Construction Machinery Inc.: Alaska-grown equipment giant.

• Author: Makool, Becky

In nine years, this firm has become one of the largest Alaska-owned equipment dealerships.

In only nine years of operation, Construction Machinery Inc. (CMI), headquartered in Anchorage, has proven it is equipped for success. The corporation, a distributor of heavy equipment, grossed over $40 million in 1993, up $6 million from the previous year.

Ken Gerondale, president and CEO, founded CMI in 1985 with two partners, Bob Elliot and Bill Allen, when they purchased the Ingersoll-Rand heavy-equipment dealership in Anchorage and converted it into a multi-manufacturer dealership.

Gerondale says, "We've made money every year. Our first year's volume was $3.5 million, and our 1993 volume was over $40 million."

As a distributor of heavy equipment, CMI represents major manufacturers such as Ingersoll-Rand, Hitachi and VME (a Volvo company), but also offers lighter equipment and tools on behalf of manufacturers like Mikasa, Takeuchi, Williams, Allmand Bros. Inc. and Gorman-Rupp.

Ingersoll-Rand, a company exclusively represented in Alaska by CMI, has been very pleased with CMI's performance over the years, according to Mark O etken of Seattle, the manufacturer's vice president.

"They know Alaska and the Alaskan market and have very good relationships with customers," O etken says.

Gerondale, a lifelong Alaskan, previously had served as general manager of McDonald Industries Alaska Inc., another heavy equipment dealer. Elliot and Allen originally came to Alaska as employees of Ingersoll-Rand to operate its store during construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. Elliot later ran his own Ingersoll-Rand dealership, Coastal Machinery Inc. in Ketchikan, which he sold to CMI in 1990.

Gerondale and Allen have known one another for about 15 years. Allen contacted Gerondale in May 1985 to discuss purchasing the existing Ingersoll-Rand dealership and then introduced him to Elliot. The three men launched CMI two months later.

Gerondale gives CMI's employees credit for the company's reputation as a provider of top-notch customer service. "The real key to our success is the team of employees that we have put together," he says. "The employees that we have here at CMI have actually worked together even longer than when we started (the company) in 1985."

The company hired about 12 employees its first year, but now has about 100 full-time employees on its payroll. Its only seasonal workers are college students who help out during the summers, taking advantage of...