Several hundred people attended the grand opening Friday of Terex’ newest dealership, Equipco in New Orleans. Customers, family members and City Councilman Oliver Thomas and members of the media attended the event, along with Terex Construction president Bob Isaman.

Equipco is located a block from the Superdome in downtown New Orleans where the likelihood of significant construction and redevelopment work in the coming years makes the presence of the only full-line construction equipment dealership in the city of New Orleans well-received by the city’s construction community.

Equipco is locally owned and operated. The four Equipco owners — 40-year industry veteran Donald Charbonnet, Wiggins Edrington, Shannon Fethke and Richard Edrington — are all lifelong New Orleans residents. All have extensive rental industry experience with companies such as Louisiana Rents, NationsRent and others.

“As a result of Hurricane Katrina, we established Equipco in the heart of downtown New Orleans near the Superdome, a great point of distribution, so we can easily serve contractors in this market,” said Charbonnet. “We are proud to have the full range of time-tested, high quality Terex Construction products in our offerings to help us with the business and the overall rebuilding effort of the region.”

During the grand opening ceremony, Terex donated a Terex site dumper to the city of New Orleans. City Councilman Oliver Thomas attended the event and took possession of the site dumper presented by Terex.

“This is the fulfillment of a dream I’ve had for quite some time, especially since Hurricane Katrina,” Charbonnet told the crowd. “The Charbonnet, Fethke and Edrington families gave us a lot of support. I want to thank our customers who urged us to get back into the business and have equipment conveniently located to help them in the rebuilding of New Orleans. We took an older, hurricane-ravaged building, city and state property, an eyesore quite frankly and turned it into a pretty exciting new business. From the very first meetings we had with Terex and other great manufacturers like Gehl and Bil-Jax and Wacker and Dynapac and Mi-T-M and more at my kitchen table months ago, they all saw the vision of what we could do with the right equipment, the right team and the right location. Our formula for success is simple: listen to our customers, treat our customers better by outservicing the competition, listen to the demands of the market, and hard work. We are locally owned and operated and have invested pretty heavily in this community. As they say around New Orleans, recover, rebuild, rebirth.”

“In addition to New Orleans and surrounding parishes getting access to fine Terex equipment, in the heart of the city, New Orleans and America get today four new entrepreneurs, people that want to build things, people that want to change the status quo, people that want to win,” said Isaman. “And although we may be underdogs for awhile, through hard work and listening to customer needs, I have no doubt that Equipco will go stronger and bigger. Donald, Shannon, Wiggins, Richard and their families follow in the footsteps of other entrepreneurs that built this city. You represent the spirit of this city and your commitment to be part of the solution to make New Orleans and the parishes surrounding it better than they were before is what it’s all about. Investments in people and investments in peoples’ dreams are the best kind of investments in the future.”

“To have an $8.5 billion corporation partner with Don and his partners and local team, this represents the kind of confidence that we are looking for all over the world,” Councilman Thomas told the crowd. “Profit margin and return on investment are important in a business, but every discussion I had with this team of people, it was about being part of our recovery. That type of civic commitment, business commitment and spiritual commitment is the only thing that’s going to help New Orleans be better than it was.”

Equipco is located one block from the Superdome in downtown New Orleans.

Photos by Michael Roth, RER

After cutting the ribbon to formally inaugurate Equipco, from left, Shannon Fethke, Donald Charbonnet, Terex president Bob Isaman, New Orleans City Councilman Oliver Thomas, Wiggins Edrington and Richard Edrington.