MEMBER SPOTLIGHT


NMC & Nick Mizaur 80 Years of Helping to Build Nebraska


NMC President & COO Nick Mizaur


BY TODD TRAUB Contributing Writer


PHOTOGRAPHY BY THOMAS GRADY


Thanks to NMC and the heavy equip- ment it has sold and serviced through the decades, construction crews in Nebraska have been able to turn a lot of dirt. But then, how else does one put down


roots? NMC, closing in on its 80th anniversa-


ry, is a Nebraska mainstay offering sales of Caterpillar and other brands of machinery and equipment as well as parts, rentals and services. The company has had a role in some of the state’s most important construction and building projects, and its longevity is part of its appeal, President and COO Nick Mizaur said.


“From the company standpoint I think it’s a sense of pride,” Mizaur said. “Certainly it is for me personally and also for the compa- ny. I think for our customers, it gives them a sense of confidence and trust that we’re going to be here for the days to come when they do business with us. … They want to make sure that we’re going to be here to back that equipment and serve them.”


NMC is rooted in the Great Depression, tracing its lineage to 1938 when Joe Swan- son and W.A. Norris, both employed by the


22 Nebraska Trucker - Issue 1, 2017


Wyoming Highway Department, struck up a friendship. The two, who both had ties to Caterpillar thanks to their highway de- partment work, began to discuss opening a dealership, with Norris hoping to mine ties in his native Nebraska.


Conversations with Caterpillar led to the men opening Nebraska Machinery Compa- ny (now NMC) and landing the Caterpillar dealership for western Nebraska. “I knew that it was “I knew that it was an established company in Nebraska,” said Mizaur, who came to NMC after 13 years with Omaha-based Valmont Industries. “I also knew NMC because we did business with them.” Valmont, a producer of products for in- frastructure and agriculture -- like irrigation equipment -- caught Mizaur’s eye while he was working on his law degree at Creighton. He’d had a love of machinery since helping his grandfather work on equipment on his Iowa farm, and he stayed with Valmont after he graduated, moving over to NMC nearly 10 years ago when he saw a fresh set of chal- lenges and opportunities. “Next year will be 80 years,” Mizaur


said, anticipating NMC’s 80th anniversary. “I’m proud to say I’ve been here 10 of the 80 years.”


What Mizaur found when he arrived nearly a decade ago was a company deeply rooted in its home state. NMC, in just its first year, provided earth-moving equipment for the Kingsley Dam project, which became the second-largest hydraulic fill dam in the world. With the passage of the Federal Aid Act of 1956 came the interstate highway system, and again NMC was part of the project. “From a company perspective we take a lot of pride in it,” Mizaur said of NMC’s


nebtrucking.com


entrenched role in Nebraska history. “There’s a lot of pride in Nebraska, in the culture and the people. Just solid Midwestern values and work ethic.”


It was just such a work ethic that pro- pelled NMC to expand from its genesis point in North Platte to locations throughout the state, and by 1987, after buying out two other Caterpillar dealerships, the company became Nebraska’s only Caterpillar dealer. While expanding physically the compa- ny also expanded its portfolio, moving into equipment sales and rental and service for the power generation, material handling, on-highway truck, agriculture, transport and railroad industries.


Those enterprises led NMC to open material handling facilities in Iowa and the Dakotas. That’s the company that transport dis- patch manager Ric Rivera found when he joined the team a year ago.


“I actually knew some employees that worked here and also heard some excel- lent feedback from surrounding areas that NMC is a great place to work,” said Rivera, a 22-year veteran of the transportation industry who got his start driving for


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