BRIDGETON, MO — After 61 years near Olive Boulevard and I-170 in St. Louis, Missouri, CMW Equipment has moved to 12890 Pennridge Drive near I-270 and St. Charles Rock Road, in Bridgeton, Missouri. The old location was displaced by the development of a Costco, however CMW Equipment’s new location is much larger and will allow for continued growth of the company.

Back in 1956, three construction equipment salesmen and their office manager left the security of the St. Louis-based O.B. Avery dealership to start their own company. Their names were J.L. Cummings, Thomas F. McGowan Jr., Victor W. West, and Ethel A. Klein. Together they founded Cummings, McGowan & West, today known as CMW Equipment. Since then, they have helped their customers pave most of the streets and roads in eastern Missouri and central/southern Illinois.

Because of their prior experience, relationships, and reputation for taking care of customers, this new group was able to quickly establish product lines and customers. Customer service has been the cornerstone of CMW Equipment, and now with a larger location with increased accessibility, the company can further improve that customer service.

“Our old building was 8,400 square feet, and now we have a two-story office building with 6,000 square feet on the first floor alone, a 4,000-square-foot parts building, and the long-term plan is to build a shop between the two of them,” CMW President Larry Glynn said. “We went from one and a half acres to close to six acres now, at the intersections of I-70, I-270, and I-370, so it’s much easier for contractors to get in and out.”

“Our whole company is built around the concrete and asphalt industries, so we sell a lot of concrete batch plants and obviously we sell a lot of the paving equipment — the rollers, the milling machines, the asphalt pavers,” Glynn said. “We figured if you are going to be building a road out of one or the other, concrete or asphalt, we got you covered. That was our logic back in the early '80s when we decided that would be the emphasis of our company, and to this day, our whole company is still built around that.”

CMW Equipment offers many product lines, including Bomag and Volvo. If a contractor needs a piece of equipment to build a road out of asphalt or concrete, they can find it at CMW Equipment.

“Going forward,” Glynn added, “we’re in great shape now, but it was a very interesting year because of all the different things we had to overcome. But sales are good, customers were taken care of, and going forward we’re in a great position to be able to take advantage of anything that comes down the pipeline.”