It was on a visit to a Volvo plant in Korea that Ross Davidson noticed the sign:
“Thank you for coming to the plant.”
Davidson, the president of Great West Equipment, whose company is a Volvo construction equipment distributor, shared the story Friday as he officially opened the company’s new facility in Spallumcheen in front of more than 100 friends, employees, clients and customers.
“The industrial system that builds all of these machines and distribution systems we are responsible for, all the things that we support in the community with the taxes we pay, the people we hire, all of it goes away if the customer doesn’t come in here and value our service enough in order to be able to pay us for it,” said Davidson.
“For us, the focus of our business and the culture we want to foster is service first. It’s our motto. “We empower our people to take care of customers.”
Great West Equipment is a full-service heavy equipment dealership with 11 branches across British Columbia and the Yukon.
The head office was formerly located on Kosmina Road in Vernon, and the company also operated two other locations on Middleton Way and Kal Lake Road before moving everybody and everything under one gigantic roof in Spallumcheen.
The three-storey facility features parts and service on the lower floor, and offices, meetings and board rooms on the second and third floors.
“It does help to diversify our tax,” said township Mayor Janice Brown at the facility’s opening. “It’s a beautiful building, very impressive. It’s a great opening to our community. It’s been a lot of hard work and perseverance but it’s all worth it at the end of the day.”
Shuswap MLA Greg Kyllo called opening the new facility “a proud day for the province.”
“It’s not government that creates jobs in this province, it’s the private sector,” said Kyllo. “This is an extremely proud day for Ross and the rest of the team, to recognize the great work you’ve done.”
Volvo did its part for the festivities by supplying a pair of celebrities.
It brought to the opening its celebrated Golden Hauler, an articulated hauler painted gold to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the hauler.
Also on hand, courtesy of Volvo, was Tony Beets, one of the stars of the Discovery Channel’s hit mining show Gold Rush.
“Great West Equipment is a Volvo dealer and we use them on the show so we are happy to be here to support them,” said Beets, joined in Spallumcheen by his wife, Minnie. “This is a very damn nice facility. Without a question.”
Great West Equipment employs about 200 people across B.C. and the Yukon (with about 100 settling into the new Spallumcheen facility), and utilized about 100 local contractors to construct the new location.