Ever wonder how a part goes from salvaged machine to shipped to you with only a quick call to our parts specialists? Take a tour of our 22-acre location in Buffalo as Parts Specialist Shawn Whiddon embarks on a transmission mission through our sales offices, reconditioning shops, salvage yard, and more. It’ll be a long walk for Shawn, but a quick look behind the scenes for you.

The Office

Whether it’s a click to chat, a call to a part specialist, or a quick quote request from the website, that conversation kicks off the action in the sales office. At H&R, the sales office is a hub of activity, insight, and knowledge. Calls come in from around the world and our customers range from giant construction outfits to single machine owners to even our competitors.

Listen to the chatter and you’ll learn pretty quickly that many of our customers are looking for more than just parts -- they’re looking for reliable, fast, and helpful insight -- and that’s why they call us. You know that cousin you have that can remember every baseball stat since Babe Ruth’s last at-bat? It’s kind of like that … but for parts.

Recon Shop #1

Every good mission starts with good recon so it makes sense that Shawn would stop by our Recon Shop early on his transmission mission. The Recon Shop is where you’ll find industry-best mechanics putting our salvage equipment to the test and making sure it’s rebuilt and reconditioned to outperform and outlast our competitor’s products.

The Recon team takes pride in every part that passes through their hands and that pride shows in their work and in our consistent business with repeat customers who know they’ll always get the perfectly performing part.

The Warehouse

When you’re in the big parts business you’re also in the big warehouse business, that’s why we have over 135,000 square feet of warehouse space across our two locations in Buffalo, New York and Lawrenceville, Georgia. In the video above, you’ll notice Shawn is doing his fair share of walking and the warehouse team does that every day. They’re expert parts pullers who know the space and are practiced specialists in locating and moving orders in a bustling and busy space.

Often it takes pretty large equipment to handle the parts for the really large construction equipment our customers need, so members of our warehouse team are also skilled specialists in getting part X from point A to point B, safely and securely.

Recon Shop #2

Shawn’s next stop is our second Recon Shop where our master mechanics rebuild transmissions and cylinders. Since we specialize in large construction equipment parts, we need specialized and thoughtful systems for working and moving big parts through our system. In the video, notice how many cranes and lifts are placed throughout our spaces -- in Recon Shop #2 the team works with precision and care, but sometimes the first step in that process is getting a quarter ton part into the right spot.

Steam Wash Bay

We know you’re probably going to get the part dirty, but we want it to look fresh when it arrives. The Steam Wash Bay is where that starts. We steam and clean EVERY part we work on to make sure we can fully evaluate a part and work from a clean slate. It might seem like a simple step, but we think it’s important and we find our customers do, too.

Salvage Yard

Buckets, blades, and booms -- the Salvage Yard is where some parts wait on their way to reconditioning. It’s also where the big machines wait before heading into disassembly. Because the excavators, dozers, and articulated trucks we specialize in are so big the Salvage Yard has to be big, too.

In the video, Shawn’s touring our Buffalo yard, but we have a center in Georgia, as well. In Buffalo, the yard backs up to Buffalo Central Terminal, a historic landmark on the city’s east side. The Buffalo warehouse shares a long history with Central Terminal -- notice the train tracks in the warehouse.

Teardown

On a tour, Teardown is the place where people stop and say, “Whoah.” In these two teardown bays, the big machines are driven, craned, or rolled in and then methodically disassembled. The pure tonnage of parts expertly removed and sent into the rebuild and reconditioning process impresses anybody who takes the time to watch the Teardown team at work. A machine can arrive in Teardown in a range of states, and it’s up to the Teardown experts to get its parts ready for a new life -- getting your machine back up and running and back to work.

Parts ID and Equipment

At H&R, we have smart systems to monitor and identify our parts and inventory -- but nothing really beats a person. At Parts ID, they manage all of the machines and identify what parts and attachments can be salvaged. Of course, they have parts books in the office, but when the guy in charge has 28 years of experience sometimes they’re redundant.

Shipping and Receiving

When you’re consistently shipping products the size of actual buffaloes, your shipping department has to meet a new set of standards and implement industry-specific techniques to ensure your customer’s part arrives as perfect as it left our lot. We build many of our own pallets to fit custom dimensions and to go beyond and perform better than the average pallet and our packaging experts never go light on strapping and reinforcement.

We’re passionate about our parts and our shipping team are here to ensure a part arrives unscathed, unscratched, and even unsmudged. Whether it’s new or not, the shipping team knows your part is new to you and that’s how they want it to look when it arrives.

Since we offer our own new H&R brand aftermarket parts, it’s not just parts going out, it’s also parts coming in so the team has to be ready when a new load of parts comes in. This smart, tech-savvy team makes sure we know what we have and where it is so when a customer calls we know just how fast we can get that part to them.

This is the last stop on Shawn’s mission, and if you haven’t watched the video yet, watch it now to see our home and, most importantly, this gorgeous transmission about to head out to a customer.