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Jan Carter, Lodi Equipment, West Sacramento, California: Sells and services truck equipment, including cranes, lube bodies, air compressor systems, dump bodies, conversion hoists, and tool and storage boxes. He believes strongly in “core competency” and avoiding the “jack of all trades/master of none” trap that he feels many distributors fall into.
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Rick Horn, Supreme Corp, Goshen, Indiana: A 27-year-old company with manufacturing plants in six states, specializing in dry freight van bodies. Horn says Supreme is one of the largest transit bus manufacturers in the US and is a “big proponent of using chassis pools.”
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Gene Kohler Jr, Kranz Automotive Body, St Louis, Missouri: A fifth-generation company that serves as a truck equipment house and handles “just about every type of equipment we can get our hands on and make money on.” It deals in ship-throughs, pools, alliances, and partnerships, which he says have created a complex scenario.
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Ken Lindt, Harbor Truck Bodies, Brea, California: In the early 1990s, after all of Harbor's distributors went bankrupt, it went with a lean production system because it felt it needed to be really good to stand out. To assist in standardization, it issued a commercial order guide that went to all of its dealers and customers. To gain a reach in direct marketing, it went with pools. In the past few years, it has started using distributors in Arizona, California, and Nevada.
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Rob Parkhurst, Parkhurst Mfg Co, Sedalia, Missouri: A 55-year-old manufacturer of platform bodies, stake bodies, and grain bodies that uses distributors exclusively to sell its products. “The only thing that's worse than selling to the end user is selling to the government,” Parkhurst said.
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Fred Bongiovanni, America's Body Co, Cleveland, Ohio: A 26-year-old company (with 12 locations) that serves primarily as a dealer-oriented truck equipment house with pools. When the company was started, they decided to partner with dealers to get products to OEMs and suppliers for sale to end users. Six core products: van bodies, dump bodies, stake bodies, service bodies, van interiors, snowplows. “We know what we're good at,” he said. “We don't try to get into a lot of other product lines like articulated cranes. We keep our emphasis on our core lines.”