Meet MDNA's Newest Member - Oregon-based MD Equipment Services LLC

It comes as no surprise to find Oregon-based MD Equipment Services LLC among the newest members of the MDNA.  That’s because the company’s sole proprietor, Jerry Spoon, has always been eager to try something new.
 
Jerry has been selling industrial equipment in North America and Europe for the past 15 years with MD Equipment Services, and before that he worked as a manufacturing engineer in the Portland, Oregon, area for almost 15 years. As an engineer he managed manufacturing processes and capital equipment purchases in addition to handling the surplus equipment disposition at his last employer. It was in that capacity when he was introduced to the used manufacturing equipment business through local dealers. Additionally, he established a college-accredited business writing class he taught for eight years. Today, he has settled in with the machinery trade and runs his company from a Central Oregon location in Redmond.
 
“I’m happy doing what I’m doing and very happy doing it as my own boss,” Jerry said in a recent interview. “I’ve been on my own since 2010 and am among one of only two or three active equipment guys up here in the Northwest. It’s working out well. At age 60, I’m not about the slow down. After all, how do you retire from being self-employed?”
 
Jerry was born and raised in Reno, Nev., when it accurately billed itself as “The Biggest Little City in the World.” When his father quit the casino business, the family moved to Sonora, California, where Jerry went to high school, with designs on a career in the military.  He entered Oregon State University’s Naval ROTC program but decided after a term that was not the direction he wished to pursue as a career. He decided, after starting out in electrical engineering, that industrial engineering was more to his liking. He was enticed by manufacturing and the idea of personal contact with people on the shop floor as opposed to being stuck in front of a CAD system doing design work.
 
He received his degree in 1990 and embarked on a series of jobs that started with burn table programming, process design, capital equipment processes, Statistical Process Control (SPC), writing process documentation for shop-floor personnel, and myriad other manufacturing engineering duties for several Portland-based companies. He took a break in engineering for five years to try his hand as a frozen-food commodities salesman with his best friend from college, who had started his own brokerage firm. After leaving the food business in 2010, he decided to use what he had learned in sales and his time in engineering to start selling used manufacturing equipment.
 
“I wanted to get started in my own business, especially with turning, milling, and other types of general metal-manufacturing machinery,” he said. “I was working in Portland and started making calls about what might be available to me nearby. After working in the Portland area for almost nine years, I decided to move to Central Oregon to get out of the rain and traffic.”
 
Don’t jump to the conclusion that the “MD” means Jerry’s company deals with medical equipment. In fact, he chose the initials to honor the memory of a niece, Michelle Spoon, and one of his good high school friends, Dennis Dugan. Both passed away in their 30s, leaving behind families and many friends who loved them.
 
Jerry worked at hiring a sales team in the early days of MD Equipment Services but has been sole proprietor since 2019. Not long ago, he took a hard look at what an MDNA membership could provide, and he is happy now that he attended the organization’s recent convention in New Orleans.  There he met fellow dealers and found both them and the organization “really honest and transparent — they treated you like family.”
 
Now it looks as if Jerry is headed in yet another direction — machinery appraisal.  “I’m really interested in what the Association of Machinery and Equipment Appraisers offers,” he said of the MDNA sister organization. “I’m really looking forward to getting my certification.”
 
He concluded: “Buying and selling is a customer-service business. I’m glad I’m with the MDNA now, because it looks like what it offers will be value-added for me and for my customers.”

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