledge of mechanics. Kenny's training would be considered immersion training in today's terms as he quickly became a highly-skilled asset."
As time went on, Brett took on additional duties, the title of vice president and treasurer of Star, and oversaw the move from the old service building to its present location on the adjacent lot.
"It's hard to remember all the things Brett does and has done since he returned but notably he makes sure we remember secretary's day; has participated in several associations we belong to; maintained his concrete pump operators rating; delivered and trained operators in the beginning for almost every concrete pump we sold; negotiates warranties with the manufacturers; determines special builds for the service truck division of Star; trouble shoots the GPS installs that are a little more critical than the standard installs; specs out fleet trucks for Star; brings in new products we should look at such as Felling Trailers; interacts with customers; and most notably forced us to really take a look what was happening during the floods of 1993," said Bruce.
"Since we had never flooded at Star, Dad and I didn't feel it was a concern, but Brett had a gut feeling this was going to be a significant event," said Bruce. "Had it not been for Brett forcing the issue, we would have had 3 ft. of water in our main buildings and 6 ft. of water in the bumper building and hundreds of thousands of dollars in new inventory would have been lost."
Brett spearheaded rounding up trucks and trailers to the contents of the bumper building into van trailers and hauling them to high ground. While the flood of 1993 is a distant memory, the work Brett went to coordinating things isn't.
"Many people don't know what a special person it takes to run a service department, so we wanted to let you know a valuable asset to Star is retiring," said Bruce. CEG
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