Highway builders, quarry operators, local utilities and many other contractors throughout North Georgia have enjoyed faster, more convenient service since Trax Inc. opened its full-service facility at 1765 Construction Dr. in Gainesville last December. As a result, the three-acre facility has attracted far more business than company officials ever expected.
“We have all been pleasantly surprised at how well things have gone at this branch,” said Dave Darby, branch manager. “We opened the branch a year ago with just two technicians. Now, as a result of picking up a lot of new business, the branch has seven people in our service department. Geographically, this has been a good move for Trax Inc. and very good for business.”
“We serve 27 counties out of this branch,” said Billy Brice, Georgia sales manager for Trax. “Because of all the growth in this area, it made sense for us to establish a branch north of Atlanta.”
The branch’s customers include many of north Georgia’s best-known granite and marble quarries, mining operations, county and municipal road and highway contractors, private and municipal utilities, and general contractors.
“Being closer to our North Georgia customers has allowed us to save them time and money when getting their service work completed or getting parts delivered,” Darby said.
The branch sells and services all makes of equipment found at other Trax locations. These include Dynapac rollers and compactors; Euclid off-highway trucks; Hitachi excavators and shovels; NPK breakers and compactors; and Volvo excavators, loaders, articulated trucks, and motorgraders.
In addition to Brice, the branch has three sales people — Scott McEver, Tony Taylor and Steven Anthony — standing by to handle requests for new, used or rental equipment. The office can even provide a customer with all the paperwork needed to obtain financing.
The 11,000-sq.-ft. facility also houses a parts counter and a parts warehouse, where staff members try to maintain a supply of the parts that customers need most. Trax analyzed its records to see which parts customers purchased the most during the past five years, and works to keep all of those items in stock.
Just a few feet away, the branch has four large shop bays where highly skilled technicians attend to the service needs of Trax customers.
“The service team here can handle just about anything,” said Ray King, service manager. “For example, we build hammers for NPK equipment. Our hydraulic repair services include cylinder repair, pump rebuilding, and custom hose assembly. We also maintain one of the industry’s most complete libraries of technical manuals, service videos and parts CDs.”
To respond to customers’ needs for preventative maintenance or provide emergency service in the field, the Gainesville branch also has a fleet of fully equipped service trucks standing by. Each truck has cellular communication capability and diagnostic equipment necessary to identify problems and initiate repairs as quickly as possible.
The service department even has its own covered wash bay attached to the exterior of the Gainesville facility. In addition to high-pressure hoses that clean equipment with maximum efficiency, the bay features an advanced water treatment system that uses two stages of filtration to remove particulate and chemical pollutants from washwater. The state-of-the-art system far exceeds all federal and state environmental standards.
Yet even with all these technical features, Brice believes that the relaxed, friendly atmosphere at Trax of Gainesville, does the most to set the branch apart from competitors.
“We like to give more personal service than customers can find in bigger branches,” he said. “When customers come in, we want them to feel like they would at an old-fashioned service station, where everyone knows their name. We know we have the best equipment and service money can buy, but we also want our customers to feel right at home when they pay us a visit.”
He added that everyone at the Gainesville branch takes great pride in continuing the Trax Inc. tradition of quality, personalized service.
Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, Trax Inc. began providing earthmoving and mining equipment and service to the South in 1962. The company focused mainly on buying and selling used equipment in its early years, but expanded its horizons when it became an authorized Euclid dealer in the late 1960s. During the mid-1980s, Trax Inc. also added Hitachi, Volvo and other leading equipment makers to its inventory.
The company now generates annual sales of more than $150 million and has 15 branches in the United States and international partners around the world. In addition to the Atlanta and Gainesville operations, Trax has Georgia branches in Savannah and Macon. The company also has Southeastern branches in Birmingham, Decatur, Mobile and Montgomery AL; Jacksonville, Tampa, Fort Meyers, Orlando and Miami, FL; Reidsville, NC; and London, KY.
Today's top stories
