Annual Work Truck Show Just Keeps Getting Better

The annual Work Truck Show in Indianapolis last March was a great success, according to dozens of exhibitors and attendees who spoke with Service Truck Magazine during the show.

Brett Collins, president of Venco Venturo Industries LLC, summed up the consensus opinion as well as anybody when she said that “every year we say the same thing: that was our best show ever.”

His grandfather, Art Collins, was a founder of the distributors’ association that eventually became the National Truck Equipment Association, which produces the Work Truck Show, Collins said. Venco Venturo has been attending the show and its predecessor versions for about half a century.

“I sat on the NTEA board of trustees for five years, so I’m very intimately involved with the NTEA, a great trade association,” Collins said. “I challenge any other industry to have a trade association and a trade show this good.”

The 2016 version of the show, held March 1-4 at the Indianapolis Convention Center, drew record attendance of 11,905, the NTEA announced the following week. That broke the previous attendance record of 11,005 set in 2015.

Steve Carey, executive director of the NTEA, said in mid March that the organization was still going through visitors surveys of the show. However, he was able to conclude that there was a “pretty good jump” this year in professional attendance, “which is the people that are there that aren’t affiliated with the exhibiting companies.” They include fleet managers, truck buyers, truck dealers, and the distributor and upfitter communities.

“We think when we get through the data we’re going to see pretty good unilateral increases across all of those groups right now,” Carey added.

An “outstanding” event, distributor says

The show was “outstanding,” said Bob Hews, president of Hews Company LLC, whose company is a distributor for various service body makers, including Maintainer Corporation of Iowa Inc., and Reading Truck Body LLC.

“It’s really a great place to get a sense of what direction the industry is heading and what products are on the forefront,” said Hews, whose company is based in Portland, Maine, and serves New England and the mid-Atlantic states. “Obviously if you’ve been here for 40 plus years you’ve got some old-timers you like to catch up with and see what’s going.”

Hews has been attending the shows since “the old days” when they called them “fun shows” that moved to a different locale — Las Vegas, Houston, or Orlando — from one year to the next. “But this is a great place,” Hews said. “This is really a work truck show.”

Peter Gagliardi of Control Products inc. of East Hannover, N.J., said he noticed more exhibitors this year than in past years when he has attended the show. “And a lot of new exhibitors that I’m interested in.”

His company manufactures electrical controls for trucks as well as hydraulic controls. “And we want to see what’s new in the industry.”

He didn’t attend the show last year but was at the 2013 event. “And that was an excellent show so I’m back again.”

More fleet managers noticed

Jason Wood, a sales engineer with  Adrian Steel, said the show provides an opportunity for face-to-face meetings with people he usually only communicates with by phone.

“So it’s always good to come here, see some new products, and show off our new products,” said Wood, whose company manufactures shelving for vans, and upfits commercial vans.

“We pretty much do anything in a van. If you want it, we probably can do it,” said Wood, who was attending his third work Truck Show.

Carla Anglin, vice-president of sales and marketing for BrandFX Body, said she encountered more fleet managers at the show this time around, a trend that she has noticed in recent years.

“And I’m glad,” said Anglin, whose company is based in Fort Worth, Texas. “It’s a welcome change. The show is evolving into including more of the fleet decision-makers. It used to be more of a distributor show for us.”

Carey said that increasing participation from those decision makers is something show organizers have been working on in recent years.

“We believe that the event is really for the industry in the entire value chain,” Carey said. As a result, the show has been bringing together buyers, distributors, leasing companies even big commercial dealers “because they’re all partners and they’re all inter-related in how these trucks get built and come to market.”

Quality trumps quantity

Not everyone was convinced that attendance at the show was up. A few attendees even said, without wanting to attach their names to the comments, that show organizers almost always say there’s record attendance. One time they didn’t, though, was in 2014 when the show’s dates conflicted with the triennial ConExpo-Con/Agg trade show in Las Vegas.

Shane Erickson, sales/marketing manager and dealer development for Valley Industries LLC of Hastings, Neb., said he didn’t think that attendance was up, “but we’ve had quality attendance.”

“The guys who are coming down to see us, they’re not just coming around to see what we build,” said Erickson, whose company makes LubeMate and FuelMate lube skids. “They already know what we build. They have a need for it and so they’re looking for us to talk to us (and) to see what we need to do to go forward with building them a custom unit.”

Ray Hessil, speciality vehicle product line manager with CTech Manufacturing, said his company’s booth experienced a lot of foot traffic, which has typically been the case.

“The show is great. It’s always a good show for us,” said Hessil, whose company has taken part in the event for about a dozen years.

“When we get the neighbours saying, ‘Boy how come all the people are by your booth? and not by our booth,’ it says a lot about our product,” Hessil added.

Cesar Paredes, regional sales manager with ASM Sensors Inc. of Elmhurst, Ill., attended the show for the first time and was impressed.

“There is a lot of good companies and a lot of trucks and a lot of new technologies that I hadn’t seen before,” Paredes said during a visit to the Auto Crane booth.

Ian Phillips, a design engineer with Auto Crane, was also attending the show for the first time, although his company has been a member of the NTEA for about 40 years.

“It just keeps getting better, a really good turnout,” Phillips said, adding that “we see a lot of suppliers and competitors as well but also potential vendors, new partnerships and things like that.”

First-timers impressed

Also attending the show for the first time was Jon Zaitz of Double J Services LLC in Seymour Wisc., about 15 minutes from Green Bay.

“I think it’s a great show, a lot of information and a lot of technology,” Zaitz said. “It’s nice to get out of the house and take a vacation.”

For Zaitz, who has three service trucks in his fleet, it was much more than a holiday. He was there to gather information on how to make his trucks more efficient, although he also had some advice for truck makers and upfitters. “There’s a lot of manufacturers it sometimes doesn’t seem like they take guys that work out of them every day and walk ’em around a truck,” said Zaitz, who repairs and services heavy equipment such Caterpillar and Cummins machines, or anything else that moves dirt.

Among his trucks is a 1999 Freightliner FL60 with a Knapheide boy and 6,000-pound capacity Iowa Mold Tooling crane. “Freightliner is an easy truck to find; they’re cheaper to find; you can spec ’em out; parts are readily available; so it’s a convenient truck,” Zaitz said.

Pam Kaplan of Truck Builders of Connecticut, based in Terryville, came to the show to learn about service bodies because her job is going to be selling them.

“It’s fun. You learn a lot,” she said as her significant other and company owner, Kim Pelletier, got down on the floor to check out the underside of a service truck at the Caseco Manufacturing Inc. stand that he was looking to buy for a customer.

Show generates many ideas

“It’s been excellent this year,” said marketing manager Andy Price at the Altec Inc. booth. “Traffic was very good. We had some new product in the booth which helped to draw in potential customers. And we found their interest in the products we have here to be very good and expect some very good leads to follow up after the show.”

Among those new products were Altec’s “newly advanced” fiberglass service and utility bodies that the company announced at the show.

George Mayhew, who works with Verizon Communications out of Westminster, Md., said the show “generates a lot of ideas” for him.

“You see some of this equipment, how somebody else puts together a vehicle and you start thinking how that might work in your application or something close to it,” Mayhew said as he stopped by the stand of Vanair Manufacturing Inc. “It’s an essential show.”

Verizon has a fleet of about 26,000 vehicles and a small fleet of service trucks that work in remote locations or to perform light maintenance in parking locations away from company garages.

“So we’re just replacing some older fleet service trucks,” Mayhew said. “And things change so we’re just kind of looking at how we want to spec out these new trucks with what equipment we’re going to put on them.”

For Mayhew, the Work Truck Show is a chance for him to meet with existing vendors to go over current and future projects. “And it’s a chance to see new products from a multitude of vendors that we may not have dealt with ever before,” Mayhew said.

Pre-show promotion proves benefical

Aaron Sage, CEO of Sage Oil Vac, said his company was back at the show after a two-year hiatus. Sage had skipped the show in 2014 in favor of ConExpo and then wasn’t able to secure a spot for the 2015 show because of a long wait list.

“The show’s been really good,” Sage said. “We’ve seen a lot of potential distributors, some very good interest from all through Canada up into the Northeast. I think it’s going to be a good show, a lot of opportunities, a lot of lube equipment is being distributed out there and quoted right now, so there’s a lot of good opportunities.”

Sage attributes that success to pre-show planning and promotion that focused on making connections with potential distributors.

“In years past, we didn’t do as much pre-show promotion as we’ve done this year,” Sage said. “So I think it’s better because we’ve really been trying to key on distribution, finding good partners.”

John Dennehy, vice-president of marketing and communications for Ontario-based Espar Products Inc., said the show was a great opportunity for his company to promote its lines of German-made Eberspächer vehicle heaters.

“So we’re enjoying the show,” said Dennehy, whose company has been an associate member of the NTEA for five years. “We’ve had some great traffic both from the fleet side but also from the government sector side. We’re manufacturing a product that reduces idling so it’s a good place to be.”

At a previous show, the Eberspächer booth was in a larger, 20 feet by 20 feet space, and in a higher traffic area. However, the company gave up the rights to that larger space and settled for 10 feet by 10 feet booth near the corner of one two the exhibition halls. “Even that being said, the traffic’s been pretty decent,” said Dennehy, who drove up the night before from a show the Technical Maintenance Council of the American Trucking Association was hosting in Nashville.

It’s the place to be

Jeff Steer, sales manager at Goodall Mfg., also attended the TMC show before flying into Indianapolis for the Work Truck Show.

“This is the place to come for people who are building service trucks,” said Steer, whose company’s products include 38 models of Start-All engine starting systems. “This is the show. We come every year supporting it and we get a lot of our customers come here to see us. We have our rep meeting here.”

Trucking consultant Dave Schaller also came to the Work Truck Show from TMC, where he staffed a booth on behalf of the North American Council for Freight Efficiency, one of his various roles.

“Since I am wearing a lot of different hats, it’s fun because I’m talking to lighting folks, I’m talking to fuel-efficiency folks,” Schaller said. “I can’t even mention some of the others. So it’s very diverse.”

Schaller was conflicted, though, about whether he prefers staffing a booth to wandering around a show.

“I enjoy the opportunity to stand there and engage folks and try to help them out. It’s a pretty cool situation,” Schaller said.

And then he explained, for example, how a company struggling with high-fuel costs and idle reduction can obtain a council paper on idle reduction.

Of course, with low fuel prices of late, Schaller is noticing that fuel-efficiency isn’t the concern it was just a year ago.

“Two bucks a gallon’s not bad right now, right? What’s it going to be in 10 years when you’re getting rid of that truck? Five? If between years five and 10, we’ve had an earthquake, a volcano, the Middle East for some reason there’s not peace there and we run into problems again, are you going to be in trouble with the way you’re speccing a truck?” Schaller said.

Attendees come from near and far

According to the NTEA, attendees at the show came from 19 countries, all 50 U.S. states, and eight of the 10 Canadian provinces.

Among the Canadian exhibitors was Kevin Lanthier, sales coordinator with Ontario-based Pride Bodies Ltd. The show was “phenomenal,” he said.

“We’ve had a lot more traffic this year than we’ve had in recent years,” Lanthier said. “We were a little more concerned because of being in the corner. But you know what? I don’t know what the difference is. It seems a lot busier.”

He credited the efforts of Pride’s U.S. sales manager, Andy deLivron, with drumming up interest by sending out email blasts to potential customers in advance of the show.

“We’ve really got a lot of more end-users this year, the decision makers,” Lathier said. The company has also had visits from potential distributors, he added.

The weak Canadian dollar has also benefited manufacturers on the Canadian side of the border, such as Pride. “But cracking that market’s difficult because if you’re not on the ground in the United States, it’s another hurdle to get past,” Lanthier said, adding that “we’re all North Americans. Canadian built’s just as strong and just as good as any American-built product.”

Albert Ribeiro, sales and marketing manager for Wilcox Bodies Ltd., said the low Canadian dollar has also been boon for his Ontario-based company. “That’s what we’re here for is to get some new distributors going and get some of those U.S. dollars,” Ribeiro said adding that “we have a little bit of homework to do after the show and follow up on all the interest.”

Show close to home for this exhibitor

Andrew Van Vlymen, president of Van’s Electrical Systems, didn’t have far to come to take part in the show. His company is based only about two miles from the convention center.

“It is a good show for us because what we specialize in are the people that either build the truck bodies here that are at the show or working on the vehicles,” said Van Vlymen, whose company is a distributor for electrical components from companies like Cole Hersee, Bosch, and CRC. “So that’s exactly the market that we’re looking for.”

Van Vlymen’s father, Marvin, founded the company in 1958. It has been an NTEA member since 2003 and has attended about 15 Work Truck Shows in a row.

Despite being with an Indianapolis company, Van Vlymen doesn’t get asked for advice on city restaurants. But he does receive a lot of inquiries from customers.

“Normally we’re known as problem solvers,” Van Vlymen said. “And so you tell us what you’re doing with that new body that you’re upfitting and we’ll be able to provide the correct parts to do that.”