Aftermarket suppliers trying to take industry challenges head on

Supplier panel at Heavy Duty Aftermarket Dialogue 2025
From left: Dominic Grote, Grote Industries; Matt Wolfe, SAF-Holland; and Chip Stuhr, STEMCO; speak to MEMA's Paul McCarthy during Heavy Duty Aftermarket Dialogue Monday in Grapevine, Texas.

Commercial vehicle suppliers know there are big challenges in their aftermarket operations these days.

“The list of challenges are bigger than the things that get you pumped up,” Grote Industries’ President and CEO Dominic Grote admits.

But well-known challenges like supply chain management and tariffs, technology and changing customer demands aren’t new issues. Nor will they be easily solved. Dwelling on them or ignoring them won’t make them go away.

During a supplier panel discussion Monday at Heavy Duty Aftermarkets Dialogue (HDAD), presented by MacKay & Company and MEMA, Grote, Matt Wolfe, vice president and general manager of Aftermarket at SAF-Holland; and Chip Stuhr, president at STEMCO; shared how their companies are tackling the aftermarket challenges facing their businesses head on, leveraging relationships with their distributor partners and end users to best meet and exceed customer expectations.

[RELATED: Peterbilt's Skoog says time is now to prepare for next market upswing]

Chatting on Inauguration Day, the panel started their discussion around potential tariffs. Like Peterbilt’s Jason Skoog earlier in the day, the trio said their operations don’t know what tariffs will and will not be enacted. The panelists all said they plan to fall back on what they learned during the first Trump administration to be nimble if and when tariffs kick in.

Wolfe said SAF-Holland has long tried to assemble products “as close to our customers as possible,” and has increased those efforts since 2017. He said the company will look to bring even more sourcing onshore if tariffs occur, but admitted doing so won’t be seamless due to capacity issues in the United States. The other manufacturers agreed. If everyone attempts to onshore or nearshore at the same time, domestic capacity will collapse under the demand.

Stuhr said that’s why STEMCO is focused on being agile with its supply chain.

“You need to have a sourcing strategy where you’re not locked into one region,” he said.

Grote agreed, adding his company has spent a lot of time recently communicating with customers to understand the impact tariffs would have on their business, so Grote can react in a way that best helps those operations.

“We have customers saying ‘I don’t want to be at risk. What are you doing?’” he says.

Another way the panelists are working to support customers ahead of any tariff-related volatility is though inventory optimization. Wolfe said SAF-Holland’s aftermarket business nearly doubled when it finalized its acquisition of Haldex in 2023. The purchase opened SAF-Holland to many new product lines, but it’s also complicated its warehouse space and has forced inventory adjustments. Wolfe says customer expectations post-COVID and the supply chain crisis have changed; SAF-Holland is trying to adapt accordingly.

“[Customers] have leaned out inventory and expect us to have it like Amazon,” he said.

Stuhr agreed, adding STEMCO is using artificial intelligence to monitor and analyze purchasing trends to determine where production changes need to be made to ensure supply meets demand.

[RELATED: Aftermarket panel at Heavy Duty Aftermarket Dialogue stresses need for agility]

“We are forecasting by part number now,” he said.

The panelists also touched on technology more broadly, addressing how they continue to integrate it into their products and adopt it in their operations.

The trio acknowledged their businesses are now just as much technology businesses as they are manufacturers, though their expertise and experience is heavily tilted toward the latter. As such, the suppliers said they are working hard to better develop marketing guidance, training and more to support customers as they order and adapt connected products. The panel also said are trying to draw on their own difficult experiences adopting technology in their own operations to understand customer frustrations and bring new tech in their products to the market in a positive way.

Grote said customer feedback remains the most effective and direct method of determining how successful any supplier initiative truly is.

“We push our team to get as much customer feedback as possible,” he said.

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