Used Equipment Sales Gain Boyd Co. Notoriety

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Jun 27, 1995 by Darrell Morrow

What began as a business diversification to counter the downturn of the mid-1980s has become a major segment of the operations of C.L. Boyd Co., Oklahoma's oldest construction equipment dealer.

That diversification has given the company, which already was well known statewide, national recognition in its field.

Sales of new construction equipment were almost nonexistent following the oil bust, but there was a market for good used equipment, said Robert Crews, president and major stockholder of C.L. Boyd Co.

"What happened was, in 1984 business was pretty good and we were doing probably about $21 million volume. Then, by 1986, we dropped down to about $12 million and now it is back up to $30 million," Crews said.

"Government quit buying equipment due to the county commissioner scandal. The oil boom went to bust," he said.

C.L. Boyd Co. was one of the very few equipment dealers never involved in the county commissioner kickback scandal, said Jim Meisner, vice president of sales and the other stockholder of the company.

A new section was added to the company's maintenance and repair shop in 1987-88 for the repair and rebuilding of construction machines. A special marketing department was established to buy and sell used equipment nationally and internationally.

"We have bought and sold equipment on almost every continent," Crews said.

Sales still are slow for new construction machines, such as bulldozers that cost from $120,000 to $140,000 or more, but demand continues for good used equipment, Crews said.

The company has become known nationwide among dealers as a supplier of dependable used construction machines of all major brands, although it flies the flag of a John Deere industrial equipment dealer.

Dealing in used equipment now accounts for about half of the company's business volume, Crews said.

Accidental purchase of the wrong model of a used large scraper for a customer several years ago led the company to a niche market.

The mistake was turned into a positive investment in the C.L. Boyd shop. The "bowl scraper" was removed from the attached tractor and replaced with a 5,000-gallon water tank, for which there was a ready market, Crews said.

The tanker conversion has become a regular part of the business when old scrapers are available. About 35 of those conversions have been done in the shop, producing tankers with a sale value of from $70,000 to $120,000, about half the price for a similar new unit, he said.

"It is a pretty good niche business. It is just limited by the amount of time you have in the shop and the availability of units at the right price to make it work.

"We have gained a fair amount of recognition around the country for putting those things together.

"Basically, we buy used equipment, take it into our shop, fix it up and sell it back out into the wholesale market. That was part of our diversification in 1987 and 1988," Crews said.

The company has developed a good enough reputation nationally among dealers that many will buy and sell used equipment on the telephone or send equipment on consignment to C.L. Boyd Co., Meisner said.

"We may fix it up, because our labor costs are cheaper here than some other places, and we are set up to do it. A lot of the other dealers don't do a lot of what we are doing. Ours started out of necessity, so we just diversified that way and have grown."

The company would have had to shrink smaller to have survived during the slack years had it depended upon only new equipment sales and service, Meisner said.

Despite its diversification into the used and rebuilt equipment business, the company still ranks high among John Deere new equipment dealers.

It earned the Gold Level dealer rank in John Deere's 1994 Mark of Excellence program.

C.L. Boyd Co. is among only 16 of 139 John Deere construction equipment dealers across North America recognized as Gold Level dealers.

The experience gained by the company's personnel in the rebuilding and repair business led John Deere to contract for C.L. Boyd employees to produce an instruction manual for use by all John Deere construction equipment dealers in the rebuilding of tractor undercarriages, Crews said.

Production of that manual is now in progress and planned to be completed later this year.

The company still bears the name of its founder, Clarence L. Boyd, who established the business in Guthrie in 1913. Boyd incorporated the business in 1923 in Guthrie as the Clarence L. Boyd Co. He died in 1926.

The company bought out the Tulsa franchise dealer for International Harvester in 1941 and covered the entire state for many years, but it no longer has a Tulsa branch.

C.L. Boyd Co. has specialized in construction equipment since about the mid-1930s "when it was first built, and even had some Gallion pull graders and Busyrus-Erie brand equipment before that," Crews said.

Its main operation was moved to Oklahoma City from Guthrie in 1948.

Crews' father, Frank Crews, joined the company in 1941 as an accountant and was president of C.L. Boyd Co. from 1972 until he retired in 1980. A history of the company written for its 50th anniversary noted that average tenure of employees was 16 to 18 years. Crews said that still is a good average, although some employees have acquired 25 years' tenure.