PennWest Industrial Trucks

As we move into the new year, I thought I would take this opportunity to reflect a bit on the topic of blogs . A blog is sort of a personal commentary on life and the important events that are woven into it. Corporate blogs can often be boring and dull, filled with facts, corporate events, and product information. They usually lack a personality, if you will. I thought I would start this year off by making this blog more personal and hopefully more interesting.

With this in mind, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Eric Berg and I have been with PennWest for about 8 months. I previously worked for 17 odd years with Beckwith Machinery Company, a Caterpillar distributor in Western PA, before they got bought out by Cleveland Brothers. During the buyout, the material handling division of Beckwith was spun out and formed into a new company called PennWest. So while I am new to PennWest, I am quite familiar with its employees, its products, and its culture. I can honestly tell you that the folks here at PennWest are truly a great group of talented and hard working people who are an absolute pleasure to work with.

PennWest is in the material handling business. My background and education was in the mining industry with a large chunk of it spent in South Africa's deep level gold mines. When I think about it, mining is all about material handling - moving, storing and processing materials from the earth. The only real difference between mining and the 'material handling' business is that mining handles raw materials where as the the 'material handling' businesses handle material which has been processed. I suppose if we were to continue this line of thought, the husband who takes out the trash could also be considered to be in the 'material handling' business. Well, just in case you're interested, we do sell garbage cans...