“We were in a good position and were looking for a way to grow the company,” Robustelli said. “So, in that way, we actually benefited from the recession. We were able to retain some good people and the opportunity for growth arose. Being able to retain our people allowed us to grow.”
What lesson was learned by watching an economy fall off a cliff? Chiefly, it was about people.
“Trust your people,” he said. “Sure, new buildings are wonderful and nice, but without the right people you are not going to get very far. We were so very fortunate to have a good group of people, from maintenance to sales to finance. That made all the difference.”
For the first two-plus decades, JESCO was a New Jersey machinery outlet for John Deere. Expansion began in 2009 that saw it grow from three locations to nine, beginning with the opening of a store in New York. A year later, locations opened to support new markets in Maryland, Delaware, the District of Columbia and Virginia.
In 2011, a growth in its product lines turned the company into more of a full-service operation. It acquired the Ditch Witch line of machines for a territory ranging from the Canadian border to Maryland and created an underground division of products.
“At that time, the acquisition put us in the position of being the only equipment company in the eastern half of the United States that could supply its customers with machinery for every type of utility construction,” said the president.
After expanding the territory and then the breadth of equipment portfolio, a few years later another opportunity for growth presented itself and Robustelli of course did not shy away from the chance. That opportunity came in the form of the Wirtgen Group in 2018. This new lineup now provided JESCO with the worldleading brands Wirtgen, Kleemann, Vogele and Hamm in the roadbuilding and material handling space, which perfectly complemented the John Deere brand and further filled out its product offering similar to Ditch Witch in underground.
This is how Robustelli sums up all this expansion: “The last quarter of the company’s 50 years has seen it catapulted from a small baseline company to a regional dealer.”
After reading about JESCO’s story of growth, you might find yourself wondering how the name came to be — well it’s happened simply by doing what the company has been best at over its 50 years in business, listening to their customers. Customers started shortening Jersey Equipment Sales Company to JESCO and the name stuck. The company tagline “The Down to Earth Equipment Company” shares a similar story as, according to Robustelli, that too, came from feedback from customers.
“We were surveying customers and asking them why they did business with us. The ‘down-to-earth’ comment was a common response. And it’s true. We do try to make it easy. That’s our goal, to not overcomplicate things. We are down-to-earth, without a lot of pretensions to be otherwise.”
Besides JESCO’s customer-centric focus, the president said there are two main reasons for that. Equipment-buyers and renters continue to turn to JESCO. First, the lineup of products is “focused and expansive at the same time. We have earthmoving, roadbuilding and underground utility products, with complementing technical solutions like Topcon, Deere’s SmartGrade and Ditch Witch’s SubSite.” In short, it represents world class manufacturers.
The other reason customers are loyal, he said, is because they get good information from JESCO’s well-trained staff members.
“We invest a lot of time in training our people so when a customer calls with a question, he knows he will receive a knowledgeable answer — maybe not the answer he was looking for, but the information he needed. People are too busy to waste time. We train our people, so they know how to help customers when they call.”
Learning is one of the core values of the company. JESCO came up with its values — the tenets of its operational philosophy — a few years ago. In formulating them, Robustelli said the guidance he gave was that they shouldn’t be aspirational. That is, they should reflect who the company is, not what it wants to be. Besides learning, they include such verities as be a team player and do the right thing.
“They don’t include such things as ‘honesty,’ because we expect that from the beginning in every employee. Those are things my father expected every day from all of us. Our employees have embraced these core values and family values and have made the company what it is. It has been a team all along and I’m real proud of that.” ***
When Lou Robustelli opened his John Deere dealership carrying Deere’s industrial division product lines, his customers were small contractors installing septic tanks and digging basements, and municipal departments needing heavier equipment.
“As Deere grew its industrial, or construction, division, we grew. Every step of the way, as Deere grew its line, we grew. We expanded with them.”
The company president calls the 50-year partnership with John Deere “really, really important to me. Multiple generations of a Deere and JESCO relationship over half a century is important and special. We are not the only second-generation company that has partnered with Deere, but it is a nice feeling.”
He quickly added that he takes pride in all of the partnerships that JESCO has forged with “great partners” like the Wirtgen Group, Topcon and Hydrema, to name a few. “It is an outstanding portfolio, and we are proud to represent the entire breadth of product lines.”
And the future? Robustelli likes what he sees. Some time ago he had predicted that JESCO’s business volume would double and then double again.
“We haven’t yet doubled again, but we are not far from that. We undoubtedly will double what we are doing now in 10 years. I’m excited by the companies we’ve partnered with — companies like Deere and Ditch Witch and the Wirtgen Group. They are growing and on the move.”
He was asked if growth might eventually find JESCO with operating branches in other parts of the country beyond its current footprint. Possibly.
“If the opportunity presents itself to grow our borders, contiguous or not, with the right partners, without question we would look at it. But the ‘who’ matters a whole lot. The new partners would have to be leaders in their fields.”
As the company celebrates 50 years of success as a family business, another question arises … will JESCO continue to be a family business? That is, is there a possibility of becoming a stock company or selling out to a conglomerate?
“No, that is not appealing to me at all,” said the president. “We continually are looking at ways to do this for a long, long time, to continue having a relationship with John Deere, Ditch Witch and the Wirtgen Group, to grow our business in a healthy way, staying faithful to our core and family values. JESCO will continue to be JESCO and to be family-owned.”
“I’m excited by the companies we’ve partnered with. They are growing and on the move.”
Jon RobustelliJESCO’s massive facility in South Plainfield, N.J.
There was a time when Ditch Witch was synonymous with walkbehind trenchers, which the company invented. Today, trenchers constitute a low percentage of Ditch Witch sales at JESCO. “Ditch Witch product lines grew and grew and many different products were brought out,” said Hagenbuch. The mini-skid steer is the top-selling Ditch Witch product now.
“They are very difficult to get. There’s a high demand and a low supply.” JESCO has some of the units in stock, of course. As important, it has the attachments that give the machine its broad appeal to customers.
“Those mini-skid steer attachments have a major impact on what we do here,” he said. “If we sell a mini to a landscaper, he is going to buy a bucket and forks to move plants and a soil cultivator for the yard — all different attachments. He might need a vibratory plow and a posthole digger. If we sell one to a tree contractor, he will buy a bucket and grapple to clean up.”
All in all, the division sells approximately 500 of the interchangeable attachments each year.
Is there a new machine coming out for underground contractors? Yes, but Hagenbuch isn’t at liberty to talk about it.
“It’ll be here in about six months, so they say. That’s something we like in this division: Our manufacturers spend a great deal of money on research and development. They have a goal of bringing a certain number of new products to the market each year.” ***
Rob Miller wears several hats — he seems to wear them well — and they all involve JESCO equipment that rolls and rumbles and does its work at ground level. He is market manager for the company’s MidAtlantic division. While the focus of his work is sales, he also manages the roadbuilding group of equipment across the company’s entire territory. “I get involved in whatever.”
Besides Wirtgen milling machines, the equipment under his purview includes such industry staples as Hamm compactors, Kleemann crushers and screeners, and Vogele and LeeBoy pavers.
“Wirtgen is always the leading product in our category,” Miller said, “but the up-and-comer is Vogele pavers. Customers looking for a good-quality option need to look at Vogele.”
Miller began in the industry “throwing wrenches” in a service department and gravitated toward the rental side of business. He worked at another construction dealership. Years later, when it changed hands, he looked for a new venue and, eventually, signed on to wearing several hats at JESCO.
The company was on the verge of evolving its sales and management culture into something more proactive. That evolution continues.
“We are looking for a more deliberate sales approach, a more focused approach,” he said. “It is the difference between waiting for something to come to you and going out and getting it. We want to guide customers more, act as more of a consultant to get through major purchases, develop more of a partnership with our customers.”
He works with a so-called signature sales group, in which the best salespeople are assigned to JESCO’s best customers.
“A large customer has large buying power, so we have a group of folks we dedicate just to them. Our quarterback strategy is that a salesperson isn’t just responsible for selling a tractor or machine, but also for managing that account, getting equipment serviced, having proper warranties for it, all the way down to throwing a nice dinner for the owner. That is our signature account strategy and it fits well with JESCO and with John Deere.”
One initiative of Miller’s is a carryover from his previous work and that is building a more diverse sales organization.
“We’ve learned from the women we’ve hired, that they tend to be more detail-oriented, more strategic, and overall well-organized salespeople.”
The veteran executive brought in one new saleswoman from the mortgage industry, another from the tobacco industry.
“They’re doing phenomenally and love what they are doing. In my 35 years in this business, it has been a man’s industry, but that’s changing.”
Customers are not all the same, either … a statement Miller confidently confirmed. “I tell you, not only is there a difference between the Northeast United States and the Southwest, there’s a difference within our territory. We cover three major markets — New York, New Jersey and Maryland. The customers in each place are vastly different.”
He said local cultural differences require different approaches from JESCO reps.
JESCO offers Hamm rollers for its customers’ compacting needs.
“You don’t sell the same way in D.C. that you would on the eastern shore of Maryland. How they go to market, how they bid, how they do work. It makes such a difference from an inventory perspective. A customer in New York requires a backhoe set up one way. In Maryland, the set-up is totally different.”
The health of an economy influences sales performance, said Miller, “but I am going to be optimistic. There’s a lot of project money out there, a lot of work to be done between New York and D.C. I think it is going to be a strong market for us and we have ordered inventory accordingly.”
Strategically bringing new equipment to stores in the midst of an economic trough is a little nerve-wracking, Miller admitted.
“But our philosophy is, if you don’t have the equipment, you are not going to be able to sell it. With supply chain issues being what they are, we want to make sure we are well-positioned in the coming months and have the iron when our customers need the iron.”
All this sales training and strategizing talk leads to Miller being asked if superior equipment shouldn’t just sell itself.
“Stuff doesn’t sell itself. What you really have to sell is dealership support. Every day we have excellent excavators for sale but, in the end, where we win with customers is how we do as a dealership.”
So, how is JESCO doing? Does it have another 50 years in it? Hagenbuch and Miller agree that the future is positive. Some of it has to do with the market-leader brands the company represents. The rest of it is management.
“We have several big advantages,” the underground equipment manager said. “Because we have the resources to have a good inventory of equipment, we have product to sell. We have the right amount of support people and inhouse expertise. We have a desire to win, which means we structure deals in ways to meet customer needs.”
He added that his organization has enhanced its performance by better daily communication so that when an issue arises, “we jump on it.”
Hagenbuch characterized his underground division as a “really good and cohesive team. Our owner has given us the resources to do that. He lets us run. Consequently, everyone in our group feels it is fun
to come to work every day.”
Miller also expressed confidence in the future of the company and cites the power of being a Deere equipment dealer. “We’re carrying one of the top brands in the industry in John Deere, and we are pretty diversified, too, so we can supplement and complement that Deere brand.”
He remembers downturns in the industry in the 1990s, in 2001 and the major recession in 2007.
“Coming out of the one in 2007 changed everything.” Yet, he believes the demonstrated resilience of JESCO over 50 years is proof of its durability as a company. “I see JESCO doubling in size within 10 years with even more diverse product lines. That will bring some changes. But how we support the customer — the total package we offer — that’s what will remain constant.” CEG
“We want to guide customers more, act as more of a consultant to get through major purchases, develop more of a partnership with our customers.”Rob Miller
lutionized how customers can interact with JESCO. This tool for customers allows them to interact with JESCO anytime and anywhere, whether that means viewing invoices and a specific machine’s maintenance history or ordering parts and requesting service — JESCO can now always be just a click away for their customer.
Polkowski noted a sharp uptick in usage with the tool when the pandemic hit in 2020 saying “construction was considered an essential business, so contractors didn’t stop working nor did our need to support them, but MyDealer really helped make sure we were able to get customers the parts they needed, when they needed them, but most of all in a way that kept everyone safe.”
When asked if the usage has decreased through 2022, he said swiftly “no.” Continuing “customers have really taken to being able to utilize this tool.”
He added that this has had other effects on the parts department because now customers have the ability to look parts up themselves easily, reducing the time needed on the phone or at the counter to find the right part. He noted it’s not just parts that has seen the benefits of MyDealer, saying he hears “accounting departments really enjoy estatements,” with a slight laugh.
***
JESCO hasn’t just been in business for 50 years; it has been growing for 50 years. Part of that growth has been in adding lines such as the Wirtgen Group, Ditch Witch, and Topcon but the other side of this growth has been geography — growing from just the state of New Jersey and into the organization today that makes up two regions. With growth comes some noticeable improvements related to scale and the ability for JESCO to support its customers.
Allen Ruqus has personally experienced this growth in JESCO’s business during his 13 years with the company. He started out in 2009 as parts manager in the company’s Beacon, N.Y., store, before moving
to a regional parts manager role in JESCO’s Mid-Atlantic region in 2018.
With JESCO now operating 13 branches and representing multiple product lines, parts inventory on the shelf is key — it’s so important that they target approximately $30 million in parts inventory available on the shelves at all times to keep customers up and running.
Ruqus noted, “this inventory is key to meeting OEM first pass fill, but more importantly providing customers the part they need when they need it.”
He continued saying, “with JESCO’s growth and the scale that comes with it, if a part is not at one branch, we might have it at another, which really helps with customer uptime.”
If JESCO doesn’t have a specific part available, he said, “Deere has multiple distribution centers across North America. It depends somewhat on where a part is coming from, but generally when we call someone like Deere, the part arrives the next day.”
You might wonder how all this inventory is managed. Ruqus said that day-to-day inventory management falls on the parts managers at each of JESCO’s locations and as a regional parts manager his role is “more a manager of people and I have a great bunch of people. Together, I think we are doing the job right, keeping the customer one step ahead of whatever parts issue might pop up.”
The stellar parts teams both Ruqus and Polkowski manage regionally are made up of a mix of both tenured employees who have been with JESCO for a dozen years and others that are fairly recent additions to the company’s workforce. There was one consistent message shared by both regional parts managers — they feel they have a great combination of experience and new blood. The more senior parts employees have an
“When you need a part for a piece of equipment and come into the dealership and deal with someone you have been dealing with for quite a few years, you do business confidently.”
Allen Ruqus JESCO’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Parts ManagerJESCO service trucks
advantage that comes strictly from their seniority: JESCO customers know and trust them.
“Tenured parts people enjoy the most customer loyalty to the dealership,” said Ruqus. “When you need a part for a piece of equipment and come into the dealership and deal with someone you have been dealing with for quite a few years, you do business confidently.”
On the other hand, those new employees, many of whom have come from the auto industry, bring a unique value in that they “have a different way of looking at parts service than the heavy equipment industry historically has looked at it. It’s been difficult to train our parts people to have confidence in recommending parts to customers. The people with auto parts experience have that confidence.”
Outside of the Polkowski and Ruqus’ teams, JESCO also has introduced another new group of team members that did not exist in 1972 — their product support representatives. This team managed by Product Support Sales Manager Wayne Martin focuses on providing another level of support to customers in the field. As Wayne described it, his team’s role is to act as a liaison for customers, often between parts and service while reaching customers where they work on the job site. His team also is integral in helping customers understand new tools such as MyDealer and telematics solutions such as John Deere’s JDLink. Wayne summed it up well saying, “it’s
a total team effort between my team, the parts team and service, but keeping customers up and running is what we all wake up to do every day.”
After 50 years in business, everyone at JESCO agrees with three constants: times will change, the company will continue to grow and product support excellence will remain a pillar of the company’s continued success.
JESCO’s MyDealer customer portal has revolutionized how customers can interact with JESCO.Joe Polkowski is the regional parts manager of JESCO’s Northeast Region.
The environmentally friendly LEED-certified company store in Deer Park is functioning as planned when it opened in 2015, but Cigliano is changing traffic patterns around it to better accommodate equipment movement. Some of the machines are pretty big, after all.
“We’re rearranging the flow in the yard to make it easier for our technicians to manage equipment and for how our customers enter the facility.” Easier in, easier out.
The manager acknowledged that working in New York sometimes can be challenging because of rush-rush attitudes that permeate transactions.
“The market here in general is a lot more demanding,” he said. “Customers want their equipment tomorrow if not yesterday as opposed to a couple of weeks from now. Our sales reps and service department people have to have a thick skin. I am kind of situational when it comes to handling things, but I can be demanding, too, when it comes to customer service. You bet I can.”
The current stresses on businesses, namely inflation, gasoline prices, supply issues, are felt at the store. Cigliano said he believes the longevity and quality of the JESCO organization are advantages in the supply situation because it places the company near the front of the line with manufacturers who are struggling to keep their dealers in equipment. He also is trying to stay ahead of the parts supply curve by overstocking critical parts to stave off future shortages.
As for inflation, the store manager said he’s trying to offset it somewhat by becoming more efficient in day-today practices.
“From a service perspective, we’re trying to streamline our processes and our services so we can diagnose and fix
equipment more quickly. We want our techs to have the tools they need to diagnose and to stay current with technology so we can streamline the service process.”
The “we” in all the above includes some key store people that Cigliano said he depends on, starting with Vincent Porpora who has been selling Deere equipment for 25 years, the past 20 at JESCO. Others (and their years at JESCO) include Sales Manager Tom Lafferty (seven years), Service Manager Mark Kerekes (three), Shop Foreman Scott Cassidy (seven), Rental Manager Dan Mayfield (five) and Parts Advisors Nick Werther (seven) and Anthony Molfetto (five).
Cigliano said JESCO earns loyalty from customers because they like its industry-leading product lines and trust its management. Whereas employees like the company because it’s family-owned and well-operated. “It’s a company you can work with for a while, and I’m planning to be here a long time.” CEG
Baltimore, MD
8411 Pulaski Highway Baltimore, MD 21237 Phone: (410) 687-1700
Frederick, MD
1525 Tilco Drive Frederick, MD 21704 Phone: (301) 874-5500
Delmar, MD 9060 Ocean Highway Delmar, MD 21875 Phone: (410) 546-1090
District Heights, MD
8200 Cryden Way District Heights, MD 20747 Phone: (301) 909-7799
Waldorf, MD
48 Industrial Drive Waldorf, MD 20602 Phone: (301) 870-1438
Middletown, DE
1001 Industrial Drive Middletown, DE 19709 Phone: (302) 376-0784
Fairfield, NJ
1275 Bloomfield Ave Fairfield, NJ 07004 Phone: (973) 227-2221
Lumberton, NJ
1790 Route 38 Lumberton, NJ 08048 Phone: (609) 267-2020 Lumberton, NJ 1799 Route 38 Lumberton, NJ 08048 Phone: (609) 534-7477 Servicing Ditch Witch, Topcon and Sokkia Excusively
South Plainfield, NJ
118 Saint Nicholas Avenue South Plainfield, NJ 07080 Phone: (908) 753-8080
Shrewsbury, MA
167 Memorial Dr. Shrewsbury, MA 01545
Phone: (508) 719-0200 Servicing Ditch Witch Excusively
Deer Park, NY
110 East Jefryn Blvd. Deer Park, NY 11729 Phone: (631) 392-2605
Beacon, NY
497 Fishkill Ave Beacon, NY 12508 Phone: (845) 831-1800
JESCO is also your preferred dealership in the Northern Virginia area. Please call us at 1-800-241-7070 for more information on our equipment and support solutions.
