Nabholz establishes industrial rigging business in Springfield

Anyone who has ever moved a refrigerator through a front door or a set of box springs up a narrow staircase can appreciate the usefulness – and maybe the rarity – of spatial intelligence.

Moving big things within sometimes cramped locations is the name of the game in the field of industrial rigging, which handles the movement of often-massive factory equipment, either across a plant floor or over multiple miles.

Earlier this year, Nabholz Construction Corp. opened a specialized heavy rigging office in Springfield. The company website notes the majority of projects take place in active plants where attention to nearby operations is crucial. The effort to install, remove or relocate complex machinery involves specialist personnel, including master riggers and electricians, as well as specialized equipment.

To establish its Springfield rigging division, Nabholz bought the book of business of Pro Machinery Movers LLC, which was owned by Bert DeWitt – now retired.

DeWitt is one of those people who can eyeball a rigging project and understand right away what the job entails.

“When I first started, I would take with me a legal pad, 8 1/2 by 11, and I’d sometimes fill up one sheet of paper, sometimes four sheets of paper,” he said in a phone interview from his Texas residence located four miles from the Mexican border. “In my last years, I just carried a little spiral notebook in my pocket, and most of the time I’d just write down when we were going to do the project or who I’d talked to. After several years, it became totally natural.”

In other words, DeWitt is the guy you want helping when you’re wondering how you ever got the hutch into the dining room in the first place – but on a much more massive scale.

“I moved anything that weighed 1,000 pounds, but the heaviest thing I ever had to dismantle was 1 million pounds,” Dewitt said.

That was at Buckhorn Inc., a plastics molding firm located in Partnership Industrial Center.

DeWitt recalled the machine had dimensions of roughly 20 feet by 40 feet and was situated 5 feet deep in a pit.

“It stood up out of that pit probably close to 15 feet,” he said.

He put in a bid to dismantle it in a month’s time, then got the job done in three weeks. It was a machine that was brought in by rail, he said, and the factory had been built around it. He recalled plates that were 2 feet thick and 15 feet square with a tie rod running through them. He labeled the pieces, which he said were ultimately moved out by 27 trucks.

“That was one of the funnest jobs I ever did,” he said. “I’ve always loved challenges. Any time I got something out of the norm, it just sparked the whole thing.”

While DeWitt enjoyed the work, he said it was his customers that made the job a joyful one.

“I was blessed with some of the best customers in the world – and they were all over, but mainly in Springfield,” he said.

It was partly DeWitt’s customer base that made the acquisition of Pro Machinery Movers so appealing to Nabholz, according to Kalvin Newberry, industrial general manager for Nabholz.

Each project is unique
There are rigging schools, primarily in the Northeast, Newberry said, but a formal education in the field is not required.

“Most of the ones I’ve known have had a maintenance background, or even a young man that worked on a farm,” Newberry said. “Those are people who can figure stuff out. This kind of business, you need somebody who has their smarts about them and can just figure out a puzzle, because every piece is different.”

Tim Konecny, project manager, agreed.

“Each project’s unique in itself, depending on what machine it is and the complexity of it, what our scope of work is,” Konecny said. “There’s sometimes we’ll virtually take the whole machine apart, lift it up, move it from Point A to Point B and put it back together. Then sometimes it’s merely offloading a new machine from a truck, bringing it into the facility and setting it in place.”

In other words, it’s never the same thing twice, Konecny said. He cited a recent project involving two machines that had been built in place on a factory floor but had to be extracted for relocation to Tijuana, Mexico.

Newberry said with its wide-ranging offerings of construction services, Nabholz is well positioned to offer complete solutions for industrial clients.

“There’s a lot of industrial rigging companies out there, and they’ll go in and pick something up and set it down and walk away, but we try to be more of a turnkey solution,” he said. “If we go in, if you need a pit or a foundation, we have the guys that can do that. If you need an electrician to pull wires over there, we’ll do that.”

Newberry noted that by using Nabholz’s services, plant managers are relieved of the need to find people with knowledge of various systems involved in a piece of machinery. Nabholz has the size and complexity to handle most challenges.

He added that Nabholz has multiple business units throughout the United States, and the Springfield rigging enterprise is part of its Rogers, Arkansas, unit. When a job is big enough, reinforcements can be called in from the other units, located in places like Hernando, Mississippi; Portland, Tennessee; or Little Rock, Arkansas.

Time to move on
For his part, DeWitt – who took a break for this interview from a morning spent picking fresh tangerines in the sun – said the Nabholz acquisition came at a good time.

While DeWitt declined to disclose the amount he was paid by Nabholz for his book of business and his equipment, he said, “I’m going to retire out just fine.”

Beginning when COVID-19 hit until he sold his business, DeWitt said he struggled in an area that had never troubled him before, and that was getting the workforce he needed.

“Help became the biggest thorn in my side,” he said. “It got to where people wanted to get a check, but they didn’t want to work.”

It’s something he felt acutely in the last two years, DeWitt said, as he worked twice as hard as he ever had while paying out twice as much in wages.

On Memorial Day of 2023, it hit him: He still enjoyed his customers, but he no longer loved coming to work.

On Tuesday after the holiday, he went into the office, let go of all of his workers except for one and locked his door.

He then called in his sons and grandsons to help him begin closing out his pending projects.

By that Thursday, he said, he received an email from Nabholz, offering to buy his customer base list and all of his social media.

“There was so much blue sky it was ridiculous,” he said, referring to payment offered beyond the value of assets. “I read it about two or three times.”

DeWitt stayed on for six months, introducing the Nabholz team – particularly Business Development Officer Gary Comiskey – to his customers.

DeWitt first learned that Nabholz was getting into the rigging business, long before the buyout offer, while meeting with Comiskey, who he said became a close friend.

“He said I want you to know, we’re planning on moving up here and doing the same thing you do,” DeWitt said. “I said there’s more than enough work for all of us, as long as you take care of your customers.”

And customers, DeWitt said, are the most important part of the business.

“I love them; they love me,” he said. “I always told them if I could do it, I’d do it; if not, I’d tell them why and they’d never ask me again.”

DeWitt’s former customers and Nabholz’s new ones are served out of the Pro Machinery Movers building at 1836 N. Eldon Ave. in northwest Springfield. Nabholz leases from DeWitt and has first rights on an eventual purchase.