Royal City business owner recognized

ROYAL CITY — A Royal City hoist manufacturer, owning a variety of businesses, received an Entrepreneur of the Year award from a group called American Solutions.

The award winner, Dean Callahan, and his wife, Nancy Callahan, met former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich when Dean was given the award for Washington state on July 21, American Solutions announced recently.

Other business owners from different states were also honored.

Gingrich is also the general chairman of American Solutions, describing itself online as “a unique tri-partisan organization designed to rise about traditional grid locked partisanship, to provide real, significant solutions to the most important issues facing our country.”

“While Washington politicians are busy pushing for job-killing health care and energy taxes, it’s important that successful businessmen like Dean are recognized for doing what it takes to create jobs,” Gingrich stated. 

“America is nearing 10 percent unemployment, and creating new jobs is necessary for economic recovery.”

The Callahans employ more than 100 people, Nancy said.

They operate several businesses in Grant and Adams counties.

They have a hoist manufacturing company, which Nancy said manufactures the biggest hoist made in the world.

The hoist is sent to customers in Canada, Philippines, Mexico and Europe.

“We also build trailers and truck bodies, but our big thing is our hoist,” Nancy explained.

The couple also farms hay, has a 1,300-cow dairy and runs a gravel pit, orchard, well-drilling, excavating, hay-compressing and trucking businesses.

Their farm stretches from Royal City to Othello.

National Solutions picked about 40 entrepreneurs, representing about 40 different states, she explained.

The couple is not a member of the group and didn’t put their names forth for the award, she explained.

“They just called us out of the blue,” she said. “They really wanted us to go to D.C. to get it.”