BANGOR, Maine — Dead River is reassigning and reducing the number of employees in its office building on Exchange Street as part of restructuring its administrative services, the fuel company announced Tuesday.
Robert Moore, the company’s CEO, met with employees to inform them of the upcoming changes, which will consolidate most shared services such as accounting, IT, finance and human resources, locating them in its South Portland corporate offices.
According to Vice President of Human Resources Guy Langevin, 18 positions have been eliminated. Another 17 employees have been offered relocation and 16 jobs are remaining in Bangor. The jobs all come from the company’s shared-services department. The transition will happen over several months.
The primary reason for the change is increased efficiency as the company continues growing, Langevin said.
About 200 Bangor-based employees who directly serve customers will not be affected, according to Langevin. Dead River’s office on South Main Street in Brewer with its customer service and operations personnel will remain in operation, as will the delivery center at Godsoe Road in Bangor.
The company, which has more than 1,000 employees, was founded in 1909 by Charles Hutchins, according to its website. It was originally a forest products enterprise named for the Dead River, which flowed through much of its timberland in Western Maine. Curtis Hutchins took over for his father as the company’s manager in the 1930s and diversified it by purchasing gasoline stations and a petroleum storage plant.
Expanding its fuel business steadily through the years, Dead River sold most of its timberland to the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot Indian tribes in 1981 and entered the commercial real estate business, according to its website. It has since expanded its petroleum-based operations into southern Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts.