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In Gaston, South Carolina, a 62-acre campus, which opens in October, is being built to consolidate statewide parts distribution, machine and component rebuilds, heavy equipment service, hydraulics, and undercarriage repairs under one roof – nearly triple the footprint of the current 22-acre site.“ The new campus is a generational investment,” says Brad. Unlike the current campus, built up piecemeal since the 1950s, the new facility is designed to flow like an assembly line and is fully climate-controlled, protecting both parts and people through South Carolina’ s increasingly hot summers. As Brad puts it,“ cooler heads prevail” – a philosophy that applies as much to safety as to comfort.
At the heart of the operation is a new warehouse management system enabling traceable parts management throughout the facility. Anchored by three 35-foot vertical lift modules, they bring parts directly to pickers who place them directly onto conveyors, rather than staff walking thousands of steps to retrieve parts throughout the warehouse. Blanchard Machinery’ s new parts warehouse will be 1.5 million cubic feet compared to 252,000 cubic feet today. The building is the brainchild of Facilities Manager Richard Trotter, who has run nearly every service and parts operation at the company over 39 years, and Brad says intentional design has impressed visitors from Caterpillar and other dealers. As the company’ s 16th location, the campus will not only improve parts and service for customers in the Columbia, South Carolina region but will also improve them for other locations by sharpening response times statewide, with the same warehouse management system rolling out to every branch by the end of 2027.
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