New company owner won't relocate Rock Hill workers

When Pat Dandridge of Atlanta took the unusual step from being a client of Hydra Platforms Manufacturing of Rock Hill to buying the business, he thought he had a foolproof plan.

After more than 10 years of purchasing equipment from Hyrda Platforms Manufacturing and then Terex – which acquired Hydra in 2008 – Dandridge knew the quality of the product. He even knew the guys who made the platforms used to inspect and repair bridges.

He hoped to entice enough of them to come to Smyrna, just north of Atlanta, where he wanted to set up shop.

Recruiting the workers fell to his general manager, David Carpio.

It took Carpio about five interviews at the Rock Hill plant to understand that Dandridge’s plan wouldn’t work.

He found a group of workers who talked as proudly about their co-workers as they did about themselves. He found people passionate about their work, so close that “we know what each other is thinking, we don’t have to verbally communicate,” said Russ Kitts, who has worked at the plant since 2008.

They found a plant where the unspoken motto is “what needs to get done, gets done,” and there is no “it’s not my job” mentality.

Dandridge and Carpio realized they couldn’t replicate the Rock Hill workforce in Atlanta. But it was more than a workforce, it was about the Hydra family where brothers and fathers and sons work side-by-side.

So Dandridge, Carpio and Carpio’s wife, Maria, did what is seldom done in business today. Instead of closing the Rock Hill plant and putting about 25 people out of work, the trio moved to York County.

“We couldn’t break up the band,” Dandridge said.

“It just felt right,” he said. “Why reinvent the wheel?”

Dandridge, says assembler Brandon Tucker simply, “saved our jobs.”

Not only did he save the jobs, Dandridge also has asked former workers to come out of retirement to build the platforms. Even some of the employees who decided to stay with Terex have returned.

“I just had to come back,” said Gerald Davis, who has been all over the world training people how to operate the platforms, from the North Slope of the Arctic Circle, where the temperatures were 71 degrees below zero with the wind chill, to the sunny Piano Island in the South China Sea.

With all of the band back together, Dandridge’s goal is to keep the company – now called Anderson Hydra Platforms – as the industry leader, domestically and internationally, and add aerial digital inspections to the list of services. Susan Hamel of York is in charge of the project to develop a small “quad-copter” with a digital camera that can stream video in real time, making bridge inspections easier.

It’s a reputation the company has held since Garth McGillewie of Lake Wylie founded the company in 1983. The platforms were first manufactured in Chester County. In 2006 the company was the first to move into the new Antrim Business Park on Galleria Boulevard, near the mall.

In 2007 the company was one of 11 companies President George W. Bush honored with an “E” Award for companies that make a significant contribution to the expansion of U.S. exports.

Dandridge’s strategy is simple – he wants to keep building the company’s rental business, sell more platforms and service what he sells. He hopes that the federal government will address critical transportation infrastructure needs, including thousands of failing bridges.

Construction of the bridge platforms is relatively simple, yet custom, workers say.

It takes about three weeks to build them, starting with Randy Leadbetter cutting and drilling the steel, followed by welders such as Rocky Rurdon, to fabricators and assemblers such as Kitts and Eric Schehane, to painters Kenny and Mike Madden.

The platforms come in three sizes and range in price from $225,000 to $650,000.

Once the platforms are finished, employees such as Davis and David Faile teach people how to deploy the platforms. Faile is another back-from-retirement employee and set to leave for China soon, where he has gone multiple times over a five-year period to teach as well as troubleshoot platforms.

Operations are so simple they can be mastered in a matter of days, and the platforms have a perfect safety record, they said.

Dandridge, who recently moved into a historic house in York, hopes to make the bonds of the Hydra family even stronger. He plans to purchase an activity bus so he and his workers can share after-hours activities such as music and sports.

This story was originally published November 17, 2014 at 12:00 AM with the headline "New company owner won't relocate Rock Hill workers."