These values, which Executive Vice President Matt Hoskinson describes as the foundational pillars of the company, are integrity, excellence, teamwork and community involvement.
For more than four decades Truck Center Companies has been anchored by these values. No matter how much the company has grown and evolved, its commitment to each has never wavered. And a quick glance at the business shows that conviction has paid off quite nicely.
Founded as the two-store Omaha Truck Center in 1975, the dealer group now known as Truck Center Companies operates 10 locations in three states and employs more than 600 people. Representing nearly a dozen combined tractor and trailer brands, Truck Center Companies is a regular recipient of top-level awards by its OEM partners. In January CEO Trey Mytty earned the 2019 American Truck Dealers (ATD) Dealer of the Year Award and six months later the company followed Mytty’s accolade by earning its first finalist nomination for the Successful Dealer Award.
For many dealers, such a run of success could be an unquestioned high water mark. A peak of excellence in a long and impressive history. At Truck Center Companies, it’s meeting expectations.
“We have a burning desire to be one of the best, if not the best, truck and trailer dealers in the country,” says Hoskinson. “Our core values pretty simply tie into that — they are what it means to us to be a great company.”
One area where those core values is most evident is in Truck Center Companies’ vow to education, training and corporate improvement.
For more than a decade the company has operated a technician training center at its Omaha, Neb., headquarters that serves the company’s service facilities. Staffed by three full-time trainers, Hoskinson says these associates provide OEM and supplier-provided training as well as an original curriculum developed specifically to meet the needs of TCC’s business.
Long a secret weapon in its service operation, Hoskinson says the company’s training center also has recently become a valuable recruitment tool to battle the industry’s tech employment crunch.
“I’m confident in saying we train our techs as good or better than anyone in the country,” he says.
Truck Center Companies also was an early adopter of Freightliner’s Elite Support. Mytty was among the dealers who helped develop the program with Freightliner and Daimler Trucks North America and TCC followed as one of the OEM’s first pilot dealers in 2012. In the years since, Hoskinson says TCC has added Continuous Improvement Coordinators (CIC) at each of its facilities to ensure the locations meet the 123 specific criteria required to earn recertification each year.
But Hoskinson says those CICs aren’t tasked exclusively with Elite Support. Truck Center Companies also employs a CIC leader who guides these associates and leads change management team meetings at each location every week. These meetings, which also include store managers and at least two rotating non-management employees, help drive corporate cooperation and cultivate new ideas.
Having employees bring business ideas to leadership is “a big part of our culture,” Hoskinson says. “We are always looking for new ideas.”
One recent idea the company has committed to is a corporate mentorship program, which Hoskinson says TCC is shooting to roll out in the fourth quarter this year. He says the first iteration of the program will be geared toward leaders and cascade down. Once fully implemented, Hoskinson says Truck Center Companies “will have a training and development program for every position in our company.”
Then there’s the company’s commitment to charitable organizations. TCC strives to give back.
Led by the Mytty family, Hoskinson says TCC is particularly drawn to organizations that seek to help children. Make-A-Wish is the dealer group’s largest beneficiary of support. Hoskinson says an intra-company poll first stirred TCC to support the non-profit in 1995 and in the 25 years since, no business in Nebraska has provided the charity more monetary support.
And this year alone was the company’s strongest effort yet, Hoskinson says, as Truck Center Companies was able to raise more than $432,000 for Make-a-Wish, bringing the company’s overall donation over the years to more than $3 million.
Hoskinson says that’s the equivalent of more than 450 wishes.
“[Make-a-Wish] has become part of our DNA,” he says. “All of our employees get involved in supporting them.”
