THEY say everything's bigger in Texas, and Haulmark Industries does not disagree.
For at least four years, Haulmark scrutinized the trailer market in the nation's second most populous state. Founded in 1977, Haulmark had been building trailers in states on both sides of Texas, in Arizona and Georgia. It had a small number of dealers in Texas, but the $1,000 freight charge from either state was exorbitant.
All that changed when Haulmark bought a 138,000-sq-ft facility in Waco and started producing trailers in February.
“We've just taken off,” general manager Rich Parr says. “The last couple of months have been incredible. We're producing more than we thought we could — an average of 10 trailers a day — and shipping more than we ever thought we could this early. It's a good problem to have.”
Sales manager Zane Sessions, who had been a Texas-based national troubleshooter for Haulmark, had been pushing for a Texas facility throughout his five-year tenure with the company.
“I knew the possibilities here and the potential for business,” he says. “There's a lot of population and a lot of trailers, from motorcycle people to ATV people to race-car people. It's a good market. I had developed Texas for another company. I knew all the players and what the market was.
“At that particular time, Texas was kind of wide open. People were still hauling race cars in open trailers. Now they've turned around and are using closed trailers. This thing's going to be big — for Haulmark and for Texas. With our coverage in the US, there was a blank area. We should have been here sooner. It just took us awhile.”
A reunion for Parr
Parr knew the potential, too. In fact, he knew the building — intimately. He worked in the plant when it was owned by Condor and used to build aerial lifts.
Parr ultimately ended up in the mobile home business in Arizona, where his wife, Debbie, worked for Haulmark. Mike Arnold, Haulmark's president, hired both of them and sent them back to Texas, with Debbie serving as purchasing manager.
“He bought the building I had come from — he just didn't know it,” Parr says with a laugh. “He said, ‘You think you can make it work?’ I said, ‘I think I can.’ ”
The plant, originally built in 1981 by Terry Trailer, had not been used in over two years. Parr's first task was to come in and clean it up. For two weeks, Parr and production manager Frank Talley used the powerful spray from fire hoses to clear the ceiling and walls of cobwebs.
Parr says it is not common for Haulmark to send in a startup team. So with the help of Johnny Street, general manager of Haulmark's Georgia plant, they designed a manufacturing plan and spent three weeks with six welders building all of their own jigs, racks and storage space. They hung overhead steel and cords.
They are using just 4,000 sq ft for offices, so the other 134,000 is devoted entirely to manufacturing.
“We don't mess around with having a lot of people or overhead,” Parr says. “We've got four times the office space we'll ever use, because we run one product. We want to make sure we make money and make our people happy. We're really only interested in building trailers.”
Plant is just right
The plant's shape is perfect for what they want to do — long and narrow, allowing them enough space to ultimately run four lines.
“We have the luxury of keeping everything contained inside,” Parr says. “Instead of moving product from a plywood building to a metal building to a final building, we're able to do almost everything inside one building. They start in the weld shop, which is a separate building, but once they're painted, they never leave the building until they have a tag on.
“With some of Haulmark's other facilities, they have to move product from area to area. Forklift drivers are going crazy, and there's all that time and labor spent in that. And somebody has to manage those piles.
“But we've got a track system and it rolls down. You don't have as much material handling and time in that.”
Haulmark produces trailers that are used to haul cargo, landscape equipment, cars, and motorcycles. The cargo trailers include Grizzlies (up to 28'), Kodiaks, Cubs, Grizzly Cubs, and transports. The automotive line is led by the Thrifty car hauler (up to 28').
Parr says the rapid growth of the product mix and the rising dollar volume justify the start of a second line in mid-June that will include motorcycle and race trailers.
“We're already talking about a third and fourth line, where we're going to set up things for that,” Talley says. “We haven't been going very long, but we're already to the point where we're ready to put up a second line. We'll finish the year with two lines. When we have four lines, probably by the end of 2004, we'll be doing 200 trailers a week.”
How did Haulmark get off the ground so quickly? Parr's answer comes quickly, without any hesitation: the employees.
He says he recruited very few employees from other Haulmark plants. Instead, he hired some he had worked with in the mobile-home business and others who had no experience building trailers.
“We've really taken people who have a good work ethic,” Parr says. “We put them in the plant and said, ‘Do you want to be a part of this? Do you want to be in from the ground up? Can you be here every day? It's all about your commitments. Don't say you can do something you can't do. If you say you're going to do it, you'd better do it. Raise your hand if you can't. Tell me where you're at. Then we'll figure out how we're going to get there.’ If something's wrong with one of their checks, I fix it. If something's wrong with one of their units, they fix it. That's the relationship we have.
“We took people who aren't familiar with this product and said, ‘Here's how you do it. Here's why you do it. Now do it as many times as you can.’ They have good work ethic.
“People say the labor force in Texas is real tough. I don't find it to be tough at all. Pay 'em good, treat 'em well. And that's what we do. They're here every day, through thick and thin. They'll grow with you. They understand what it means to go from one trailer a day to 10 trailers a day.”
Parr says the disadvantage is that they don't have the 26 years of knowledge that the employees have at the headquarters in Bristol, Indiana. The advantage is that Parr and the other managers can tell their employees how to do it and stress that the method will never change.
“Because we had the luxury of a new plant, we didn't have to teach old people new things,” Parr says. “We were able to take some of the things that are done in Georgia, some of the things that are done in Indiana, some of the things that are done in Arizona and Utah.
“We haven't changed the product look. We've just made a better package for our customers. Our product isn't any higher priced. We just feel we provide better value for our customers.”
Parr conducts 20-minute plant meetings every Monday in which they address rules and safety and quality issues, along with discussing which methods are effective and which aren't. But mostly, they take the no-nonsense approach: They just work hard.
Demand is great
From the sales aspect, Sessions says they have inherited some existing dealers from some other plants and also are trying to solidify their relationships with new dealers.
With the logistics of the plant operation and the dealer network already solidified, the biggest problem right now is producing enough trailers to meet the demand.
“We still have to say to some of our dealers, ‘Go ahead and order that trailer from Georgia,’ ” Parr says. “It kills me, because we want to build everything. But we're not ready. We're going to take it in steps to make sure we don't jeopardize our quality. We haven't lost that order. It just goes to another Haulmark plant.
“We're really going to work hard on our quality and delivery times. I think those are the most important things in Texas. I'm a bit more involved than most general managers in production. I'm not sitting here tooting my horn. I'm just saying that my background is production, so naturally I lean toward that side. Sales will always outdo your production. We feel that's a great problem to have.”
Talley says that while they are aiming to produce more trailers, they do not want to allow those goals to compromise quality.
“Frank looks at every trailer that goes out of the plant and every one that ships,” Parr says. “Zane looks at every trailer that ships. Until you have your quality to where it needs to be consistently, it's an every-day fight. These ladies and gentlemen out there, they're human. They do make mistakes. But I can confidently say that we don't have a person out on the floor that doesn't care about their job.”
Steps to efficiency
To increase efficiency — “working smarter and not harder,” Talley says — they have:
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Concentrated on assembling all the tools and materials in one place. For example, trim is stored on the roof scaffold. That way, the workers do not have to climb down to cut their own trim for each trailer. At the end of the day, they cut what they'll need for the next day.
“Getting up and down that scaffolding 35 or 40 times a day is cumbersome,” Talley says. “This cuts down on back injuries and fatigue.”
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The door builder is supplied with two miter saws: one for wood and one for metal.
“The blades are different, so he doesn't wear out one faster by cutting wood on a metal blade,” Talley says. “It's also for safety. If you try to cut metal on a wood blade, it has a tendency to jump on you.”
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Parr designed tubes leading from the saws down to five-gallon containers to collect sawdust and metal shavings instead of allowing the saws to spray everywhere. They figure that saves at least five minutes of cleanup every day.
Parr is confident that the plant is firmly anchored in the right principles and procedures, and will be able to meet any challenge. He says the trailer competition is stiff even in Waco — Pace is 12 miles away, Wells Cargo is two blocks away — but that Haulmark is in it for the long haul.
He says it's as important that the city of Waco and Haulmark's neighbors — M&M Mars to the north, Coca-Cola to the south — know that as it is the dealers and customers.
“We want to make sure we fit in with the community,” he says. “We have stiff competition to keep up with the Joneses in this business corridor. We want to make sure the community knows we're not here for the quick buck.”