Velocity Vehicle Group doesn’t shy away from challenges. Brad Fauvre says you can’t survive doing that in the truck dealer business. The business is unquestionably hard — every dealer faces new challenges every day — but with those challenges also come opportunities for improvement. For innovation and customer service excellence.
Velocity Vehicle Group is one of the largest commercial truck dealers in North America (and the world) because it relishes the chance to get better. That dogged pursuit of excellence also has helped the company be named a finalist for the first time in 2024 for the Successful Dealer Award.
“We’re a company that’s always leaned in,” says Fauvre, who co-founded Velocity in 1998 with Conan Barker and serves as CEO. “Everyone on this call is a great example of that. All are willing to dig in and help to improve the business.”
The pace at which the business has improved and grown is almost unfathomable.
Fauvre and Barker launched Velocity after careers at an investment group where they became interested in the potential of bringing new ideas into fragmented, business-to-business industrial operations. They purchased three Los Angeles-area Freightliner dealerships in 1998, initiated their business plan and the company hasn’t looked back.
Velocity now has 119 locations globally — including 52 in the United States. Yet Fauvre says the building blocks on which the company operates today aren’t any different than what he and Barker laid 26 years ago.
Velocity’s go-to-market strategy is based on speed, value and trust. On being a dealer customers can count on to provide attentive, quality customer service during every interaction and never hesitate to improve.
Adds COO Scott Zeppenfeldt, “We treat every customer like an opportunity, not an interruption, and we try to embed that in our employee’s DNA.”
With more than 5,200 employees, that’s not a simple task. Nor is it one the company takes lightly, says Jessica Ramirez, vice president of human resources.
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“Our culture is built by front-line leaders at the local level,” she says, noting store and department managers are encouraged to focus heavily on training and employee development for all associates. Additionally, Velocity has detailed employee mentoring and career path programs and a dozen internal trainers to keep the dealer’s huge workforce updated on all products and technologies.
Recognition is another key tenet of the company’s culture. Velocity introduced a technician skills competition four years ago to best celebrate its strongest technical minds. Zeppenfeldt says all technicians are eligible and the top performers from an opening round online test are brought to California to compete in an on-site competition to receive for cash and prizes.
In other departments, Ramirez says associates are regularly recognized by each other and leadership for great work, and an annual employee survey helps gauge how the company’s workforce programs are received.
Customer interaction is equally important. Fauvre says Velocity is one of the only dealers in the world that supports every Daimler commercial vehicle brand, but the dealer group does not rest on its size to survive.
Velocity sells more than a dozen truck and trailer brands to ensure it has a product to meet any customer’s needs, and supplements those vehicle sales with many other resources.
In the parts sector, Velocity holds more than $68 million in inventory and has an 85-person outside sales team calling on customers each day. The company’s service division employs more than 700 technicians (50 of which work full-time on-site at customer locations) and has more than 100 mobile service units. Zeppenfeldt says every U.S. store is Elite Support certified, and the company’s Canadian locations that were purchased last year should all be online with the program by 2025.
Velocity has other resources too, including a 2,500-unit lease and rental fleet, standalone finance company and an alternative power and regulatory compliance division dedicating to helping customers faced with difficult procurement designs due to state and federal emissions regulations. With 21 locations in California alone, Fauvre says the team is helping customers learn not just of their regulatory requirements, but how to adopt new technologies and install infrastructure intelligently.
“We can help our customers navigate these technologies,” he says. “We want to be there for them.”
Adds Zeppenfeldt, “We have technical engineers to talk to customers about their needs. We can connect them with their public utility … we do all of that as a free service.”
Fauvre says all those efforts help Velocity continuously improve, and remain on the leading edge of meeting and defeating challenges.
“I always tell folks, ‘Did you improve something today?’” he says. “When you do that, you’ve had a great day.”
“Over our years of growth, we’ve always been focused on growing that one-stop shop mentality for customers,” says Zeppenfeldt. “We ask ‘How can we help you grow your business?’ because we know that will help grow ours.”
The 2024 Successful Dealer Award is sponsored by Automann, Interstate Billing Service, Karmak, National Truck Protection and Premium 2000. For more information on the award program, go to the award story archive.