By Mike Copeland

Tribune-Herald business editor

Don Moes is into heavy equipment.

Forklifts and lift trucks are the meat and potatoes of his company, Equipment Depot.

Business is good, he said. But it has been better.

He just returned to Waco from a meeting in Lexington, Ky., where he had a chance to talk with other dealers from across the United States.

The consensus was that the market is soft right now. Moes prefers to call the lull “an economic correction.” He said there is no way that demand for heavy equipment could remain as hot as it was.

“There’s been a little bit of a slowdown, just as there has been in the housing market, but probably not nearly as bad as some people say,” Moes said. “Our business is good in all markets, particularly good in the Valley.”

He added, “We’re hiring people as we speak.”

Moes follows these trends as CEO of Equipment Depot, a company he and his wife, Pam, owned from 1975 to 2000. Now it belongs to a privately held company from Holland called Pon, but headquarters remain in Waco.

“I actually decided the company was getting too large, so I found a family-owned business with goals and an outlook on how to run a business similar to mine,” Moes said of his sale to Pon.

About 100 people work at Equipment Depot headquarters in Waco. The company has grown to 12 forklift and materials-handling superstores that sell, service and rent forklifts from the Red River to the Rio Grande. It also operates a string of forklift service depots strategically located around the state, as well as a tire and battery center in Dallas.

Total employment has reached 610 people.

Equipment Depot is one of five companies to be honored at a Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce banquet Monday.

Chamber President Jim Vaughan said he admires Moes’ entrepreneurial spirit and the fact that he grew his business, sold it and now manages it.

He added that Moes was among the first to contribute to the chamber’s Challenge Greater Waco Fund that will pay for a new chamber headquarters in downtown Waco and hire more economic development staffers.

It was a $300,000 gift from Moes that kicked off the American Cancer Society’s campaign to build a $1.2 million local office at 1700 Lakeland Drive, near the Heart O’ Texas Fair Complex.

“I’ve known Don a long time, and he’s highly charitable, both he and Pam,” said Waco businessman Hal Whitaker, a spokesman for the cancer society. “He is fortunate enough to have success in his business, so he was able to make this lead donation. We’re highly appreciative of it.”

Talking business, Moes said he believes Equipment Depot has thrived due to its size. It is big enough to adequately support customers in a wide geographic area, yet small enough to offer personalized service.

The company follows a 80/20 rule, Moes said, meaning 80 percent of decisions are made at the corporate level, the rest by local managers.

As part of recent growth, Equipment Depot has acquired several successful materials-handling companies, including ClarkLift of Fort Worth, Powr-Lift of Dallas and Sherman, Bailey Forklift of Dallas, Bill Pease & Sons of San Antonio and four branches of Mustang Equipment.

“There is never a time we aren’t talking to someone about acquisitions,” Moes said. “That’s part of our strategy.”

Over the next five years, Moes said, Equipment Depot will be driven by one phase of the company growing the fastest: rentals.

“Our customers, more and more, are choosing rental as their way of doing business with us,” he said.

mcopeland@wacotrib.com

757-5736