On Friday, RDO Equipment Co. celebrated moving from its former home off of Midland Drive into a brand new location on S 1900 W in West Haven.

Tim Stokes, RDO Equipment Co. general manager of Northern Utah operations, told the Standard-Examiner RDO Equipment first came to the Ogden area when it acquired Honnen Equipment three years ago.

West Haven Store Manager Seth Anderson told the Standard-Examiner that it was quickly apparent that it was time for a major change

“We outgrew the old facility,” he said. “We had a pretty small facility, and we’d grown so much. To be able to take care of our customers, be able to grow and support the market, we needed a new facility to be able to support that growth. Before this new facility, customers would maybe have to take the machines to Salt Lake, to a sister branch there. With this, we’ll be able to keep it here locally, help support them, help support everybody in the process.”

He said that there’s hardly a comparison between the old facility and the new one.

“As a little bit of comparison, we had two very small bays in the old location,” he said. “We have 12 full-service bays here with an additional two indoor wash bays. So we went from two to essentially kind of 14 in that aspect, if you include the wash bays. (3:44) Parts on the shelves — previously we were about $600,000 in inventory on the shelves. Now we’re a little over $2 million on the shelf in parts inventory.”

Anderson said RDO Equipment in the area went from eight employees at the old facility to 29 today with plans for more.

“The old facility, we kind of looked at more as a triage — we patch a hole, try to do what we can,” he said. “Here we could do a complete rebuild of a machine, take it down, rebuild it from the bottom back up.  … We just have a lot more to be able to support the customer in a broader range. Whatever the customer needs, we can meet those demands here and those needs out of this location versus trying to rely on Salt Lake like we had to do in the past.”

But it’s not just RDO Equipment’s management celebrating — officials both local and beyond are also excited for the company’s operation in West Haven.

This included West Haven City Mayor Rob Vanderwood, who spoke during the ribbon cutting ceremony about how the area is rapidly growing around RDO Equipment’s new location.

“It takes a lot to put these things together, and this is a great facility,” he said. “I don’t know if you know about this corner in general, but this corner is one of the few exits that we have off of the freeway, off of I-15. And because it comes down 21st Street here, we have some huge businesses that are behind us over here and some that are just down the road. But this corridor, as it runs along here, is going to be one of our big boulevards, and you’ll see a lot more traffic coming down this road over here as it goes over to 1800 South.”

He said that projects like this are crucial for the city.

“Our city is fortunate because we do not have a property tax,” he said. “We rely highly on sales tax in our city, and that helps us to provide a lot of benefits to our residents and to the commercial businesses that are here.”

Also speaking Friday was Rep. Blake Moore.

“The construction industry, the equipment industry like this is unique,” he said. “And it’s not just like if it’s doing well and you hear about the job growth and all the numbers that were just shared, that’s awesome. But what that means is that the community at large is growing, and that opportunities are existing for not just this specific industry but multiple other industries.”

Stokes said they’re ultimately happy to finally be able to show off the new facility to the public.

“We’re proud to have a facility and be able to show it off –not only to our partners, whether they be contractors or other commercial businesses that use our products — but also to the community, also the residents and people in the community.”