Barnhart to keep Marino name

"Hake and Marino operate under their original namesake as a recognition of the value and history of the founding companies," a spokesman told Cranes Today magazine. Although both technically fall under the control of a wholly-owned subsidiary Barnhart Northeast, the company has no plans to roll out regional businesses across the USA, he added. "The subsidiary is not necessarily a strategy but a convenience."

With depots in Seattle, Washington and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Barnhart has expanded out of the southeast USA, and aims to offer a nationwide service, the spokesman said. "Our interest is national for now but not with specific targets," he said. Barnhart is a union contractor in most locations including Hake and Marino.

He said that in acquisitions Barnhart likes to add good operations that benefit from the strength of Barnhart sales, engineering and experience. For the acquired businesses, Barnhart aims to help with the burden of ownership for small company directors without necessarily interfering with the business. "We are always looking to add good operations. As businesses become available that want to continue operations we offer the opportunity for joining our team. Often we keep all of the key staff but take away the burden of ownership (insurance, risk, banking, etc) and offer them a new world of capabilities." He added: "Our interest is national for now, but not with specific targets."

The Marino acquisition encompasses 100 employees at depots in Middletown, Connecticut, Houston, Texas, as well as 75 cranes, 130 lines of Goldhofer trailers, gantries, slide systems and rigging.

Traditional crane and rigging, along the lines of the work of Marino, is a big part of Barnhart's operation, the spokesman said, even though some of Barnhart's biggest jobs are in large rigging and alternative lifting operations. Even for these larger jobs, a depot structure has strategic value, says the spokesman: "Taxi cranes serve local markets and give access to larger work. The more presence we have for small work the more opportunity we have for large work. We want to build relationships and much of that is geographic," he said.