Making its mark in heavy equipment

Published Saturday, September 17, 2005

There’s a good chance the dotted lines you’ve followed on America’s highways were painted by Fargo-based Swanston Equipment Co.

Since 1928, the three- generation family has repaired, painted and sold cars and trucks, built truck boxes, striped highways, and sold and serviced school buses and heavy construction equipment, said Mike Swanston, company president.

Today, more than 60 employees work for the company in Fargo and Minot, N.D.

Behind the stately glass entrance to Swanston’s nearly 40,000-square-foot Fargo headquarters at 3450 Main Ave., are two floors with 16,000 square feet of offices and meeting rooms.

The other half of the building – which opened in May – contains a 20,000-square-foot, 12-bay service center. It replaces the previous 7,700-square-foot shop.

A dozen Bobcat skid-steer loaders line the front of the building, representing one of several implement brands the company rents and sells.

“The company really has a large focus with Bobcat now,” Swanston said.

“This is what we’re going to call a flagship store,” said Lee Jordheim, district manager for Bobcat. “It’s an example of the Bobcat store of the future. It’s a Bobcat-branded building.”

Today, 25 percent of Swanston Equipment’s focus continues to be on striping highways, which the company began doing in 1969, Swanston said.

“We’ve worked in 44 states,” he said, as well as in the Samoan Islands.

“The company has gone through a lot of changes,” Swanston said. “It’s been a lot of fun.”

‘Swannie’ started firm

Mike Swanston was only 5 years old when his grandfather, William Swanston Sr., was killed in a car accident in 1958.

Three decades earlier, “Swannie” (as the company’s founder was known) opened Swanston Auto Body and Paint Shop at 623 2nd Ave. N. in downtown Fargo.

“He thought of himself as the mayor of Second Avenue. He wore a white Stetson and smoked a big cigar,” said William Swanston Jr., who started working as a teenager for his father, a 1918 University of North Dakota graduate.

“By the time you were 14, he thought it wouldn’t hurt you to work a little bit,” said William Swanston Jr., 77, the company’s chief executive officer.

The family’s debut into the construction industry came in 1947 when William Swanston Sr. opened a Nash automobile dealership and became a distributor for Galion motor graders. Later, the company began selling Wayne school buses.

The focus switched in 1955 when the business name became Swanston Equipment Co.

“From then on we got completely into the asphalt and equipment business,” said William Swanston Jr., who took over the company after his father died.

Shop sets standard

“If you can’t service it, you shouldn’t sell it,” said William Swanston, Jr., calling the new service shop one of the best in the country.

With 12 service bays, overhead hoists and floor heat, the facility was designed by the mechanics themselves, Mike Swanston said.

Heavy equipment Service Manager Paul Strand and Bobcat Service Manager Steve Krupich helped design the shop.

Field service technician Dean Yokom said he likes the visibility and expanded space the new facility offers.

Service technician Craig Michels came up with the idea of installing a scissor lift to hoist Bobcat loaders for mechanical work.

He used the implement while previously working for Bobcat. “It’s a lifesaver,” Michels said.

Swanston Equipment also builds and sells equipment to serve special needs.

Forty-year employee Charles Thompson designed the TC 2000 Stripe Eater, a machine that removes pavement stripes.

“So far we’ve built 26 of these machines,” said Thompson, vice president of equipment. He began his career welding gravel boxes for the company.

Swanston Equipment also rents out about 400 different pieces of equipment throughout the U.S., Mike Swanston said.

Growth continues

“We do 10 times the volume that we did when I started 21 years ago,” said company Vice President Jon Saetre.

Swanston Equipment employs 10 mechanics compared with three when Saetre started. “We had one parts person, now there’s four.”

He expects growth to continue over five to six years with congressional passage of a new highway bill this year.

“It’s changed a lot, but in the same respect, the majority of our business is repeat customers, many that we dealt with 20 years ago,” Saetre said.

One of the repeat customers is Northern Improvement Co., a Fargo-based highway, water and power plant construction company that has been around as long as Swanston Equipment, said Northern Improvement President Tom McCormick.

“We’ve bought literally millions of dollars of equipment from them over the years,” McCormick said. “We use them as a subcontractor on striping jobs.”

The Swanston families have known each other personally and as business associates for more than seven decades, McCormick said, recalling growing up with the family of William Swanston Jr.

“He’s almost like uncle Bill to us,” McCormick said.

Readers can reach Forum Business Editor

Craig McEwen at (701) 241-5502