Overcoming Heartbreak Makes Company Stronger

Employees step-up when moral is at an all-time low

The City of Oshawa, affectionately known as “The Shwa” to many of its 141,500 residents, is also known as “Motor City Canada” simply because it’s where General Motors Canada has been headquartered since 1918.

Over the years, however, the city has grown in many directions beyond the automobile industry and today, it includes a number of other distinguished names and companies that have helped put Oshawa on the map.

For instance, The Oshawa Generals of the Ontario Hockey League, for one, has brought international recognition to the community by producing some of the best hockey players in the world. Famous alumni include Bobby Orr, Alex Delvecchio, Wayne Cashman, Dave Andreychuk, and Eric Lindros to name just a few.

But beyond General Motors and the Oshawa Generals, there’s also many other companies contributing to the city’s reputation and wellbeing and one company, for example, that has been doing so for almost 45 years now is PR Engineering Limited.

Since its inception in 1965, PR Engineering Limited has grown from basically a local, family-owned repair shop handling rock crushers and their components to where it is today, an internationally known company that designs, manufactures, fabricates and yes, being true its roots, still repairs and refurbishes rock crushers.

However, like many businesses that have lasted as long as PR Engineering has, there have been many changes over the years and for PR Engineering, the worst and most tragic of any of them came in May 2007 when its owners, brothers Frank and Joe Grieco, were killed in a plane crash while on company business.

Not only did this disaster leave the company and its loyal employees in a state of shock, it also hit the mining industry hard too because Frank and Joe, and particularly Frank, were extremely active with both manufacturing and other associations involved with the mining industry.

After a period of deep soul searching and naturally, grieving, the management team of PR Engineering, headed by Frank’s wife Linda, shook themselves off emotionally and got back to business.

In fact, the team, according to Linda, became even closer and more dedicated to making PR Engineering everything that Frank and Joe believed in… a family company that’s an industry leader in the supply and fabrication of large rock crushers.

Aside from a few upgrades in terms of office furnishing and so on, plus a more structured and wider-spread focus on safety and neatness in general, Linda Grieco has left pretty much all of the manufacturing and technical side of things in the hands of the “experts” she has on staff.

But that’s not to say that she’s not technologically involved. In fact, as anyone who has met her knows, she’s the company’s strongest supported when it comes to letting the world know just how good PR Engineering really is.

One example that endorses Linda’s marketing and sales efforts came last year when the company won the Greater Oshawa Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Award.

A proud achievement indeed but again, the company is more about designing and manufacturing/remanufacturing, repairing, and supplying parts and service to most makes of crushers.

Again, its 45,000-square-foot manufacturing facility is equipped with the latest CNC machine tools, welding and CAD/CAM technology capable of carrying out large custom fabricating and machining.

In addition, the company also designs and manufactures the Birdsboro Buchanan line of heavy-duty double toggle primary jaw crushers and PR Engineering is also an authorized repair centre for Metso Minerals and has a working affiliation with FLSmidth Minerals.

To handle these demands, the factory is equipped with three large horizontal boring mills (capable of handling pieces measuring 12 feet vertically and 22 feet horizontally), a large planer mill and a large lathe, plus a vertical boring mill capable of turning large diameters up to 209 inches x 14 feet high. It’s one of the larger vertical boring mills in North America.

Adding to the company’s capabilities to handle “large” projects is a 50- ton crane designed to lift huge pieces of equipment characteristic of the mining industry. Another important part of PR Engineering’s operation is its babbitting. Some 65 per cent of jaw crushers have Babbitt bearings so it’s only natural that the company has a capacity to pour about 60,000 pounds of Babbitt per year.

All in all, the combination of modern equipment and the technical capability to design and manufacture huge pieces of machinery makes this small-town company a big player in the world of rock crushers and despite the loss of Frank and Joe, it carries on thanks to the skills and devotion of those left behind, especially Linda Grieco.