I handled some classic Powermatic and Jet equipment; but the big cabinet shops were more a blend of much more expensive industrial gear and lots of Festool for sake of jobsite portabiity, prototyping, and one-offs. I had the one of the largest Festool inventories in the US, an even bigger selection than the catalog itself, actually all in stock. But we didn't handle big industrial woodworking equipment of the kind where the only profit involved is in the installation and service contracts. Powermatic is of course, more old school cast iron, and I'd simply have the bigger items, like 12 inch wide jointers, shipped directly to the end user provided they had their own loading dock and forklift. Out own service center accommodated anything relatively portable - we had the largest classic pneumatic nailer and stapler parts inventory anywhere in the world (especially Paslode and Senco), worked on many many portable compressors, did innumerable Bosch, Makita, and Milwaukee repairs (back when Milwaukee was still worth repairing), lots of industrial Skilsaws, gosh knows how many other items. Sioux air tools. Dewalt until it became outright trash. All of that is gone now, as the key people either retired or passed away, and when many tool brands went over to more of a disposable outsourced tool concept.
The fellow who ran the tool repair, along with the far more lucrative Marvin window & door warranty division, was ranked no. 2 in the world as an arm wrestler. He owned around 45 houses and had a huge income, but only slept about 4 hrs a night, took steroids, and died prematurely. His training partner himself had arms the size of tree trunks, but competed in the middleweight division instead because one of his legs was a hollow prosthetic. That guy was a professional lead sheet welder specializing in nuclear reactors, and accustomed to handling very heavy weights even with a fake leg. He's the one who heat welded my own 10 foot polypropylene darkroom sink - materials, fabrication, and even delivery right into place, all for $200. It's nice to have connections - or have had them, in the past tense.
For my own modest needs, I just use the Festool line bore plunge-router system, and their Domino joinery system. Even all the big shops used all those too, at least for sake of van portability, even if they had hundred-thousand dollar equivalents in the shop itself for sake of mass production. Often someone would be prototyping with the Festool, and then have the multiples made on their giant Xeroxish machines. None of this was really pre-fab, but all expensive custom work. It's amazing the kind of work that came out of that neighborhood. But I was a bit annoyed when a person who happened to be the richest individual in the world at the time ordered up a set of 40K apiece deck benches out of a rare tropical hardwood and had them beautifully Sikkens finished, but rather than putting on a refresher coat every two years, simply threw them out and ordered a new set each time. Conspicuous consumption is bad enough; but conspicuous waste? Somebody at the dump was darn lucky.
