With more than 400 years of combined industry experience and 234 locations spread across North America, the finalists for the 2026 Successful Dealer Award have the largest footprint in the 14-year history of our award program.
Introduced in 2013, the Successful Dealer Award program honors North America’s best commercial truck dealer operations for continued market excellence. All dealers featured in the program are nominated through industry input, ensuring only operations known for consistent brilliance are recognized as among the industry’s best each year.
The finalists are California Truck Centers, Excel Truck Group, Kenworth of Pennsylvania, Kenworth Sales Company and Rush Truck Centers.
Excel Truck Group was previously a finalist in 2024; the other dealer operations in consideration for this year’s award are finalists for the first time.
“What an embarrassment of riches we have with this year’s group of award finalists. I feel maybe the industry is spoiling us,” says Lucas Deal, Trucks, Parts, Service editor and content director. “Since the formation of our program we’ve always been incredibly fortunate to have strong buy-in and support from the trucking industry. Our list of nominated dealers is always astounding, and this year that group has provided us five tremendous dealers to consider for our award.”
In total, 29 truck dealer operations received at least one nomination for this year’s award — including two prior winners and three previous finalists. After our nomination period concluded in June, each nominee was then requested to complete a detailed questionnaire about their business, with the finalists being selected this week based on the strength of their submissions.
“I would like to thank everyone across the trucking industry for their support in nominating dealers for our program this year, and offer a special thank you and congratulations to every dealer who was nominated,” says Deal. “Selecting the finalists for this program is gut-wrenching work. Every dealer deserves recognition and we are sorry only five can be honored as finalists.”
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With 167 locations, Rush Truck Centers is the largest dealer group in North America and thus the largest dealer to ever participate in the Successful Dealer Award program, surpassing Velocity Vehicle Group, which had 119 locations when it participated in 2024.
Every finalist in this year’s program has at least eight locations, and has been in operation at least 60 years. Together, the five organizations represent Autocar, Battle Motors, Freightliner, Hino, International, Isuzu, Kalmar Ottawa, Kenworth, Mack, Peterbilt, Rizon and Western Star.
This year’s finalists will now be profiled on TPS in the months ahead, with the 2026 Successful Dealer Award to be announced during the program’s exclusive dealer summit on Oct. 6, in Nashville.
Attendance to the Successful Dealer Award Summit is limited to current award finalists and prior winners. The two-day event is a meld of high-level industry presentations, open business discussion and elite networking opportunities. Award finalists are provided all-inclusive registration for the event, while all on-site expenses are covered for prior award finalists.
Stay tuned to TPS for more about this year’s finalists and the 2026 Successful Dealer Award program.
