When people approach the 60-year mark, they are referred to as “senior citizens.” When a company approaches the 60-year mark, it can be referred to a “seasoned company.” One such “seasoned” company is Lancaster Development located in upstate New York.

Lancaster Development was founded in western New York State in 1947 by Gus Galasso. At first, the company took the baby steps of starting with small jobs. Then came the teenage years during which the company began to expand.

In middle age, it had the confidence and means to expand into one of the top road and bridge contractors in upstate New York with revenues exceeding $60 million a year.

The business is now headquartered in the Town of Richmondville in Schoharie County, approximately 40 mi. east of Albany.

Now in its seasoned years, Lancaster Development headed by Mark Galasso as president and brother Marty Galasso Jr. serving as executive vice president, continues to use its expertise as it works on a major highway project designed to improve local congestion from the intersection of Routes I-84, I-87, 17K and 20 to the Steward Airport in Newburgh.

The $49.9-million job includes the construction of 3.5 mi. (5.6 km) of two-lane highway, four bridges and the excavation of 1.3 million yds. (1.2 million m) of dirt was started Feb. 1, 2006, and has an estimated completion time of the fall of 2007.

Although Lancaster Development has an extensive equipment inventory from which to draw — 50 heavy trucks, 150 light- to medium-duty trucks, and 250 pieces of off-road construction equipment — it purchased six Volvo A30D articulated trucks from Vantage Equipment, which is headquartered in Syracuse, NY, with offices in Albany and Batavia.

The sale was consummated in a team effort, which included John Hession, president and Todd Kaley, general manager of Vantage Equipment; and Walt Vosbrink, sales representative based in the Albany, NY, store. Currently, all of Lancaster’s new Volvo trucks are on this job in addition to six other Volvo A30D trucks and four Volvo A30C articulated trucks and one Volvo A30A articulated truck. Altogether, Lancaster Development owns a fleet of 17 30-ton Volvo trucks.

And, there is a reason that Lancaster Development has so many Volvo trucks in its inventory.

“We honestly believe that Volvo makes the best end dump truck on the market,” said Marty, as he went on to explain. “A couple of years ago, we held our own equipment rodeo giving the manufacturers of four different trucks an opportunity to test their trucks side by side against other machines that we were considering purchasing,” he said.

“I developed a course and I drove the trucks across the three-quarters of a mile course. We tested for speed, total capacity and total fuel consumption of the trucks. Each truck was operated for one full hour.

“We also took into consideration other areas such as operator comfort, visibility, braking capability, maneuverability, scheduled maintenance, ease of maintenance, and estimated time allotted for maintenance. Volvo won this contest hands down,” Marty explained.

“Surprisingly, overall speed was nearly identical on all of the trucks. [But] based on the results of this rodeo, we are continuing to build our truck fleet around the Volvo product, although the results were no great surprise to us. We purchased our first Volvo in 1993, and we still use it in our fleet with more than 16,000 hours on the machine,” Marty said. CEG

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