During his stint as a real estate investor, Tom Folmar, “missed the smell of fuel,” a sure sign that he is back where he belongs: In the diesel engine business.
His love for diesels started when a part-time job at a Cummins distributorship while attending Penn State University in 1973 turned into a full-time position, which led to Folmar being named branch manager of a Cummins operation serving the mining industry. But by 1980 Folmar wanted a change of pace, so he and his wife headed south. After a year and a half as a Florida real estate investor, “I found that I missed diesel engines, so I went looking for an opportunity,” Folmar said.
He found what he wanted at Interstate Dieselect in Orlando, Fla., a truck shop that evolved into a more specialized business offering fuel injector service, turbocharger work and heavy-duty electrical work.
That change in focus is the opposite of what Folmar sees happening at ADS, an organization of engine specialists with more than 700 corporate and individual members nationwide, of which he is the president. Through the years, fuel injection systems have become integrated with the engine, he said. In response, ADS is helping its members shift “from focusing on fuel injection to working on entire vehicle systems, with a focus on the engine.
“We’ve always keyed in on the fuel injection system, yet in the last five to 10 years almost all of our members have added complete truck bays to their facilities,” he said.
After going through a growth period in the 1980s, the fuel injection segment of the market declined slightly in the 1990s and early 2000s, Folmar said.
“Now we are going through another growth spurt,” he said and ADS is growing along with that market. “We have a tremendous amount of interest in membership, and our programs are hitting the mark on what our members need, especially our training programs,” he said. One such program, TechSmart, was developed to improve the knowledge of entry-level and currently employed diesel technicians.
