A Century of Progress
Erie Strayer Celebrates 100+ Years in Business
Concrete for the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge, the highest and longest arched concrete bridge in the Western Hemisphere, was produced with Erie concrete batching equipment.
By Sheryl S. Jackson, Associate Editor
Teamwork and family values are the
keys to a successful 100 years in business
for Erie Strayer, a Pennsylvania manufacturing company that has grown and
changed throughout its history to meet
the needs of customers in the construction
industry.
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Robert F. Strayer is President and Chief
Executive Officer of this family business
founded in 1912 by his grandfather,
G. H. Strayer. “I learned at an early age
that success comes from hard work and
discipline,” says Strayer. “My family taught
me to surround myself with people who
shared those same values. Our company
has survived the ups and downs of the
CONCRETE PAVEMENT PROGRESS
economy because of the stability of our
family ownership and the support of our
many employees who work as a team.”
At its origin in 1912, the company,
then named Erie Steel Construction
Company, was a steel and erection firm
working on commercial, industrial and
public buildings throughout the Erie, Pa.
area. Its nine-man crew operated out of
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a single-story brick building. Following
G.H. Strayer’s startup of the company,
his son Hamilton W. Strayer became
president. Robert Strayer followed “H.W.”
as president in 1998. His son Kyle joined
the company in 2010 becoming the fourth
generation Strayer to work in the business.
During World War II, the company’s
expertise with specialty steel fabrication
resulted in orders for more than 100
overhead electric traveling cranes and
thousands of clamshell and dragline
buckets for the Army and Navy. Defenserelated work continued after the war
with the building of radar towers used
throughout the United States. As the
business grew, Erie Steel began to design
and produce concrete batching equipment,
clamshell digging buckets, and storage
bins for the construction industry.
In 1950, specialty steel fabrication
was phased out, and the newly named
Erie Strayer Company focused on the
manufacture of concrete batching
equipment and material handling buckets.
The manufacturing facility is now over
200,000 sq. ft. and is situated on 21 acres
in Erie, Pa.
A focus on new technology
Innovation has been an integral part
of Erie Strayer’s history, with customers
inspiring many new products. “We want
our products to meet the needs of our
Four generations of the Strayer family have led the business over the past 100 years. Erie Strayer founder G.H.
Strayer’s portrait hangs on the wall of the conference room. His descendants, from left, include: Kyle Strayer, the fourth
generation of Strayers to work at the company; Kyle’s father, Robert F. Strayer; and Robert’s father, Hamilton W. Strayer.
customers,” says Strayer. Heavy mainline
paving usually requires equipment that
has to be mobile in design. For customers
to move batch plants several times a
year from job site to job site, Erie Strayer
developed a complete line of highly mobile
and self-erecting paving plants that can be
easily moved along with the paving train.
Strayer says these plant models have been
very popular, especially in remote areas
where crane access is limited.
Erie Strayer introduced its first
automated batching system in the
1970s. “Automating systems improves
consistency and accuracy and produces
a better concrete mix,” explains Strayer.
The company has continued to improve
connectivity and functionality with
many of today’s systems operating on a
cloud platform, which enables passwordprotected access from any computer in any
location.
An Erie aggremeter plant installed at a contractor’s jobsite in the 1940s.
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(continued on page 8)
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Three Erie concrete
batch plants
purchased and
erected for use
with the Dubai
International
Airport Runway
Expansion Project.
enhancing the use of the most up-to-date
technology, even within its own walls.
“Like all companies in the concrete
pavement construction industry, we’ve
had to adjust and learn how to be
more productive in slower economic
times,” states Kyle Strayer. “Advancing
technology has helped us achieve that. We
benefit from a faster paced, more efficient
workplace. For example, technical and
engineering drawings once drafted with
pen and paper are now produced with
computer-aided design and drafting
software, often in minutes.”
Mobile Combo 11 Central Mix Paving Plant (MC-11C)
erected at a contractor’s jobsite.”
Century of Progress (continued from page 7)
Another example of innovation comes
through the on-site experience of Erie
Strayer’s service department. By listening
to customer, the company redesigned
its concrete mixer equipment to create
an automatic lubrication system and a
central grease station that eliminated
production downtime to perform
easy-access routine maintenance. Erie
Strayer’s service manager emphasizes the
advantages of these changes, “We not
only addressed downtime concerns of
contractors, but also reduced lubrication
maintenance time by 90 percent.”
The company is continually
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Mobile Gravity Central Mix Paving Plant (MG-12CP) erected at a contractor’s jobsite in the Southeast.
CONCRETE PAVEMENT PROGRESS
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Concrete paving equipment departing Erie’s factory en route to Doha, Qatar, just one of many international installations for the company.
Support services evolved
When Robert Strayer began working in
company sales of concrete batch plants in
the 1970s, it was a time of a distributordominated marketplace. For Strayer, this
was particularly true for the international
market. The multi-national experience
and knowledge of transportation methods
that distributors brought to American
businesses helped Erie Strayer introduce
products globally. Today’s distributors
remain valuable to the manufacturer
through the product knowledge and
personal influence they bring to their own
territories and/or countries.
Although Erie Strayer works closely
with a network of distributors today, it
has also enhanced its own marketing
and customer support. “We don’t just
sell equipment,” explains Strayer. “We
manufacture, deliver, train customer
employees, and support our equipment
with parts and service.” To reduce the cost
of maintaining equipment, the company
streamlined product offerings to allow
standardization of parts. “Although
we offer a range of products to meet
different needs, we have a number of
standard parts that can be mixed and
matched to produce a customized order,”
he says. “Standard parts not only reduce
the cost of maintenance or repair, but
also decrease the time needed to obtain
replacement parts.”
Erie Strayer products, service offerings
and support have changed throughout
the years based on customer needs, points
out Strayer. “We see our relationship with
end-user producers as a partnership and
are always looking for better ways to help
our customers find a better way to do
their jobs.”
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