Page 158 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

In our eyes, International got instant credibility when Peterson bought them. Peterson has partnered with us for years and helped us be successful.
– Gregg Stumbaugh, corporate equipment director, Biagi Bros. Trucking
decided to build their own Cat vocational work truck. Rumors had been flying through the indus- try for a year but nothing had been formally an- nounced. Customers loyal to the Caterpillar brand were left to wait and wonder.
THE TRANSITION: WHEN RELATIONSHIPS LAST
Peterson is about relationships every bit as much as it is about products. Nobody knows that better than Ken Ehni. And his customers. Ehni has worn several hats during his thirty years with Peterson but is happiest out on the road talking trucks with customers. So when Caterpillar quit building truck engines in 2008, things started getting gloomy. While his customers were in mourning, Ehni was
out reassuring them that he would not leave them dangling. He was also trying to figure out a work- able solution for the big gap that Cat’s departure posed. “I was a bit nervous at first,” says Gregg Stumbaugh, Biagi’s corporate equipment director. “But when I heard about the new Cat truck, I got re-energized. And then when the specs for their new model came out, I took a step back because it was way too heavy for our application.”
Ehni got a call a few weeks later from the own- er of Biagi Trucking himself, Fred Biagi. “He was holding back to buy the new Caterpillar truck he’d been hearing about,” says Ehni. “I told him it was too heavy for his application. ‘Yeah, I know,’ he said, ‘but we’re all Peterbilt here, and you’ve worked with us all these years. We just want to buy something from you.’ So I told him to buy Interna- tionals.” When Ehni reported the impending sale to his boss, Krummen was incredulous. “Five new trucks just like that? Unbelievable!”
At a time when Peterson was trying to get traction in a new business, having a customer buy five new trucks, just like that, was amazing. “It’s a relation- ship thing,” Ehni told Krummen. Thirty years of relationship, to be exact. Thirty years of being there before and after hours, partnering on deals, split- ting the difference on disagreements, going the extra mile, and selling equipment with the right specs, not just the one in stock. Loyalty and rela- tionship go both ways.
“For four years, we didn’t buy any new trucks be- cause of the economy,” says Stumbaugh. “None. And that’s unusual because we generally buy thirty new trucks every year. But the first ones we bought after that stint were five new Internationals from Peterson. The reason we went with International is partially the service. But mostly, in our eyes, In- ternational got instant credibility when Peterson bought them. Peterson has partnered with us for years and helped us be successful. It’s the integrity of guys like Ken Ehni. You can’t question it. It’s just there.”
156 | PETERSON: 85 YEARS AND GOING STRONG