Making rock crushers isn't something the paper-shufflers on Bay Street would understand. "You got your office towers downtown, but sooner or later someone's got to make something," says Joe Grieco, co-owner of PR Engineering in Oshawa. "This is where the rubber hits the pavement."

Strolling through their mining equipment assembly and repair shop, Joe and brother Frank pass a hulking 160,000-kilogram rock crusher while a vertical boring mill spins a few feet away. Masked welders in grease monkey suits hover over sparks. The acrid taste of metal in the air, the hiss of the welder's torch. The walk refreshes Joe - says it reminds him of the movie Pretty Woman, how Richard Gere's character nonchalantly raids companies like trading baseball cards until he finally gets it. "He (was) buying and selling companies and not really touching, feeling and smelling. He didn't even see the building," Joe says. "The last company that he did buy, he decided to buy it and keep it for himself because he wanted to touch, feel and taste. It wasn't something on paper."

There's almost nothing more tangible than a rock crusher. Whether underground or in the open pit, these prehistoric-looking machines crush rocks roughly 3-by-4 feet to about the size of a snooker ball, and do it at the rate of 600 to 800 tons per hour, Joe says. Founded in 1965 by their father Paul, a second-generation Italian and Hell's Kitchen native, PR Engineering owned the licensing rights to a brand of rock crusher and subcontracted out the assembly. But Joe, 57, and Frank, 54, also saw a need for refurbishing crushers, so they bought a machine shop in 1977 and gradually built the business from three to 40 employees, positioning the company as one of the few places willing to lift and fix these unwieldy machines. "You can't walk into a shop anywhere in Canada and say, `Hey, I got a crusher, would you mind reconditioning it?' " Joe says. "(Owners) figured they're worn out, they're done, they're finished and let's discard `em."

The Griecos still make new Birdsboro Buchanan crushers that cost about $1 million. Refurbishing a used machine costs in the $400,000 range. Keeping costs down is an ongoing chore, but attending auctions and tracking eBay is a good way for the brothers to snag equipment they need for the shop at a fraction of the cost had they bought it new. One of the biggest challenges, Joe says, is making sure the workers feel fairly treated. But getting along with the labourers pays when a client comes begging PR to fix a crucial piece of machinery. "You come to a guy on Friday night, say, `Look, I need your expertise. We got a breakdown. Can you help me out?' "Unless you treat your fellas well, they'll say, `I got something else I gotta do.' "But the expertise in PR's shop is not cheap. "When you come to our place, it gets expensive," Joe says. "It doesn't cost $197.52."

This Oshawa plant is not where Frank figured he'd be after high school. He didn't discover his blue-collar sensibilities until age 20, when he headed for Sudbury after a couple friends bragged about the wages they were earning in the mines. Three thousand feet below ground, helmet and headlamp on and the heft of the pneumatic drill. That was work - boring for nickel - that was tangible. "It got in my blood. I met a couple crews who were brothers, and I said, `Jesus, Joe and I could do this job ourselves, working in the drift.' " There was something wholesome about the grit and strain of a day's work in the mine. Walking through the shop reminds Frank. "Every time I see a crusher, it reinforces my life in the industry."

Contact PR Engineering at (905) 579-9721 or visit our website at www.prengineering.com