For 72 years, Gregory Poole Equipment Company has been the exclusive Caterpillar dealer for eastern North Carolina, serving one of the fastest growing regions in the country.
Along with its surrounding territory, the Raleigh-based dealership has grown rapidly, expanding into new equipment lines and services, branching out to 26 locations and employing nearly 1,400 people.
Despite its size, the company remains family owned. Greg Poole III, chairman and CEO, bought the company from his father in 1999.
James Gregory Poole Sr. formed Gregory-Poole Equipment Company in 1951 with his uncle William Lewis Gregory. Poole Sr. and his family became the sole owners in 1961 after obtaining Gregory’s shares. The business’ name then became Gregory Poole Equipment Company. J. Gregory Poole Jr., the second-generation owner led the dealership from 1965 to 1999.
Another generation has joined the company as well. Greg Poole IV, director of product support, grew up with the business and spent summers working in the warehouse assisting master technicians. He joined Gregory Poole full time about five years ago and has transitioned through various departments to learn the business.
Along with a lengthy family history, the company has many long-term employees who have remained with the company for decades. That has translated into strong, trusted customer service, not only in sales and parts but in maintenance as well. The company’s technicians can do it all, from PMs to rebuilds. Gregory Poole has a large fleet of field technicians who go out at all hours when customers need help.
Not only does Gregory Poole have a large fleet of highly trained technicians, but it also has trained equipment operators on staff to help customers with their new equipment and technology – even with equipment training simulators. The company remains on the cutting edge of Cat’s latest technology, including the Cat Command remote-control machine operation. The dealership also has a dedicated staff to monitor machine telematics for customers who choose that option. Its latest effort has been to adopt Cat’s e-commerce app service for ordering parts.
For those reasons and more, Gregory Poole Equipment Company is Equipment World’s 2023 Big Iron Dealer of the Year.
Aggressive Growth
Gregory Poole Equipment Company is based in Raleigh and has 26 branches.Gregory Poole Equipment Company
The dealership’s number of employees has nearly quadrupled since 1999 through acquisitions, the opening of new branches and expansion of product lines.
One of the fastest growing areas has been its Lift Systems Division. The company is an authorized dealer of Hyster and Yale lift trucks across four states and one of the region’s largest overall material handling dealers. Gregory Poole also expanded into forestry equipment, compressed air, generators, industrial and marine engines, even on-road truck and RV service. And it has an agreement with Blue Bird Buses throughout North Carolina and South Carolina for sales, parts and service of school and activity buses and similar vehicles.
Other major lines include Weiler, Astec Industries, Genie, JLG, Multiquip, Toro, BOMAG, Wacker Neuson, Allmand, Micro Bird, Kobelco, Atlas Copco, Sullivan Palatek, Sullair, Boge, Kaishan, ASCO, Generac, Road Widener and Trimble.
Focus on Rental
Though sales of new equipment remain the core business, the company has been turning a focus toward rental, where it sees high growth potential.
Driving that potential is the growing Triangle and eastern North Carolina market, but also a national trend of contractors choosing rental over ownership for financial reasons.
“We always want to meet our customers where they want to be met,” says Greg Poole IV. “It seems increasingly like they want to be met with rental, and so we're going to provide that for them.”
A couple of years ago, the company rebranded its rental business to GP Rental dedicated to competing with the larger rental companies in their territory. GP Rental started with six locations and will soon be opening its ninth and 10th stores with plans for more.
Dealing with Supply Issues
On the construction side, Gregory Poole’s strongest sales are in the compact to mid-size equipment, says Eddie Williford, executive vice president and COO of the Construction Division. It also has a strong presence in supplying highway and road construction contractors.
Another area of growth for the company has been used equipment. Part of that was driven by supply-chain issues for new equipment over the past few years. Used equipment has also helped the company keep its customers up and running.
“We’ve bought a lot of used equipment the last couple of years for our rental fleet, so that we could direct new equipment toward retail deals for customers,” Williford explains. “We've kept machines in our rental fleet longer, because we didn't want to replace them with the limited amount of new machines that we're getting.”
Williford sees supply issues improving, but it still has not reached pre-pandemic levels. Throughout the pandemic, the dealership worked to set priorities and come up with creative ways to keep customers’ machines running.
“We did everything we could to expedite parts if they were in trouble,” Williford says. “We'd take them off machines; we’d do anything we could to try to help them. And we really tried to prioritize down machines over machines that weren't down, for service needs.”
Increased communication with customers was also crucial.
“The main thing was trying to communicate with the customers and let them know,” he says. “Bad news is better than no news. They can plan around bad news, but they can't plan around no news.”
Going Digital
Gregory Poole Equipment Company
The company has implemented the Cat Central Mobile App. When downloaded to a customer’s phone, the app uses the phone’s GPS to connect to the nearest Cat dealer for parts ordering. The customer can select the parts needed and either pick them up at the dealership or Gregory Poole will deliver the parts.
Greg Poole IV expects future parts transactions to be mixed between traditional retail and digital and is seeing increased digital adoption from younger contractors.
“We know that there will be younger-generation contractors entering the workforce today that will want to order their parts online,” he says. “And so we really need to be easy to transact with, however our customers want to transact with us.”
“We've actually started to see some of our larger contractors have a resource dedicated within their business to just ordering parts online,” he adds. “So it's happening.”
Attracting and Retaining Technicians
Gregory Poole Equipment Company & JKase Photography
The company has invested heavily in training. Third-party sales coaches spend time with salespeople to help them improve.
Training is also a heavy focus for the company’s service technicians. Gregory Poole has a separate training department for that purpose and has developed a structured career path for techs. The company’s “Technician Career Development” program has been uploaded to a digital learning management system, outlining step-by-step advancement potential along with pay raises.
“It is 100% clear to every single technician in every single stage of that progression path what he or she needs to do to get to the next level,” Greg Poole IV says. “Some of that involves online training. Some of it involves classroom training, and some of it involves demonstrated skills.”
The company has taken to social media to try to attract new technicians. Greg Poole IV began the Gregory Poole Advantage Series, which provides a glimpse of the life of a technician. The videos are posted to Instagram, YouTube and other social media and have become a recruiting tool.
Gregory Poole has also ramped up its traditional recruitment as well as expanded it. Its outreach includes high schools, community colleges, historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic Heritage Events, and Women in Construction Professional Groups. Its Hispanic Recruitment Campaign and internal referral bonus program have led to a rise in skilled applicants, the company says.
Poole also fosters apprenticeships through Cat’s Think Big program at Florence-Darlington Technical College in South Carolina.
On the Cutting Edge of Technology
Telematics has been another area of adaptation for Gregory Poole. The company has a dedicated team that monitors customers’ machines for preventive maintenance and troubleshooting through Cat’s VisionLink.
“With the product information we're getting off machines today, we’ve become more of a consultative role with them in helping manage their fleets,” Williford says.
The company also has its own oil analysis lab for customers.
For customers interested in the latest machine control technology, the company offers Trimble products as a SITECH dealer. Gregory Poole sells, installs and repairs the automation technology as well as trains operators on it.
Training simulators are also becoming more popular, allowing operators to train on equipment in virtual reality before facing jobsite dangers. Gregory Poole sells the simulators and provides training on them.
Two years ago, Cat began rolling out its Cat Command remote-control operation stations for dozers and excavators. Williford estimates 15 to 20 customers’ machines are on it, with a couple of customers using Cat Command extensively.
“A lot of it is safety driven,” he says. “You're taking operators out of dangerous situations, number one.
“Number two is it takes some adaptation getting used to, but once the operators get used to it, it's so much easier on them physically from a vibration standpoint and noise standpoint. They're sitting in a nice, air-conditioned room.”
Sticking to Core Values
Gregory Poole Equipment Company & JKase Photography
When asked what sets Gregory Poole apart from the competition, Williford, who has been with the company for 44 years, says simply, “Our people.”
“We’ve got a lot of long-term employees in this company that grew up in the business, and they know how to take care of our customers and our people. And that's our biggest differentiator.”
For Greg Poole IV, the company’s core value of integrity stands out when he thinks of the company’s employees.
“My dad and my grandfather always preached the culture to me, and I never understood it until I actually started working here,” he says. “We have a very, very strong culture.”
“We're constantly trying to take care of our customers,” he adds. “We always want to be the first ones on the jobsite. We want to be the first call every morning. We view ourselves as a partner to our customers. And we're here to serve them.”
This vintage Caterpillar Thirty crawler tractor was restored by Gregory Poole Equipment Company and is on display in its showroom.Gregory Poole Equipment Company
