Last month we announced the finalists for our sixth annual Successful Dealer Award. Nominated by the trucking industry and selected by the Successful Dealer editorial staff, this year’s finalists feature one prior award winner, one past finalist and three first-time finalists. Over the next few months, we will be regularly profiling each business in the lead up to our 2018 Successful Dealer Award presentation in October.
Those features began last week, and today we check in with 2018 Successful Dealer Award finalist Truckworx.
This is the first time Truckworx has earned a nomination for the Successful Dealer Award. The answers below were provided by the team at Truckworx.
When was your business founded, and by whom?
Truckworx was founded in 1978 as Kenworth of Birmingham by father and son, B.B. and Bob Mitchell. Today, the company is led by Will Bruser, president, and is still family owned.
How many locations do you have?
Truckworx operates nine locations with plans to open a tenth by the end of 2018. Full-service dealerships are located in Birmingham, Dothan, Montgomery, Mobile, Huntsville, and Thomasville, Ala., as well as Jackson, Miss. We will be opening another full-service dealership in Tuscaloosa, Ala., by the end of 2018.
Additionally, Truckworx operates a commercial truck, trailer, and bus parts store, TRP Parts, in Alabaster, Ala., as well as a commercial body shop, Truckworx Body Shop, in Birmingham, Ala.
How many employees do you have?
375
Please describe the full complement of services offered by your organization?
Truckworx is the Southeast’s premier commercial truck, trailer and bus dealer featuring nationally acclaimed parts and service teams and award-winning product lines. Truckworx represents Kenworth, Hino, and Isuzu commercial trucks, Blue Bird school buses, and six heavy-duty trailer manufacturers (MAC, Talbert, Pitts, Fontaine, Dragon, and Clement). The company also offers short term and long term commercial truck rentals and full-service leasing through PacLease and is an authorized dealer for Yeti products and M.B. Ranch King deer blinds.
We are consistently working to reduce our customers’ downtime and improve the overall customer experience, therefore our list of products and service offerings is constantly evolving.
All full-service locations are qualified to perform service work on all makes and models and are certified to do warranty work on Kenworth, Hino, and Isuzu Trucks as well as CAT, Cummins, and Paccar engines. Our state-of-the-art facilities are all equipped with specialty equipment such as DPF cleaning machines, flywheel resurfacing machines, and alignment equipment. Truckworx also offers Kenworth PremierCare ExpressLane, which includes computer diagnostics guaranteed within two hours of a truck’s arrival and an ExpressLube to handle quick maintenance items. Our service departments recently implemented the TruckTech+ Service Management System, which streamlines internal and external communication on service repairs, providing our customers with real time status updates and drastically reducing downtime. Truckworx also has a fleet of mobile service trucks that are equipped with the appropriate parts, service tools, and software to complete the most common truck repairs and maintenance needs on a customer’s jobsite.
Additionally, Truckworx offers extended business hours in many of our locations to help get our customers’ trucks up and running faster. The Birmingham and Mobile, Ala., locations and Jackson, Miss., location have each implemented an “80 and 8” policy, in which the parts and service departments are open for 80 hours during the work week, running two shifts, and eight hours every Saturday. To accommodate our customers’ needs, our Birmingham dealership is also open from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Sundays and our Dothan, Ala., location is open on Saturdays from 7 a.m. to noon.
Throughout the company’s nine locations, Truckworx parts departments have over $13 million in inventory and the company has a 99 percent fill rate on parts orders. Truckworx delivers parts daily to most counties within Alabama, Mississippi, and the Florida Panhandle, as well as some in Georgia. Plus, customers can now order parts online through Online Parts Counter (OPC) making it fast and easy to get the parts you need to get your equipment back in action!
What is your company’s value proposition?
Truckworx is the partner you can count on in the transportation industry. We recognize that in our line of work, time is money, and our goal is to keep our customers’ trucks and buses on the road and running smoothly. We do that by making the investment where it counts. Our knowledgeable, experienced parts, service, and equipment sales teams maintain up-to-date training on products and equipment so that we can solve our customers’ problems correctly and efficiently. Our facilities house state-of-the-art equipment, software, and tooling plus an ample supply of truck, trailer, and bus parts. From spec’ing a new truck or bus for optimized performance to repairing your truck right the first time, Truckworx has you covered; now and for years to come.
How do you differentiate your business from your competitors?
Everything we do at Truckworx stems from our mission statement “Do what’s right for the right reasons. All day every day.” Truckworx has a strong focus on customer service and personal relationships. We consider our customers, vendors, and employees to be business partners and our goal is to create long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships with them. As a company, we are always looking for ways we can serve each group better and truly listen to ideas for improvement.
Why do you believe the trucking industry has nominated your business for this award?
The Truckworx Team is made up of an exceptional group of people that comes to work every day ready to work hard to accomplish greatness. We strive to make a positive impact on our customers’ and vendors’ businesses, our employees and their families, and each community we are in. Managers at Truckworx stress the importance of living by the company’s mission statement, “Do what is right for the right reasons. All day every day,” not only in business, but in our personal lives. The company’s core values are “Respect” and “Attitude.” Applying these principals throughout the company when making all business decisions, big or small, has created a company culture that customers and vendors want to do business with and one that employees are proud to be a part of.
In fact, the company’s total sales has increased by more than 60 percent over the last five years and employment has increased by 25 percent. We have exciting things coming over the next few months as we move into a new 75,000 sq.-ft. facility in Jackson, Miss., and open a new full-service dealership in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Truckworx also continues to evaluate opportunities for growth as they are presented to determine if they align with our mission statement to “Do what is right for the right reasons” for our customers, our employees, our communities, and our company.
