Introducing “Trucks Roll!”

  This is Wiers’ inaugural podcast episode featuring CEO & Owner Tom Wiers. Tom brings his 30 years of expertise to help provide insights to viewers and listeners about the commercial trucking industry in this first edition of Trucks Roll! Whether you’re an owner, driver, mechanic, or some other part of the industry, this show aims to give you fantastic insights and more. In this episode, Tom introduces himself and his company, including the history of Wiers as a family business with extensive experience in this industry that keeps America moving!   What You’ll Learn:

• Our show aims to help our customers across different industries!
• Wiers is a family business with loads of experience.
• Tom wants to bring his 30 years of experience to help YOU!

 

Here is the transcript for Trucks Roll Ep. 1:

Tom Wiers: Hello, everyone. I’m Tom Wiers and welcome to the first of many Trucks Roll Podcast. I’ve personally have been in the transportation related field since 1992, spending 30 years at a company called Wiers Fleet Partners and also Wiers International Trucks. This is a new adventure for our company. We hope to educate and bring some subject matter experts to ongoing podcasts and make this a fun experiment for everyone in the commercial truck related space. I’m Tom Wiers, and welcome to the Trucks Roll Podcast. I’ll be your host today with assistance from Liz Wimmer. The Trucks Roll Podcast, this is our very first episode, and we’re bringing it to folks in the commercial truck industry. Whether you’re a driver, a mechanic, an owner, or some other supporting role, we’re here to help talk about those issues facing the commercial truck industry end users and hope to make this a very entertaining and fun experience over the next several episodes. A little bit about myself. I’m Tom Wiers, and I’m the owner of Wiers Fleet Partners and Wiers International Trucks. We provide commercial truck repair and fleet service, and also own three International Truck Dealerships. We’re located in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Colorado at the present time. The story about our company is my parents started this international dealership, International Harvester, back in the day in 1964, and I grew up in that business. My father passed away in 1992, so I ended up taking over the family business. And over the last 30 years have been dedicated to helping trucks roll and commercial truck users try to maintain their profitability and grow their businesses with our assistance. Looking forward to sharing a number of experiences with you and learning myself along this journey. Liz Wimmer: Thanks. Tom, I have a question it’s mostly around the catchphrase trucks roll. What does that really mean? I mean, I think we talk about it internally a lot, but what does it mean to our customers? Tom Wiers: Well, trucks roll is something that we’ve adopted a number of years ago, and it’s really an internal discussion point about keeping the focus on the fact that we’re here. Our job really is to help our customers get their trucks on the road. If a truck is sitting in our shop and waiting on parts, or if it’s waiting to get in the shop or parts are back ordered, that’s not helping our customer. What they’re really after is they want their truck on the road. They want to be able to deliver products and services in a timely, cost effective manner. Trucks roll is an internal term and saying that we use just to really focus and understand that our job is to get them in them and get them out, whether it’s a body shop repair, as I said, parts sales, or most of our business is around the truck repair and maintenance, just really keeping that focus and top of mind awareness internally. Liz Wimmer: People who are tuning in to the podcast for the first time or maybe they’re listening in, who’s this for? Tom Wiers: Well, that’s a great question. When I talk to people about our business, somebody will ask me what do you do and I’ll talk about truck repair, fleet service, they oftentimes think about large fleets. They think interstates. They think of truck stops. They think of 18 wheelers and that sort of thing. And while that is a good portion of our business, Liz, as you know, we actually deal with a lot of smaller companies who have commercial trucks to deliver, as I said, their products and services. A lot of our customers are in the construction supply fields. They’re in utilities. It could be landscaping, all kinds of distribution, whether they’re manufacturer of widgets and they have trucks to deliver their products to customers, or maybe they have trucks just to deliver products to their suppliers for powder coating, or whatever the case may be. We have a really big breadth of customer types and many of them aren’t really focused on their fleet because their main business is something else. They’re not experts in truck maintenance. They’re not experts necessarily in purchasing trucks, so they need help and assistance. That’s one of the things that we really try to work on. That’s one of the reasons of Wiers Fleet Partners. Fleet Partners is the title of the company because we really want to help those customers operate efficiently and be there with them through good times and bad, if you will. Liz Wimmer: Yeah, that’s good. I know internally also we talk through what the different kind of components of our business are. We operate in service centers, mobile service, and we’re working on kind of vamping up the connected technology. That’s very exciting to see. This will be a great podcast. Tom Wiers: Yeah. Yeah. Liz Wimmer: What do we want people to do if they’re listening in? Where do we want to send them, or what kind of action do we want them to take? Tom Wiers: Well, I think, first and foremost, just being a resource for those companies and customers and prospects and even other either competitors or suppliers within industries are first and foremost, just kind of giving back to the community, the commercial truck community, that has been so good to us is our main objective. Obviously we like to educate folks along the way. If we can be a part of the solution, something that would improve their business, then we’re in business to help customers, so we’d love the opportunity to have discussions and see if we can play a part in their future. I think you touched on an important part of our business. It’s not just bricks and mortar, even though that’s where we started with the company with one location. We’re currently at nine and looking to add. But along the way, we’ve understood that customers’ needs are beyond just a brick and mortar. They need support sometimes on their location. We provide mobile services, where that’s mobile maintenance, which is scheduled. We can come and help them out on their lot on a Saturday or perform a number of PMs at one time. And that benefits customers because they don’t have to worry about moving trucks around and hours of service and accidents happen and over time costs and those sorts of things. The mobile services is a big part. Emergency service, which is part of that umbrella. When a customer doesn’t… Their truck won’t start on a cold winter morning, we’re there to help and support them. That’s an important part. And then the use of technology really over the last five to 10 years has really expanded. It’s yet one more thing. As business owners, we’ve got to evaluate and purchase and implement, and then try to manage. There’s data coming at us. How do we use that information to make better decisions? Those are all real serious challenges. That’s where we’re at as an organization is helping our customers in those three categories. Liz Wimmer: Sounds like a lot of fun. Tom Wiers: It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of work. A lot of challenge. A lot of investment. On this first episode, we’re just getting our feet wet. I’m sure that each one will be get better and better. If you have the ability to see this on a screen, you can see in the background, there’s a few pictures behind me. Over my right shoulder, there’s our shop that I grew up in and a picture of my father behind me. And then, of course, over my left shoulder was the original shop my parents had in the ’50s back when they were the trucking industry. We bring a lot of passion, a lot of heritage, a lot of commitment to the industry, and we’re looking forward to sharing that in upcoming episodes. If you want to learn more about our company, Wiers.com is a great resource. We look forward to bringing in some subject matter experts in future episodes, whether they’re helping to understand how to recruit drivers, experts in telematics devices, and all kinds of tire usage and all those sorts of vendors and suppliers that help keep commercial trucks on the road. Look forward to it and thanks for joining our first podcast. Have a great day. Liz Wimmer: Thanks, everyone.

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