An Independent’s Perspective on the FleetPride-TruckPro Merger

Chandler Kohn talks with Bobby Rutherford of Freedom Truck & Trailer about the Truck Pro–Fleet Pride merger and what it means for independents. From store consolidation and inventory shifts to digital tools, alliances, and talent strategies, Bobby shares how smaller shops can thrive in the changing heavy-duty aftermarket.

Chandler Kohn: Welcome back to know to grow. A light tech heavy duty podcast focused on all things growth for CEOs by CEOs. Today I have on Bobby Rutherford with Freedom Truck and Trailer based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. He’s an industry veteran in the space today. Today’s podcast is focused on the merger between Truck Pro and Fleet Pride, two of the industry’s largest fleet maintenance programs owned by private equity, American securities and Platinum Equity. Let’s go ahead and hop into this. Bobby, tell us a little bit about your background and what you do over at Freedom Truck and Trailer Parts.

Bobby Rutherford: I’m one of the owners here at Freedom Truck and Trailer parts. We’re a VIPAR member independent. We run a 30,000 square foot facility and we’re a little different than most of your WDS warehouse distributors. Besides the retail storefront, we remanufacture here brake, shoes, differentials, transmissions. So we tend to fit into a little different niche than most of your just retail stores. My background comes from I’ve been on both the OE side, the vendor side and the distributor side working for two large OE groups running programs for them to running a division of a large manufacturer that sold to the OES and aftermarket. And now for the last six years I’ve come in as an owner at Freedom Truck and Trailer.

Chandler Kohn: Good. Well I think you’re the perfect person to speak speaking about this, this merger between Fleet Truck. Let’s jump into things. So big picture and market landscape here. What does this potential merger signal about the heavy duty aftermarket where it’s at?

Bobby Rutherford: What I think it signals that even though the last few years it has slowed down, that it’s getting healthier and stronger the market, there’s stronger demand for parts and fleet maintenance.

Chandler Kohn: Good, that’s helpful. What do you think motivated the merger between the two? Obviously they’re similar companies do slightly different things ultimately I thought they were the first but wanted to get your opinion.

Bobby Rutherford: Well, my first thought is cost savings, procurement, economic scale, logistics, digital systems, combining, providing equity timing. Both of them are at the five year mark which means their ROIs were due. Yeah, and yeah, slower on both sides for them.

Chandler Kohn: And what you mean in the five year mark is right. Most private equity firms buy a company and basically try to flip it over a five year time frame to return a gains to their limited partners.

Bobby Rutherford: And honestly it’s a private equity timing. We know at that five year mark they want a, you know, a return on their ROI. We know fleet price was 225 million that was due November 1st.

Chandler Kohn: Okay, so in practical terms, over the next 12 to 24 months, how do you expect this to or shape parts distribution service and maybe most important, customer expectations?

Bobby Rutherford: Well, my first thought is we’re going to see probably 40 to 60% of consolidation stores. If you look everywhere in most metropolitan larger areas, they were already oversaturated, both of them anyways. So now with the two of them merging, the only thing that makes sense is them to shrink this down. And even if they look at it from the conservative side, you’re gonna see 30 to 40%.

Chandler Kohn: And talk about those percentages again. What does mean.

Bobby Rutherford: Consolidation of their stores. Yeah, we’re going to use Utah for instance. With this merger, there’s now 18 stores in the state of Utah. Both of them struggled with the amount of stores they had and had already been talking consolidating them down.

Chandler Kohn: So you think they’re gonna shrink up to 60%?

Bobby Rutherford: I think it’s going to be between 40 and 60.

Chandler Kohn: All right.

Bobby Rutherford: And I think we’re gonna see fewer storefronts but more regional hub style distribution.

Chandler Kohn: So if we’re talking about the independent small shop, so you know, the kind of the lower digit multiple location and the single location. You mentioned this threat independence, but an opportunity. Let’s dive into this a bit and you know, explain why you feel that way yourself and what specific advantages.

Bobby Rutherford: When big players merge. They get slower, less personal and more corporate independence can move faster. Know their customers by name, solve problems creatively and relationships, flexibility and real-world experience still matter in this industry.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah. And give us, give us kind of some examples. I mean, how do you, how do you actually see that changing for you in your business?

Bobby Rutherford: Well, especially I think the first 24 months, you’re going to see them consolidating down vendors and they’re going to try to get their hands around what both sides were doing. As they do that, we’re going to see shortages in products. They’re not going to keep the stores loaded up high dollar wise. And with that, my guess is inventory is going to be a big concern over this merger and trying to bleed down. What with the consolidation, what they have. Truck Pro and Fleet Pride both had a lot of private label products. And they’re going to have a lot of headaches just trying to combine that into one unit.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah. It’s going to take a while to get this deal done. When do you think you’re going to be fully in it?

Bobby Rutherford: My guess is they probably worked on this at least two years already. They know what stores are going to close, how they’re going to integrate everything and how they’re going to move it together. So I’m betting the next 12 months fleet price been really good at brand identification. Truck Pro hasn’t been as good at it up until the last year and a half, two years. They bought guys out several years ago that’s still been run underneath the same names. So as Fleet Price identifying what’s going to stay open and Truck Pro, you know, and they decide what’s going to close down, it’s going to get rebranded.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah. And you know, but I guess, you know, a lot of times in the space these are legacy businesses, family owned. A lot of people simply don’t want to change the logo. In your opinion, is Truck probably going a little, you know, kind of smaller down on business sizes or shop sizes where the folks, you know, part of the ingredients are to still keep those same logos. And they can’t really brand as well as Fleet Drive.

Bobby Rutherford: And I think that’s hurt Truck Pro over the time because it’s hard for them to have a brand identity where they keep the old names flowing.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah, I gotcha. So when larger distributors consolidate, there’s typically some gaps that arise. Market. How can smaller shops step in.

Bobby Rutherford: They need to realize that there’s going to be service disruptions, especially during this consolidation period. So if you can move fastly, let customers know you’re there, take care of them, you can get product to on the same day, not tell them all I got to pull it out of a DC and I can have it to you tomorrow. And most of the independents know this already. They know their customer base. We base our inventory off of what our customer base uses. So it gives us a huge advantage to move quickly.

Chandler Kohn: Okay, so in terms of independence, facing more pressure from suppliers as these companies gain more pricing power, what are you doing right to maybe not get impacted as much as you know from being now an even smaller guy.

Bobby Rutherford: To be honest, this is where the buying groups help. The VIPARs, the power heavy duties, the HDAs, because you get a good buying power because they conglomerate all of us independents that are in those programs together to get a good price.

Chandler Kohn: As an aside here, there’s still a lot of independents that aren’t part of these buying groups. Talk about that. Why has not everybody joined or majority of everybody?

Bobby Rutherford: You know, that’s always been interesting. I think guys have a tendency to feel they can get a better deal on their own and not realize that the buying power of a group buying together, what that does as an advantage. I think a lot of guys don’t understand how the buying groups work. And when you buy into one of the buying groups, you’re not part of a big corporation. You’re an owner and get to help, excuse me, decide what goes on with the buying groups and the directions that they move. And I think that’s where a lot of little guys get lost with the buying groups because they don’t understand that.

Chandler Kohn: Has there been a noticeable difference in your business since you joined?

Bobby Rutherford: There has been. The VIPAR brand is very strong and it’s recognized. They run national account programs that have brought fleets into us that we wouldn’t be able to get on our own. And then as a group we service the locations and we brought customers to them to put into the group. Oh cool.

Chandler Kohn: So let’s, let’s dig into differentiation and value proposition a little bit under the lens of, you know, independence and you know, multi location shops kind of doubling down here. So you know, I think you had put a post on LinkedIn talking about local expertise, speed, personal service, those are all important here for independence to really focus on. Here are some real examples of where independents can outperform the national chains.

Bobby Rutherford: One of the real advantages is same day delivery. I hear from a lot of customers complaining that they’ll call one of the two national chains and they don’t have it at their location and they can’t get it tomorrow and they need a part to get a truck on the road today.

Chandler Kohn: Why do you think truck room fleet price aren’t doing a good job?

Bobby Rutherford: I think they’ve been scaling down for this merger.

Chandler Kohn: So reducing their inventory. Yes. Anything else you want to add there?

Bobby Rutherford: Expertise, real world knowledge. This is something I hear a lot of complaints about that fleet pride and those guys have turned into more of an Autozone or an O’Reilly’s where they just go through and punch the boxes on the computer and somebody comes in, throws a part down. They can’t just identify it or know what it takes to fix that.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah, I got you. So more of a commodities-based business in terms of kind of homeless labor and talent.

Bobby Rutherford: I think they lose a lot of guys due to frustration on how the systems go.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah, okay. You know, if you’re talking to a peer in the space, another, you know, smaller independent, you know, what are the top two to three differentiators that they should work on sharpening? So in other words, what are you sharpening?

Bobby Rutherford: One of the things we pride ourselves in is, let’s say a customer has a 2018 Caspadia. We know what they need for those trucks where the guys at Fleet Freight and Truck Pro are going to run through, check the boxes, what year is it, what model is it, what engine is it? And they don’t know what their customers need. You know, if you’re dealing with your same customer weekly, monthly, quarterly, you have a pretty good idea and it gives you a real world knowledge to take care of them.

Chandler Kohn: Let’s talk about some of your digital capabilities and technology expectations. Obviously, you know your regionals and nationals are going to be able to wrap their heads around digital tech and technology. More so than you mentioned before, the digital convenience is no longer, no longer optional for the customer. What are the core digital capabilities? Independence must adopt today at the state.

Bobby Rutherford: We need to look at it like an Amazon. Amazon’s been so successful because of the ease of using them. Customers can get on there. They can order their part and know that they’re going to either have it the same day or the next day, depending on where they’re at. They know what they’re getting. They can see a picture of it when they order it. They can see all the cross numbers that correlate with it. So rather customers are signing up with someone like Offycat or. Most of the CRM systems now have a business to business and business customer portal. And a lot of us over the years have been resistant on this. It’s the one thing that hurts our market is we hate change. But this younger generation that’s grown up with Amazon at home, that are coming into our industry, that’s what they want.

Chandler Kohn: So, you’ve been able to implement this in your business, right?

Bobby Rutherford: We’re in the middle of it right now. AutoPower is the CRM we use and it’s a timely, costly initial. To get it launched, you have to put descriptions and parts, load your inventory. So it takes a little bit of time. It’s about a three month process in.

Chandler Kohn: The grand scheme of things. That’s not too long.

Bobby Rutherford: No, it’s not too long. And the benefit of it is we have fleets that really started pushing us. Hey, we have night shift and they need to be able to order parts, be able to put a PO in and have one delivered in the morning so the day shift can finish what they had left over from the night. And listening to the customers where we started looking at having to move this to a business to business and a business to consumer.

Chandler Kohn: Yep. And you know, talk about the user interface. You know, we have some folks in the space that they have kind of more of that kind of E commerce storefront presence and it’s not that impressive to be honest with you. Just the ease of ability to use like an Amazon storefront. Is this all standard? You know, what you’re using or what you’re implementing and how’s the ease of use for customers?

Bobby Rutherford: Well, we’ve worked with Autopower. We started talking with them about six months ago and having them change some stuff on their site so that they can search by number, put OE numbers in and have it tie to what part they’re looking for in our competition numbers. So instead of just going in and having to know the number we use that they’re ordering, we’ve needed the CRM to be able to put in multiple different numbers, other people after market wise or OE and have it correlate to.

Chandler Kohn: What we stock and talk about. There’s going to be some folks listening that I’ve never heard of it or what is it and how old are they?

Bobby Rutherford: Auto Power has been around for a long time. They’re probably one of the older CRM systems for the aftermarket, but they’ve stayed on top. Everything. They’re a smaller company, not the size of a Carmack or one of them, but they’re able to make real world changes for you really quick.

Chandler Kohn: That’s very, very good to be nimble like that. I’m sure they’re working with a lot of independents, so having the bandwidth to do that, it’s an excellent advantage. If we’re talking about share tech platforms or co op digital solutions, how do you think about those?

Bobby Rutherford: We do some stuff with Find Up Parts. Find Up Parts probably does the best job of co oping a website selling parts other than the Find it Parts, I’ve struggled finding some of the other ones that you don’t lose your brand and identity in.

Chandler Kohn: So you think Find It Parts is the best? You know, roughly how many independents on a percentage basis are on these share tech platforms or.

Bobby Rutherford: Most of the OEs and most of the WDs are using guys like Find It Parts. There are a few other ones online that they use, but so far from what I’ve seen, Find A Parts has done the best job.

Chandler Kohn: Okay, let’s jump into alliances, networks and collaborations here. Yes. This is especially talking about a fleet ride truck merger. Right. So you suggest independence, collaborate, you know, even through shared logistics. What are some of the most promising alliance models that you think independent should.

Bobby Rutherford: Look At Bipar, Power Heavy Duty hda. I’m going to say the buying groups again and the people, you know, I know some guys that are members of other groups that we all collaborate, we talk, we’ll order trailer loads together and split them so we can get that extra discount.

Chandler Kohn: Okay. Now are you able to talk about. Yeah, I know most here with the buying groups. Are you able to kind of hone in on any specific numbers or talk about any of that?

Bobby Rutherford: Any numbers as far as what?

Chandler Kohn: Just the cost essentially of participating in the buying groups?

Bobby Rutherford: Well, it varies. Power Heavy Duty has a lower amount to get into than, let’s say VIPAR and HDAs got the same program. They have another one they’ve launched this last year that has a lower buy in amount than to jump into an hda.

Chandler Kohn: And then how, how some of some of these programs evolved. I’m sure they’re a little bit different than they were five years, five years ago. They may be different five years from now. Talk about the evolution.

Bobby Rutherford: Well, I think the buying group revolution originally was mainly so they could collaborate together and get better pricing.

Chandler Kohn: Of course. Yeah.

Bobby Rutherford: But as that’s changed now, when you figure VIPAR as a group, we’re investing in stores in Mexico, Central America, South America. Now we have members in Canada. We’ve joined some other programs like Nexus and a few other ones that give us more of a global outlook to vendor suppliers. So it’s changed where we can get to by looking further ahead on how strong we can make the group as a whole.

Chandler Kohn: Do you have any examples of some of these smaller independents that have partnered with these groups to really kind of get their business to the next level?

Bobby Rutherford: Yeah, we have a Napa store here in Utah. They started two years ago as a Power Heavy Duty member with us because they wanted to get into the heavy duty side where they’re at. I work with them a lot. We do a lot with them. VIPAR does a lot. And we’ve helped them learn more about the heavy duty market and grow their market share where they’re at. I know they went from spending, you know, couple grand a month with me to they spend 10 to 15,000amonth.

Chandler Kohn: Let’s talk about talent. You know, loyalty suppliers with these emerging opportunity concepts. Talent displacement is going to be part of this. You know, these, these two nationals coming together. You know, obviously there, the talent shortage. You know, how. How should smaller shops think about recruiting and retaining, you know, some of the talent that’s being displaced from the merger?

Bobby Rutherford: There’s a lot of guys right now that have no idea where they’re going to be by Christmas. I’ve known a lot of people in this industry, a lot of people at both Truck Pro and Fleet Pride that I’ve heard from, they’re worried, they know consolidation is coming. They’re just not sure where and when it’s going to be and who it’s going to be.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah.

Bobby Rutherford: So that right there, there’s guys looking, they don’t even know if they’re going to be ones to be cut right now.

Chandler Kohn: So when it comes to the, to the multi location, single location shop. Right. How can they get ahead of maybe acquiring some of these talents? Should they sit back like the phone call?

Bobby Rutherford: No, I think they should. Hopefully most of the, most of the guys in our industry in the independence, they know who’s good at the Truck Pro or Fleet Pride location. We all share buy in from each other and I think the best thing they could do is start reaching out. Hey, are you worried about this? If you are, let me know.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah. Okay. Smart. You know, I think everybody knows what that kind of, that local loyalty advantage means in practice. You know, there’s some, there’s going to be some customer dissatisfaction. Fleet Rider truck customer satisfaction comes out of this merger. You know, I, I guess, you know, what does that mean for, for the kind of the smaller. What, what’s the, what’s the loss rate of the attrition rate of some of these folks?

Bobby Rutherford: Well, you know, that’s changed with the last few equity groups that have bought both of them Fleet put when they used to take over, they’d retain 90% of the employees for two years or longer and they keep 75 to 80% of that customer base. Now at the end of two years they’ve lost most of their employee base that was there and usually 50% of their customer base.

Chandler Kohn:, that’s fairly significant.

Bobby Rutherford: It is.

Chandler Kohn: That’s quite a lot. You know, you think they can meet the independence on pricing, Right. Just because of the buying power they have. But is it, is that not.

Bobby Rutherford: No, it’s not. Because they’re not passing that savings on anymore. A lot of that they’re keeping as margin.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the lead consumer though, they don’t know that? No. I mean you don’t think they’re passing on any margin, any marginal.

Bobby Rutherford: I think from what I see we all share a lot of the same vendors and buy from the same ones and a lot of times, unless it’s their private label material and we’ll use brake Shoes, for instance, I see them here selling reman shoes at high 50 and low $60. And we’re out there selling them in the low 40s. Part of that is we remanufacture right here. So there’s a step out of it in distribution. But you know what, the size, who they buy from, they get a deal better than anybody else out there.

Chandler Kohn: So, you mentioned some of the suppliers are looking for transparent partners. Right. They’re looking for folks that are going to have kind of a steady flow of parts, demand, et cetera. How should independence approach suppliers that may be considering reallocating the distribution?

Bobby Rutherford: One of the things I always say is reach out. I know right now I hear a lot of vendors, they realize consolidation is coming and they’re about to lose a big chunk of business. That’s a huge advantage for the aftermarket because it allows us to negotiate better pricing with the market share, they’re going to lose.

Chandler Kohn: Are you reaching out? What are you doing specifically?

Bobby Rutherford: I’ve reached out to a couple, as a matter of fact, a couple vendors that used to not sign anybody up because they already had Truck Pro and Fleet Pride. I’ve reached out, and now all of a sudden, they want to sign up the aftermarket.

Chandler Kohn: Are you able to share those names?

Bobby Rutherford: I cannot share those names at the moment.

Chandler Kohn: Okay. I thought I would ask.

Bobby Rutherford: Nope. And I. I appreciate that. I thought it was kind of funny how they’ve been. But a lot of them are having people sign NDAs before January 1st not to announce programs.

Chandler Kohn: I would think so. So let’s talk about what’s coming next, how to prepare. We’re, you know, know 2025 is almost over. You know, we had this trucking recession, you know, cautiously optimistic about the market in 2026. We have this merger. Now. How is this going to change? How is a store consolidation or player consolidation going to change some of these regional hub models and competitive geographic.

Bobby Rutherford: Well, I think one of the things people need to realize is we’re going to see larger regional hubs service in larger territories with fewer branch stores out in the field, because the end result is it’s a capital company that owns them. And all of this is about the next sale.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah, but, you know, if we talk about some of the. The. The regional hubs kind of absorbing some of the. It’s the kind of single location kind of mom and pops out in the field, there is a geographical impact right. To the actual customer. You know, you would think that, you know, that the Consolidators can’t pull away so much from some of the rural or you know, location based areas. Talk about that a little bit.

Bobby Rutherford: Rural locations, Fleet Pride and Truck Pro both already struggling them talent’s been hard for them in those areas as well. Now we service several rural areas from our main location in Salt Lake. I’ve got sales guys that go outside to outlining areas and we do very well. Yeah, my sales guys will go up the week before, take an order and then we send a driver up later in the week to deliver everything to them. All right.

Chandler Kohn: That’s so less folks, larger upright kind of what you’re saying. Yeah. How should a, what should a small distributor shop do right now to avoid being squeaky east as these as Truck Pro and Fleet. Right. Renegotiate suppliers. What are you doing right now?

Bobby Rutherford: Strengthening supplier ties as products are moving away from some of these through the consolidation. They’re going to let you know, hey, I’ve lost distribution. We had this much in your area and now they’ve scaled it back to this. Here’s a good opportunity for you. Diversify your sourcing. Look at some of the vendors they drop as this merger goes who are about to lose market share in your area. They can share with you what was being sold in those areas. They may not know to who, but they’ll know what was being sold and how often.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah, that’s helpful. I like that.

Bobby Rutherford: Yep. And volume discounts through the groups. I think the groups are about to get much stronger over this.

Chandler Kohn: So if we talk about this merger to the largest matchup space coming together, is this going to spark more consolidation at the independent or regional level or are we going to see that? Are we not going to see that? What’s going to happen?

Bobby Rutherford: Absolutely, we’re going to see it. We know how this works. Once private equity sees results, others will follow.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah. And you know, from an M and A standpoint, we’ve seen that across higher and services too. I think any truck parts repair is three to five years behind those two groups, maybe five. So we, we expect to see that as well here. Let’s, let’s close this podcast and you know, just want to reiterate kind of two questions here. How are you positioning your business to win? Kind of this new aftermarket environment.

Bobby Rutherford: We’re touching a lot more customers. I brought new sales guys on just so we can go after new business with all of this. There’s going to be a lot of turmoil on this. Why they integrate the two groups together.

Chandler Kohn: Tell our listeners how many Total employees, you have free the truck and trailer. How many sales employees.

Bobby Rutherford: We run? Well, and we’re a little different because we cover part of Idaho, part of Wyoming, all of Utah, part of Nevada and part of Colorado that we touch weekly. So I’m running five outside sales guys total. I run three counter guys, my purchasing team. So total we’re at 19 employees.

Chandler Kohn: If you had to give the listeners one mindset shift and one tactical shift at their shop, rising independent shops, multi location or what would that be? As we.

Bobby Rutherford: Don’t be negative. I hear a lot of people right now from how the last two years have been talk negative about what’s going on in the industry and they’re not looking at where things have gotten better. I’m going to use Thomas Edison for an example. He felt a thousand times trying to create a light bulb to get one to work. And instead of being negative about it, his answer was no. I didn’t fill a thousand times. I found a thousand ways that didn’t work. And people are afraid to fill. And none of us want to fail and lose a business, but we can reach out and try for things and fail that are outside of our comfort zone. And that’s part of being an entrepreneur. Look for areas where you can move into and don’t think small.

Chandler Kohn: I love it. That’s fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Bobby. This has been very helpful.