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Reconstruction ("Through a Grinder and Back Again – Joplin, Mo., Two Years Later" continued from page 33) center. The 130-feet-by-60-feet facility was fronted by a double-wide unit for customer service. Over the next year and a half, the dealership worked its way out of those facilities and relocated to a new 50,000-square-foot facility on 20 acres along the city's eastern edge. Loaning Out Machines The storm cut through Joplin safely north of another equipment dealership, the 100-year-old Victor L. Phillips Co. (VLP) The day after the tornado, clogged streets made it tough for VLP employees to reach the dealership. But the company's crew quickly recovered from the shock of what they were seeing and immediately loaned out Case and Hyundai excavators and skid steers to the city to help clear primary streets. Then contractors began to appear. "The biggest demand was excavators with grapples on them and skid steers and wheel loaders with grapple buckets – anything that would move material," recalled Bill Ewan, a long-time sales person at Victor L. Phillips. The storm area was littered with debris not only because Fabick Cat was crumpled and trashed, but the dealership swiftly restored customer service and eventually built a new facility. of the storm's strength, but also because of its creeping pace. "When you think of a tornado going through, you think of it blowing everything away," Ewan said. "That wasn't the case here. A lot of the houses that were destroyed were like they were run through a grinder and disposed of right back on the foundation." In response to such devastation, contractors and volunteers arrived from across the state and country. While having so many helpers show up was marvelous, renting equipment to some of them was something else. Ewan says Victor L. Phillips rental personnel exercised caution in signing over equipment. "Some people came from as far away as California, Texas, and Louisiana and some of these people we elected not to deal with," Ewan matter-of-factly recalls. "You rent a piece of equipment to a customer from, I don't know, pick a state, and you set up an account and there is no guarantee that you are going to get your money or that they are WITH OUR TEAM SELLING APPROACH, YOU SELL going to bring back a machine in THE EQUIPMENT AND WE STRUCTURE THE DEAL. useable condition." Despite its cautionary policy, the dealership brought in equipment from five other locations and Programs for new & used heavy moved all of it from their yard and construction equipment onto jobsites. Some contractors who became customers in the weeks after the storm still are working in Joplin mpetitive rates two years later. Their arrival and continued presence in the southwest Missouri town partly reflects the state of the construction economy across the country. Close Sales Faster With Financing (800) 875-0326 875 0326 www.directcapital.com 34 | www.cedmag.com | Construction Equipment Distribution | November 2013 By the Numbers David Hertzberg can tell much of the Joplin story in numbers. Big numbers. 7,500 homes and 500 businesses