I managed the equipment for a large maintenance company in Baton Rouge for several years, and I have been a normal, meaning private, customer of K & D for 15 years. As an equipment manager, I had a significant contact with many vendors of the sort of equipment K & D sells and maintains. K & D has been the the only provider of maintenance equipment, in my experience, which consistently offers sound advice for the appropriate use and maintenance of the equipment it sells. Every other vendor I came into contact with, at one point or another, offered advice or equipment which explicitly served their own interests, say, for example, part of some sales goal, then could not live up to the promises they made regarding service or allowed their personal goals to interfere with an understanding of the limitations of the equipment they sell. All equipment has flaws, usually trade offs for something like durability for a smooth cut. A sales force has to be honest about these trade offs to give a customer sound advice. I always found K & D's employee's advice to be accurate.
I have no explanation for this, except, perhaps, that K & D is a family owned business in which they expect to have decades long, peronsal contact with customers. Bad advice or over promising serves no real short term interest for them in same the way that it can for an employee of a single brand name vendor. I've also seen ownership and management change at most of the vendors, with uneven advice and service as the result. I see the same faces in K & D now that I saw ten years ago.
When I go to K & D now, 5 or 6 times a year, I am just a normal customer. I no longer work in the maintenance industry, not for 7 years. Still, when I go in, I often see managers I knew years ago in the maintenance industry. They've gone out and started their own businesses, or have moved on to some other job, and are now doing business with K & D for their personal property. That tells me that their experience with K & D mirrored my own.
I noted with some amusement Jennifer's review of someone in K & D's parts department. I do understand her complaint. Some of the people in their parts department had been there for 15 years, and in my experience found any part still available for the equipment I managed or own personally. However, it takes a certain kind of mind to do that kind of work for years on end and to have that kind of graphic memory. There are people that work for a single vendor, say a John Deere dealership for that same amount of time, who have similar knowledge of their brand equipment, but the parts people at K & D have knowledge of several brands and graphic memories that are rather astonishing. I simply did not have the time to examine the plans for every motor, bushing, belt, washer and pin I needed. I had to get a lot of parts from many vendors in Baton Rouge. I was dependent upon such people to save me time, and K & D's parts people were as good or better than anyone else's. Get your part, don't worry about the...rigidness?...of the mind that finds it. Those of us who worked in the maintenance industry noted that same demeanor she complained about on occasion, perhaps from the same very knowledgeable person, and decided it was worth K & D's parts people's professional knowledge. It was contact over a long period of time with K & D and other vendors which gave us that opinion.
I can recommend K & D without reservation for advice and service over years. read more