Over the years the company has grown to a 2016 total sales revenue of $40,564,064, which is a 44 percent increase from the previous year, resulting in a $7.3 million profit increase.
Steve Hancock, general manager of the Laredo, Texas, dealership, says the company sold about 200 trucks a year before Doggett purchased the dealership four years ago. This year, the dealership projects to sell 1,200 new trucks alone, not to mention an average of 100 or more used trucks each month.
Hancock says the Laredo team has built a strong relationship with its customer base, and believes that keeping those customers informed is a pivotal part of the dealership’s success.
“Educating our customers is a key part of our success,” Hancock says. “Freightliner has a team of drivers that are part of the “Run Smart” initiative. We regularly have one of their drivers, Henry Albert, come to Laredo and meet with our customers and their drivers to do training and talk about fuel economy. The Run Smart Team is some of the top drivers for fuel economy and work closely with the factory to continually improve the product.”
Working with those customers to ensure they know their vehicles is a top priority to the customer service relationship.
“We work closely with our customers to review their engine reports and help them understand what the data means and how we can possibly make changes to the truck to increase fuel economy and performance,” Hancock says.
“We participate in “ride and drive” events where we take customers to see, test, and drive new products that are coming out in the market. For example, collision mitigation was a recent event that we participated in with customers.”
Doggett Vice President Paul Burk added that employee education is also key.
“We know the value of relationships in our industry and knowledge for both customers and dealership personnel are key to success,” he says.
“We understand that knowledge helps drive success. This is consistently one of our biggest goals and we invested more than $100,000 in service training expense this year to ensure that our technicians were among the highest trained technicians in the industry. Our goal is for all of our technicians to become expert certified at the highest level offered. In addition to technicians, we also require that our salesman complete all of the OEM training that is available and become certified by the factory at the highest level.”
From its beginning in 1993 with one dealership, $2 million in annual sales and 18 employees, the Doggett Group has grown in the past 22 years to 31 dealerships, $980 million in annual sales and more than 1,200 employees.
“We believe in a customer focused way of doing business and providing world class service to each and every customer,” Burk says. “We strive to be the dealership group all other dealers strive to be.”
By design, Burk says, the Doggett Group focuses its philanthropic efforts toward a small, well-defined group of causes in an effort to have a profound impact to a targeted group in lieu of having a marginal impact to many. The Doggett Foundation undertakes activities that can directly impact and change people’s lives without the red tape and associated waste inherent to larger, local and national charities, he says. A sample of the Doggett Foundation’s activities include: payment in full of hospital, anesthesia, and surgical cost of uninsured/indigent applicants; payment in part or full of certain educational costs of approved applicants, payment in full of work tools for approved applicants, construction of the narthex for St. Michael Church, Houston; creation of the Doggett Family Gym at a local high school; contributions for the well-being and living expenses of widows and families of police officers killed in the line of duty; contributions toward the well-being and living expenses of approved at-risk single-parent families.
Doggett Freightliner is one of five Successful Dealer Award finalists invited to the Great American Trucking Show in Dallas in late August.
The other finalists will be profiled in separate articles in the coming weeks.
