About Stork's
Wow, it's been 35 years and a lot has changed! Stork's Plows is a Christian, family-run business that was founded in 1986 by Gene and Theresa Stork along with their two young children - Gene Anthony (Jeen) age 6 and April age 5. Both children, now adults, continue to work in the business today - April running the front office dealing with scheduling and walk-in customers and Jeen Anthony, the business manager, focusing on the buying and selling of our inventory and growing the team.
In 1986 the business was a small, automotive repair shop that specialized in Jeeps and Renault cars. With only two bays and only one tall enough for a lift, it took long, hard hours to pay the bills and keep it going. Prior to owning the business, Gene worked at a Jeep dealership and also had a plowing business along with some friends. Together they plowed thirty parking lots and driveways. In the meantime, Theresa did accounting and notary work. The first winter of owning the shop Gene realized that being committed to both plowing and running the shop was not going to work so he dropped the plow contracts.
After a few years of commuting, the Stork family moved into a rough house attached to the shop and fixed it up as they lived there. The first winter there was snow coming through the windows and they covered them with plastic to slow it down! Within a few years they raised the roof of the garage and added a bay, so they then had three bays and three lifts.
At first Stork's only sold a few plows each year, as Jeeps were sold that had snow plows installed already. However, because we still loved to plow, we kept on hand a number of Jeeps with plows on. During this time we noticed that we enjoyed installing and servicing snow plows and so began rebuilding used snow plows because of the demand for lower-priced and used plows. Rebuilding plows also fueled the sales of new plows. In the Early 90's We tried to contact Meyer Plows, the brand we knew best, but there seemed to be no interest to sell to us.
It wasn't long before we outgrew our original property, so in 1996 we purchased a property next to the shop to give us more parking and two additional buildings. That same year a local landscaper, who we still deal with, was offered a Meyer sub-dealership but they had no interest, so through that contact we became a Meyer/Diamond sub-dealer. After some good years of sales, Meyer let us in as a direct dealer.
In 1999 the property on the other side of the shop became available and we grew into that too, adding a nicely sized parking lot and two more buildings for storage. We also took on Fisher as a sub distributor and after a few years around 2001, we became an official distributor for Blizzard, a company founded in 1999 with some very promising ideas. Following that, we also took on Snoway but dropped them after a few years.
In 2002, we added onto the original shop, giving it a few longer bays on the back so we could fit the longer trucks with plows and spreaders in the shop. We kept running out of space as the plow business grew and we found all our properties were full, with both the township and our customers complaining about the parking situation. On busy days you could not even get into our parking lot because of our limited space.
Jeen (AKA "young Gene") had worked at the shop all through those years and in 2002 left for New Tribes Bible School for two years. Upon returning, Jeen started selling products on EBay again and then started this website as storksauto.com which became storksplows.com years later.
In 2012 we added a new property that doubled our total acreage. It gave us a needed 200 feet of road-front parking, along with an entire lot to fit 200 plow displays and room to build a 72x120 pole building to store plow mounts. Until 2015, we did the car repair in the summer and scattered throughout the winter, but we realized we could not do both and offer our customers the best service. So the decision was made to eliminate all car repair. This opened up Joey, our mechanic of 28 years then, to now work on plows all year long, all day long with the other installers and to free up the office, too.
We were given the opportunity to take on Boss, as a local distributor had closed its doors. But the day we were to sign the contract, the regional sales man was fired and there was a delay. We would later find it was a blessing in disguise because we were offered the opportunity to go direct with Western in 2006, despite the fact there was a local dealer registered (we found it was because they did not push any local product). Blizzard was rebranded as SnowEx in 2015 so we subsequently took on the SnowEx plows.
Today we are a full-time snow plow business. We sold 720 plows between April 1st 2015 and March 31st 2016 and that was our best season until 2019/20 season again to be beat by the 2020/2021 season we were able to set a new Record even with the pandemic going on we sold 1026 plows. We spend our summers installing plows and the summer of 2016 we put all our our inventory into a computer program (up until then it had all been done by old-fashioned memory). Since we are still into Jeeps, we have around 100 of them here but as we get time the goal is to significantly down size that. We part them out over the summer months and sell those parts online but the last few years the summers have been full of plow installs. In 2016, the generic name Stork's Plows was made official and is now our legal name.
In 2018 we purchased yet another property giving us more storage, more parking and a body shop with a paint booth that we are able to use to paint our plows. It is connected to one of our other properties making it nice to get full use out of the properties.
In the end of 2019 we closed down the Notary and Theresa sold her remaining shares in the business to Gene and Jeen. So the business transitioned to a father and son venture. This allowed Theresa to go part time to be able to focus on some volunteer and counseling opportunities that she is passionate about. Jeen had been working to become more and an owner for a few years and this transition made that possible.
We love to offer stuff that is hard to get. Now that Blizzard is gone, we have stocked up on their parts more than ever. We have more Blizzard parts in stock than any dealer in the country! Additionally, Stork's Plows has over 2000 plows in stock all year round. We also have a large inventory of plow pumps and plow pump parts making our inventory one of the largest on the East Coast. We do not sell the most plows, but we are believed to have the largest and most diverse inventory in the world. We have even have had the privilege of employees from most of the major plow manufacturers come tour the Stork's facilities and see what a full stock is.
At Stork's Plows we are known for our knowledge and inventory of obsolete parts. Our advice has been printed in Snow Magazine and collecting parts is our business and our hobby. Up until 2015 we had juggled the auto repair along with the plow and spreader business, but after 30 years we completely phased out of the automotive to better focus on the plows. In addition, at the end of 2019 we closed the doors of Theresa's notary business. We are thankful for the auto and notary customers we had all these years, but are also very excited about these changes and the freedom they have given us.
In 2019, Stork's grew to twenty employees. We have a great crew. Since the start of our e-commerce website around 2010, our business has both changed and grown. It has allowed us to reach a much larger customer base and take care of more customers. We now have six people in the office, two doing inventory in the warehouse, two in shipping and the rest in the shop.
In August of 2021 Storks purchased a new Property 12 min from the original property. This property is 9.5 acres, with 150 parking spots, a 55,000 square foot building. This will give us the needed space to grow and get all the inventory under one roof instead of spread out over a dozen buildings on our current 6.8 acres. This will allow us to have a large show room and a 22,000 SF under roof plow display area, a larger lunch room, waiting room, and get us off the edge of the highway. This new location is a corner lot at the intersection of routes 61 and 73. It will be a tough year trying to keep the business flowing and move at the same time but we hope to have a grand opening September 2022. The propery was formerly Ozzy's Family fun center.