Hamilton Equipment Co. specializes in manufacturing durable water tanks and specialty trucks for construction and mining industries worldwide. Founded in 1996, the company's focus on quality, simplicity, and customer support has solidified its reputation and garnered repeat business success.
CEG photo
Bill Hamilton (L) and Ryan McGuire, both of Hamilton Equipment Co.
For a company to successfully build construction and mining equipment to withstand the toughest environments on Earth, it needs veteran experts and skilled fabricators to satisfy the demands of its customers.
Hamilton Equipment Co. (HEC) is a prime example of an outfit that has used its many years of firsthand experience to create extremely durable water tanks and specialty trucks for use all over the world —from Africa to the Arctic Circle and Australia across North America to Europe.
HEC had been selling those products, along with lube trucks, fuel tankers and tank kits since the company was created in Knoxville, Tenn., in 1996 by Bill Hamilton (by then a veteran at selling these machines, along with new and used heavy equipment) and son, Ryan McGuire.
For almost three decades now, he and his son have seen their operations in eastern Tennessee grow to where they are today with two locations in Knoxville and nearby Lenoir City.
McGuire said that when they were looking to grow the business and have some stability, HEC began to concentrate heavily on manufacturing water tanks and specialty bodies with the help of other fabricators for a couple of years, an experience that he said, "turned into a nightmare."
As a result, HEC bought another facility and started up its own fabrication shop.
"The lead times and the quality of work from other folks just could not meet our schedules, our criteria and our customer's demands," he said. "We got to the point where we said, ‘If we are going to be in this business, we need to have total control of it.'"
Hamilton added, though, that his company no longer produces as many lube trucks on a regular basis as it used to because of the difficulty in keeping up with demand. Instead, HEC primarily focuses its attention on water equipment.
The water tanks that HEC manufactures in 2025 generally range from 4,500-gal. units for on-road trucks, up to 18,000-gal.-plus tanks for off-road vehicles with a rigid cargo body fixed on the axles, such as a mining truck.
"These tanks are not used in residential projects but in large scale construction and mining at quarries or in the oil sands of Fort McMurray in Canada, for instance," McGuire said.
HEC's products are designed to fit onto the chassis of any make or model of truck, either new or used. In addition, most tanks are mated with late-model, low-hour truck chassis —like-new, but not brand-new, McGuire clarified. They also come with a three-year warranty, and the components themselves carry the manufacturer's warranty.
"Our tanks are built to fit specific chassis, another of Hamilton Equipment's advantages," he added. "We don't just fabricate a one-size-fits-all tank like other people in the business; rather, all of our tanks are custom-mated to the truck brand."
Everything HEC does to build its equipment must achieve the company's primary objective, according to Hamilton, which "is to make our products a lot better than everybody else. We are probably the best out there when it comes to parts and service, too. As far as the quality of the manufacturing process, we know we are the best because that's what our customers tell us."
"The death of a good business is growing too fast and not being able to deliver to your customers," McGuire added. "We have had a steady, organic build, if you will, that has lasted close to 20 years. We just want [HEC] to be where we have everything in line and to our standards before we deliver our products to customers."
Simple, Safe, Durable Products
Hamilton is proud to say that all the steel that goes into fabricating HEC's equipment is "U.S. prime and comes from American mills. We get some foreign made stuff because we can't get it anywhere in the states, like a spray head component or something like that. Most all of our plate and pipe suppliers are also U.S.-based."
He also noted, "We process every bit of it ourselves, but we don't burn it to process the patterns anymore. We have that done by others because the machines to do it became too expensive to operate —the burn tables and all that equipment. But the rolling and breaking and pipe welding are all still accomplished by us."
HEC also is proud of the long lifespans of its tanks and equipment.
"The first water tank that we ever built ourselves in our shop was, I think, about 18 years ago, and just a couple months ago, we got a call from the customer asking for parts for that same machine," McGuire said. "As far as I know, we have not had a tank fail or go out of service. The vessel and its structure are overbuilt, and our components are the best we can get, but at the same time it is the simplest system we can build."
While some of HEC's competitors put computer systems on their tanks, which he said end up needlessly overcomplicating the product, HEC aims for making its products simple and rock-solid, which his customers really appreciate.
"A water tank is not a production machine, but it is still a high-use product," McGuire said. "We know the various environments that it is going into, how it is going to be used and when it needs to be fixed. The tank must be one where anyone at any time can repair it to make it operate properly, and we have been successful building them that way."
Over the years, HEC also has worked diligently to make its tanks and truck bodies easy for transport.
"Our heights are down, and we emphasize a low center of gravity to make them safer on the job," he said. "We still cut out the fenders, and our subframes are lower than most other manufacturers in the industry for safety reasons and for transport. The tanks are usually either right at the OEM's cab or just below it, so we don't have height issues."
McGuire added that operators have no need to climb on top of HEC's tanks as the access to them is through the bottom.
"That makes the safety man on the job really happy and fulfills our desire to make our products easy and safe to use," he said.
HEC's Machines Prove Themselves in Toughest Environs
For the past several years, HEC has limited its manufacture of fuel lube trucks to custom builds, but a lot of that equipment ends up serving mining customers working in the Arctic and at Fort McMurray, located in northeastern Alberta.
Although the Arctic is usually described as a frozen wasteland, below its land surfaces are large quantities of oil, natural gas and various minerals, including phosphate, bauxite, iron ore, copper and nickel.
"I have been up there to the northernmost open mine in the world putting on a fuel lube body when it was 50 degrees below zero and having to sleep in a tent," McGuire said.
As a result of the region's often harsh conditions, he said those work sites are regarded as outstanding proving grounds for testing the durability of HEC's products.
"We built machines to work up there in that environment and in various applications. We saw that they could stand up and operate as they should to pump out oil when it's 70 to 80 degrees below zero due to their being insulated and kept warm with redundant heaters."
In addition, he said that the work sites are often full of 4- to 5-ft.-deep ruts made by huge Cat 797 mining trucks with 8- to 10-ft.-high tires that articulated trucks must drive through, meaning any fabricated bodies in use there have to withstand often punishing terrain.
"Once we saw that our products could survive those proving grounds, then we knew we had an excellent body," McGuire said.
HEC's Product Support Must Meet High Standards
According to Hamilton, HEC's parts and service business mimics what he learned many years ago working as a shop mechanic for Rozier Machinery, a Cat dealership in Tampa, Fla. While there, he took note of how hard one was expected to work to satisfy customer needs and has instilled that same ethic into his Tennessee business.
"I learned the old way that when a call came in, you took care of the customer," he said. "At HEC, we've left out of here at 4 o'clock in the afternoon to fix somebody's water truck that is three or four hours away so it could be ready for work the next morning. That's the whole key to product support. We have young people here that know when to get in a service truck and quickly get out to where the repair is needed."
His company does business with several Cat dealers and with James River Equipment, the latter of which recently sent some brand new 410-P 40-ton John Deere articulated dump trucks to Knoxville for HEC to fit new tanks onto for use at a massive phosphate mine located near the North Carolina coast.
"They need equipment that will run seven days a week," said Hamilton, "meaning we need to send a guy over there to put them in service. We have dealt with [the mine's operators] a long time and they are a good customer."
Training people to run its machines is another key function of HEC's customer support.
"That is especially so with new customers," according to McGuire. "Our people help familiarize them with the machine, demonstrate how everything works, explain how they can handle any potential issues that may come up and make ourselves available if they cannot.
"Everybody at Hamilton is accessible and that is one of our biggest strengths," he added. "I have my phone on 24 hours a day and we have a technician that lives in Idaho, Zane Pilakowski, who does a lot of our field installs out west, and is usually accessible to customers, as is our parts and service manager, Brad Howard, located at the Lenoir City shop. If you call us, you will get hold of somebody."
If there are issues with an HEC product in remote, far-flung locales like Australia or East Africa —places that the company's people cannot easily reach, Hamilton said that his customers' technicians have been fully trained by HEC's service experts to handle any problems.
Because of its outstanding products and service over the past few decades, it is no surprise to learn that most of HEC's success comes from repeat business, a testament to how well regarded it is among its customers.
"At the beginning of the year, we know that our order board is going to be 80 to 90 percent full of repeat business, and a lot of those customers have bought from us for 15 to 20 years," McGuire said.
Hamilton has tremendous pride in the reputation his company has established within the construction and mining industries but gives the credit to his team of professionals, many of whom have been with him since they were young adults. Each one, he said, understands that they must adhere to HEC's high standards in order to remain with the company.
"Some of the fabricators and welders come and go, but we pay our people well," Hamilton said. "If they can't do their best, they don't stay here long — we're not going to have it. The products that go out of here have to be the best this little family business and the people within it can make."
For more information, visit www.hamiltonequip.com. CEG
(All photographs in this article are Copyright 2025 Construction Equipment Guide. All Rights Reserved.)
Eric Olson
A writer and contributing editor for CEG since 2008, Eric Olson has worked in the news-gathering business for 45 years.
Olson grew up in the small town of Lenoir, N.C. in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he began covering sports for the local newspaper at age 18. He continued to do that for several other dailies in the area while in college at Appalachian State University. Following his graduation, he worked for, among other companies, the Winston-Salem Journal, where he wrote and edited the newspaper's real estate and special features sections for 10 years. Since 1999 he has worked as a corporate media liaison and freelance writer, in addition to his time at CEG.
He and his wife, Tara, have been happily married for almost 40 years and are the parents of two grown and successful daughters. He currently is in the employ of two dogs and three cats, a job that he dearly loves.
Read more from Eric Olson here.
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