Catch up with Harbor Truck Parts, first-time DOTY finalist
“We’re obsessed with parts — so we can’t help but stock too many parts, stay open too many hours, and keep our prices too low — all for you, the customer.”
Over the next five months, TPS will regularly shine our spotlight on this year’s finalists and what makes them unique, leading up to our DOTY award presentation on Jan. 20, 2026, during Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week.
We begin today with Harbor Truck Parts, a first-time finalist for Distributor of the Year.
When was your business founded, and by whom?
We were founded in in 2006 by Israel Arellano. His adult children and their spouses now own and operate the business.
How many locations do you have?
We have six locations in California, with five opened in six years between 2018 and 2023. Long Beach, Gardena, Ontario, Lancaster, Modesto and Bakersfield, opened in 2006, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023, respectively.
We receive multiple applications every month from a variety of sources. We are open and responsive to all such incoming applicants. Sources include individuals within our customers’ networks, walk-in or online applicants without any prior relationships and friends and family of our employees.
What is your company’s value proposition?
The parts-obsessed store you’ve been waiting for. We’re obsessed with parts — so we can’t help but stock too many parts, stay open too many hours, and keep our prices too low — all for you, the customer.
We make your job easier by giving you the parts you want, and making your orders happen with clear, simple ease. Whatever makes buying parts fast and smooth, we’re already doing it.
Do you offer any additional services to complement your parts offering?
We offer: hose assembly and repair (A/C, air, hydraulic); flywheel resurfacing; and bushing removal and installation.
Partner Insights
Information to advance your business from industry suppliers
Fully focused on parts: Many competitors run their parts business tangentially to their service or truck sales businesses and leadership are asked to split their cerebral fuel between multiple ventures. We believe the parts business is a dynamic, not-easily-tamed beast worthy all of our attention, energy. We believe success in this department requires focused, devoted leadership.
Deep and wide inventory: Conventional wisdom in inventory-intensive distribution businesses might dictate that the ideal level of stock is the 80% coverage which comes from 20% of SKUs. We, however, have lived and learned the pain of leaving 20% uncovered. This industry has greater costs associated with an unavailable part than most other industries. We go further and take on the burden of far more inventory in return for saving the day for our customers. And executing 500-600 parts sales transactions every day, we see multiple sales that wouldn’t be every day were it not for a deeper and wider inventory than standard.
Ever-evolving technology: We invest heavily in our business systems, software and automation. The result is a set of tools for our teams, which enable them to serve customers completely and quickly with maximal transparency and communication. Our goal is to automate everything that isn’t directly tied to service of the customer, leaving a maximal amount of time available to spend serving customers. The further a task is from the customer, the sooner we believe we must automate it. We will never ask the customer to act more efficiently for our benefit (e.g. must place order via site). Rather, we will buy or build the tools which make us flexible enough to say “yes” to every reasonable request a customer might have. We have our own team of full-time developers so new features or tweaks are always within our control. We have spun up requested tweaks and features minutes after being asked by customers.
What is the biggest challenge facing your business in 2025?
Our biggest challenge is making sure we are a business where all generations of workers can succeed and grow in their roles.
Accommodating younger generations proves increasingly challenging. Today’s workforce has different expectations and work habits than prior generations. Rather than resist the shift, we’ve embraced it — investing in systems and data to reduce dependency on experience and make onboarding easier. Our younger team members are leveraging these tools to sell parts faster and more effectively than ever before.
Continuing this success into the future means continuing to adapt our workflows and tools to suit the current landscape of employee preferences and available technologies. In short, the challenge is to continually make the work in our company easier with intuitive tools and simple processes.
Why do you believe the heavy-duty aftermarket has nominated you for this award?
In an industry where legacy carries weight and can sometimes stands up barriers, our recent growth and strong reputation have broken conventions and expectations. Our customers and vendors alike observe the reasons for this reputation daily; a team of fully involved hard-working owners working shoulder-to-shoulder with well-paid, sincere, hardworking employees.
This team is the source of our ability to get that little bit better every day and keep over-delivering for our partners (customers and vendors).
Stay tuned, as in two weeks will learn more about 2025 award finalist Southside Trailer Service.
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