1995 fire is history

On July 13, 1995 the nearly century old Town of Tonawanda highway department building began to burn. Before it was over, the old, factory-style building dating back to the very early twentieth century (between 1910 ad 1920) was totally destroyed and along with it most of the equipment that had helped the highway department earn a reputation for its efficiency.

Today, Highway Superintendent Brad Rowles can look back on the interim years with some pride and the team at Monroe Tractor can account for its role in his department’s resurrection from the ashes.

“We lost virtually everything,” Rowles recalls. Even though John Hedges, elected in 1989 and sworn in in January 1990, was superintendent at the time, Rowles vividly recalls the day. Prior to taking the department’s reigns in 2003 he served the department for 25 years as everything from laborer to mechanic, assistant crew chief and shop foreman.

“It was one of the most devastating and costly fires in town history,” he says. “Amazingly, town residents did not see any interruption of services from the department. Garbage was picked up and streets were paved as if nothing had happened. The quick rebuilding of the department and the beautiful state-of-the-art building that now houses the department, is part of the lasting legacy of initiative and leadership of Superintendent Hedges and all our employees,” says Rowles.

He recalls that at the time the 80,000 square foot building as valued at $4 million. “We replaced it with a state-of-the-art facility for $3.5 million, a savings to town taxpayers of some $500,000.”

Today, Rowles’ department includes more than 100 pieces of equipment ranging from snowplows to stumpers, chippers, backhoes, wheel loaders and skid steers. With some 360 lane-miles of roads to maintain (including 30 lane-miles of Erie County roads) equipment is critical to the mission. In that it’s called the highway department, many people can be excused if they believe its mission is strictly limited to town roads. In fact the employees and equipment have a much broader mandate.

“For example,” says the superintendent, “we use our trucks and equipment as the defacto town forestry department and sanitation department, too.” Sanitation and recycling alone is a huge job serving more than 27,000 homes and hauling 25,000 tons of garbage annually.

Much of this workload is handled by Monroe Tractor (MT) equipment. Recently a new Case 821 wheel loader was added to the department’s equipment fleet. “We run a broad array of Case equipment and have established a strong working relationship with Monroe Tractor,” says Rowles. The new Case 821 is outfitted with a coupler that allows use of a 4-cubic yard general-purpose bucket.

If that sounds a little mundane consider its value when it’s time for winter road maintenance. “We will go through more than 250 tons of salt during a typical snow event,” says Rowles.
With this bucket on the Case wheel loader the department is able to load a truck and send it back out on the road in just minutes because the 4-ton bucket can dump eight yards of salt into a salt truck in just two scoops. This enables the salting of all roads in the town in less than four and a half hours. That can be critical, in preparation for rush hour traffic for example.

After a snow event has subsided, Rowles’ team will use its equipment to move some 250 truckloads of snow from town streets to the “mud flats off Route 290. Without this capability,
town-center streets could quickly become impassable.

Monroe Tractor stays involved. “With eight 721 Case wheel loaders there’s always something that needs immediate attention,” says Paul Mayer, MT salesman assigned to service its Tonawanda customer. According to Mayer, two of the 721’s have nose and Viking Cives wing plows mounted and are pressed into service on regular plow routes. A third, with just a nose plow is employed on the narrower town streets. Four more have 4-in-1 buckets that “help us do the courts,” says Rowles… residential circle drives that won’t accommodate the larger equipment.

Two Case 1840 and 1845 skid-steers and a new 450 skidsteer, with super hi-flow hydraulics, that’s on order, are outfitted with cold planers or milling machines, as the department calls them. “The milling machines help us with road construction, especially where we need to connect some new work with pre-existing roadway. With the skid-steers equipped with the milling machines we can make the transitions from an existing road to a newly surfaced road almost unnoticeable.”

While Rowles’ department has 10 mechanics, two foremen and a tire man on board, the service department at Monroe Tractor figures strongly into its operation as well. “They have a great service center, so of course we rely on Monroe for all the warranty work. But we work closely with them all the time. We learn a lot about the equipment and its maintenance requirements through their technicians,” says Rowles. “It’s always a benefit to build good relations with good people,” he continues.

Since a lot of our Case equipment was lost in the fire, it was natural for us to turn to Monroe for help. We’ve maintained a close relationship for nearly 13 years now, because they know their stuff and they’ll go out of their way to keep us running. All we have to do is pick up the phone,” he says.

For more information visit www.MonroeTractor.com
or call the Monroe Tractor sales office nearest you:
Henrietta, NY: 585-334-3867; Buffalo, NY: 716-681-7100; or Syracuse, NY: 315-452-0000.

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