Benjamin Dutton: Icon of the Equipment Industry
Feb 01, 2016
Ben Dutton, executive vice president of Equipment Corporation of America (ECA), was born and educated in Philadelphia and now lives in nearby Springfield, Pa. However, he is no stay-at-home. He spends almost three quarters of his working hours traveling to manage the firm's growing number of locations, now eight.
Dutton began college after accepting an offer to play football at North Carolina Wesleyan College, Rocky Mount, N.C. The school cut the program when he started and Dutton returned home to Philadelphia, where he studied accounting at Saint Joseph's University. He never worked as one. Instead, while he was still in college, he began to sell construction equipment for a local company as a commissioned salesman while still attending classes. That first venture into equipment sales seems prescient now.