WOMEN IN ACCESS
34
ACCESS, LIFT & HANDLERS
JULY-AUGUST 2013
be intimidated. It’s like learning any other new
language. There are new words, things that
you’ll get introduced to, but everybody has to
get introduced. If you can get through that initial
introduction, it’s a lot of fun and a rewarding
place to work. Just jump in and try it.”
Small Rental, Big Growth
Sarah Rothenbuhler grew up working on
construction sites and at her family’s Birch
Equipment Rental & Sales company located in
Bellingham, WA. Rothenbuhler’s father started
the company in 1972 and Sarah Rothenbuhler,
who was a minority owner, watched on as the
company grew and blossomed for its market.
But then the market shifted.
“In the early ‘90s, the long-time Birch
Manager left and set up a competing company
with the goal of cutting Birch’s volume by 50
percent,” Rothenbuhler says. At the same time,
a major national rental company came into town
and approached Birch with what Rothenbuhler
describes as an ultimatum: they were either
going to buy Birch or run it into the ground.
“The company was suddenly in a steady
downward spiral,” Rothenbuhler says. “Birch
had gone into complete dysfunction and
knew there were no systems for any healthy
remaining staff or equipment to fall back on.”
Rothenbuhler decided it was time to take
the reins and approached the other “power
holders” at the company. “I suppose, for some,
the best that that could have happened was for
me to run the company into the ground quicker
so equipment and property could be liquidated
or transferred to other companies.”
However, just the opposite happened. In 2001,
Rothenbuhler gained enough traction to get
bank support and buy out all the stockholders.
She was officially the main woman in charge.
Rothenbuhler laments the days of past are not
the days of now.
“An access ‘industry’ didn’t exist on the
jobsites and rental yards I was around. Concrete
was poured into the ass-end of forklifts to
enhance counter weight and lift capacity,
backhoes were more common than excavators,
reach forklifts were rare,” she says. “My first
glimpse of the aerial, labor-saving revolution
may have been a 20-foot red scissor lift with a
z-style stack. Obviously lines have opened up
access in every production, maintenance and
construction market from the mini personal
hoists now to the Genie SX-180 Boom. I never
would have guessed that aerial units would one
day make up thousands of units in our fleet.”
Today, Rothenbuhler worries about Tier 4 and
how it will affect business in the next few years.
“Hopefully it won’t bury our companies into
much more financial stress,” she says. “Then
we can get into some new forms of cool, sexy
access and material handling power sources
that provide another big increase in productivity
and safety.”
Good People. Period.
Birch Equipment Rental & Sales has the same
goals as other companies: they want to hire
only one scissor line at the time, was on the
brink of introducing its 90-foot RT family.
“I’m less about product design and more
about how we build things,” she says. “I have
always been very much about hands-on an I
like to work on things where I can see them
coming together. There’s a lot of satisfaction of
having an idea and then seeing it designed and
built in front of you.”
Today, Snow-Boscolo works with a group
called Terex Business Systems, which is a lean-
specialist operations group.
“In my role I have a mixed bag of
responsibilities,” she says. “When you’re in an
organization for for so long, you get more hats.
They never seem to take any away, they just
add them,” she jokes.
Snow-Boscolo creates and develops training
for Terex and makes sure its people understand
what the company is doing and why. She
consults internally and works with human
resources to improve data management. Every
now and then Snow-Boscolo will get called in to
put a new production control system in place or
she might even get green lighted to go to China
or Italy and work with teams across the world.
But she wasn’t always the team leader. One
of Snow-Boscolo’s first big linked-up projects
came after she was with Genie for only nine
months. The team was working on a new and
innovative plan of delivering parts to weld cells
so the worker would have his or her tools and
kit all in one place in one unit.
“This was a very different idea at the time
and people were nervous,” she recalls. “Trying
to get someone to be the initial delivery person
was a nightmare so I said I’d do it just to prove
it would work.”
Men wouldn’t believe that a “girl” was
“actually going to deliver our parts five times a
day for a week.” But, she did, and, she says, it
bought her respect for the rest of the time she
worked with that team in that department.
“There have been some people I’ve worked
with who are jerks,” Snow-Boscolo says. “When
I was younger I maybe beat myself up over how
to prove myself and, looking back, there were
just some people who no matter what I did,
nothing was going to change their minds. There
were older supervisors who I worked with that
were never going to reach a different level of
respect for me as a professional. Things have
changed a lot in the last 13 years.”
At Terex, more women are coming into the
industry than ever before, Snow-Boscolo says.
“I see a lot more women now than I did in
the past. Hopefully that’s because a few of us
helped pave the path and encouraged others to
join the industry.”
From her manufacturing point of view, Snow-
Boscolo says working on the line and being a
part building a product is thrilling.
“We make amazing products that help build
the world,” she says. “It’s fun. We get to work
with great people. For the women who are
looking to join the industry, my advice is don’t
