History of The Retriever

The Guys from Up-N-Atom:

Entrepreneur Sees a Better Way to Move Heavy Equipment

Rick Romell, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin) Jun. 26--Town of Brookfield

Something took hold of Joseph Simons– an idea – and it wouldn't let go.

It has grasped him so tightly that Simons, a farm boy turned successful businessman, has spent $2.75 million from his own pocket to bring it to market.

He never planned to spend that much. But one thing led to another and here he is, majority owner of a promising company in which he has sunk a significant share of his net worth.

"It just was an idea that I guess I got hooked on," said Simons, a large man with a calm temperament that has served him well in his latest venture.

Simons' idea, embodied in the company he has named Up-N-Atom, LLC, involves what he believes is a better way to haul construction equipment - backhoes, fork lifts, small bulldozers - from work site to work site.

Typically, such gear is winched up steep ramps and onto flatbed trucks with heavy duty hydraulic systems. Simons' firm offers an alternative: a flexed truck bed that can be lowered with compressed air, combined with a double-hinged ramp that provides a loading angle so gentle that equipment can be driven onto the truck.

That, Simons said, is safer and easier than conventional loading mechanisms.

With few moving parts, the compressed-air lifts require less maintenance than hydraulics, he said. And he said avoiding hydraulics means the truck weighs less, allowing it to carry heavier loads.

Jeff Giese, an operations manager for Kreilkamp Trucking Inc., said the Up-N-Atom truck beds are "very efficient" and more reliable than systems that use hydraulics.

"I've had them for two and a half years and I haven't had any breakdowns," he said.

Background in the business

Simons hatched the idea for the specialized truck beds after 25 years of working in the heavy-equipment rental business.

His brother Pete started Badgerland Equipment in 1972, catching the rising interest in aerial work platforms, which were replacing ladders and scaffolding for overhead construction and maintenance tasks.

Four years later, Pete Simons died at 34 of pancreatic cancer, and Joseph took over Badgerland. Business was booming. The 100 or so lifts the company began with increased to nearly 500 by the late '70s.

Then inflation and recession wracked the firm. Industrial and commercial construction in the Midwest shriveled, and the prime rate, on which Badgerland's inventory loans were based, shot beyond 20%.

"We were paying prime plus two at 22 percent, without a lot of customers," Simons said. "It was pretty grim."

Actually, the prime topped out at 21.5%, but to Badgerland it was all the same. The company went bankrupt in 1984 and was liquidated.

That same year, Simons started up again as Midwest Aerial Platforms Inc. His parents mortgaged their farm west of Oconomowoc to back him.

"And I was fortunate to find an asset-based lender who believed in what we were trying to do," Simons said.

Buyout leads to new venture

With the economy back on track, Midwest Aerial prospered. Starting with 150 lifts, the firm's fleet grew to 600 units by 1998. Then, amid a wave of consolidation that spanned many industries, Rental Service Corp. offered to buy Midwest for "about twice as much as my accountant said it was worth," Simons said. "So I thought, 'This probably isn't going to happen twice.' "

The sale netted Midwest's owners - Simons chief among them - $5.2 million. That gave Simons the wherewithal to stick with an idea that, good as it might be, proved much more expensive than he anticipated.

"It costs a lot more to make something from a clean sheet of paper than I ever realized," Simons said.

To take his idea from concept to concrete design, he recruited retired engineer Ray Smith. Smith, now a minority owner of Up-N-Atom, patented the basic system the company uses.

The firm built its first 40 truck beds in its 5,200-square-foot shop, then began contracting with an Oshkosh fabricator.

In November, Simons brought in a group of angel investors assembled by law firm Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren.

Daniel Murchin, one of the investors, praised the Up-N-Atom design and Simons' command of his business.

"Joe has knowledge of who the customers are, where they are, why they can use the product," Murchin said. "He has a vision of how to work with the engineering people, the sales people."

That's good news, but having both weathered business failure and cashed out at an unexpectedly high price, Simons isn't inclined to get too excited.

"After getting beat around a little bit," he said, "the stuff that's terrible . . . isn't as terrible as it looks, and the stuff that's fantastic probably isn't as fantastic as it seems."

From the June 26, 2006 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, story by Rick Romell