Flint Equipment Company announced the acquisition of Metrac Inc. as of June 4, 2010. Flint Equipment Co., which began in 1975 as a John Deere sales and service company in Albany, Ga., has since become a family of companies which also includes Albany Tractor Company and Flint Power Systems operating 26 offices in four states.

With the purchase of Metrac, Flint has expanded by six locations and has hired former members of the Metrac management and sales teams. All six locations were open for business on June 7, following system conversions and employee training. Todd Smith has responsibility for Atlanta and Adairsville, Alex McGee will continue to manage Grovetown and also will take over responsibility for the Braselton location, Mike Henderson will continue to manage the Columbus, Ga. locations and Rick Cucci has come on-board to manage the Macon, Ga., location.

Chris Cannon, president, purchased Flint Equipment Company in 2002, after spending 19 years as president of a Caterpillar dealership. The purchase of Metrac, according to Cannon, “is a strategic move to align our dealerships by state, get the proper footprint to achieve the economies of scale required to succeed in today’s economy and achieve connecting our southern Georgia, Alabama and Florida markets to our Carolina market.”

Cannon feels that current customers will benefit from “a larger contiguous market that allows us to invest in the products, services and people to better serve our customers. A larger footprint allows us to provide our products and services at the least possible cost to our customers,” while former Metrac customers will see that, “we operate a very decentralized business whereby our local managers are trained and empowered to do whatever it takes to take care of our customers. We believe that selling equipment is important but the after sales support is what differentiates our company and products from our competition. People do business with people and we believe very strongly in building strong relationships with those that we serve.”

In addition, the North Georgia agricultural industry will have the opportunity to work with Flint Equipment Company. “We currently have 10 John Deere agricultural locations in southern Georgia operating as Albany Tractor Company and also represent John Deere Power Systems though our Flint Power Systems in six southeast states and the Caribbean. Many of our Construction and Forestry customers utilize ag type tractors and engine products such as pumping units and generator sets so we look forward to assisting them with these fine products also,” Cannon said.

As the new locations begin doing business, Cannon noted that, “This is a very difficult time to be expanding our business but we have the utmost confidence in the ability of our people to not only handle integrating the Metrac operations, but also to successfully operate our new operations during these difficult times. The Cruikshank family has done a superb job taking care of this market for almost 40 years and we shall do all in our power to continue this fine tradition. We are very grateful to our partners at John Deere for this unique opportunity.”

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