Modern Machinery Co., based in Missoula, Mont., has bought the assets of Spokane Machinery Co., a company here that has been supplying crushing and screening equipment to mining, quarry, and contracting businesses for 62 years.

Modern Machinery sells, rents, and services new and used equipment and sells machinery parts primarily for the construction and logging industries. It emphasizes the Komatsu line of machinery, for which it has exclusive dealership rights in the Pacific Northwest, although it also carries equipment made under about 20 other brands, the company says.

The purchase positions Modern Machinery well as the distributor of the Metso Minerals line of crushing and screening equipment for Eastern Washington and Idaho, Modern Machinery says.

Spokane Machinery owner Jim Peplinksi and six of the company's other employees will handle that line for Modern Machinery while doing business under the Spokane Machinery name, says Lamont Cantrell, vice president of sales and marketing for Modern Machinery in its Kent, Wash., office.

He says Spokane Machinery also was known as Spomac. Cantrell says Spokane Machinery employed about 20 people at its peak in 2006 and 2007; he was unsure how many people Spokane Machinery employed at the time of the sale.

The Spokane Machinery operation, which has been located at 3730 E. Trent, will move to Modern Machinery's 35,000-square-foot facility at 4428 E. Trent, Cantrell says. The move should be completed by July, he says.

Modern Machinery employs about 370 people in 11 locations throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana, and two locations in Russia, he says.

Garco Construction Inc., of Spokane, built Modern Machinery's new branch office here on Trent for $3.5 million, completing it last summer. Modern Machinery's employees moved there in August, from the branch's previous location at 4412 E. Trent.