Building the Next Generation of Truck Bodies: Inside NXG’s Rapid Rise

In this episode of Know to Grow: Light to Heavy Duty, Chandler Kohn sits down with Joe Lewis of NXG Truck Bodies to explore how a greenfield startup is redefining innovation in the truck body industry. Lewis shares how NXG scaled from launch to nearly 100 employees in under a year, the strategic decisions behind its purpose-built manufacturing model, and how the company is solving long-standing industry challenges like coating durability, toolbox leakage, and product design. The conversation also covers NXG’s go-to-market strategy, customer-driven innovation, and vision for becoming a top-tier manufacturer in North America.

Chandler Kohn: Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Know to Grow a Light to heavy Duty podcast. I am Chandler Khon with FOCUS Investment Banking, an automotive medium and heavy duty M & A and capital raising platform in the space. Today I have on Joe Lewis with NXG Truck Bodies. Welcome Joe.

Joe Lewis: Hey Chandler, how are you doing today?

Chandler Kohn: Doing fantastic. I am from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina and you were in Mount Pleasant, Texas?

Joe Lewis: I am, yes sir.

Chandler Kohn: You’re east of Dallas and I’m in the Charleston area. So good minds think alike there. Tell us a little bit about NXG. It stands for Next generation. You guys kind of the business was just started recently and want to hear about a little bit about what you do and we’re going to go into, you know, how you’ve grown the business and will continue to grow the manufacturing operation.

Joe Lewis: Yeah. Thank you, Chandler. So we started manufacturing before my tenure here, actually started manufacturing in late June of 2025. I joined the business the second week of July 2025. And we are virtually a greenfield startup. So the team and founders built this organization from the ground up. Literally what we’re standing in today was, was a hayfield 18 months ago and they built the facility and started the business and the brand over the last 18 months to build truck bodies. We’re a purpose driven manufacturing company focused specifically on flat deck truck bodies today, all steel bodies as we sit here in April of 2026.

Chandler Kohn: That is fantastic. And you’re on 110,000 square feet, I believe. And how many employees do you have today?

Joe Lewis: We’ve got about 90 employees. We have had to significantly increase employment over the last 30 days due to some increase in demand from the Marketplace. So about 30 days ago we were 65 employees and we’re right at 90. We should cross a hundred. It feels like, you know, probably third quarter, early fourth quarter of this year.

Chandler Kohn: That’s fantastic. Congratulations to you guys. And, and let’s talk about the origin and maybe the gap here in the market. Obviously you had a problem to solve. NXG is the solution. Truck bodies have they remained largely unchanged for, for the past, you know, one or two decades?

Joe Lewis: Yeah, they have, I would say actually for the last three decades, truck bodies have largely remained unchanged. A little bit about it. Next Generation Truck bodies or NX G. Two of our three founders actually owned one of the largest manufacturers in the space, CM truck bodies. One point I was the guy that kind of globalized that business. I worked at CM as the vice president and General manager, mainly focused on the commercial side of the business. From 2012 to 2024. And you know, CM was kind of the pioneer of that business. So Jeff Jackson, one of my partners, actually welded the first CM truck bed and he’s here in this building with me today. So he’s out in the shop welding, welding bodies or leading our welding team and manufacturing team. He’s also very involved in the product design and the layout of our manufacturing facilities. Actually laid out what we know as NXG today himself. One of my other partners, Ricky Baker, was the founder and owner for 40 years of, of Big Tex Trailers here in Mount Pleasant, Texas. And then my fourth partner is Steve Courageous. He was actually a president of Big Tex and CM Truck Beds at one time in their careers. And I worked with those guys previously at Big Tex and cm.

Chandler Kohn: Fantastic. Tell us a little bit about why the truck bed industry has been stuck the past 30 years in terms of innovation and maybe service and really capturing what customers want to.

Joe Lewis: Yeah. So to address that point, I think the market has largely been unchanged. And it’s been unchanged because of lack of engineering expertise in the business and probably lack of strategy. I think when you look at many of the truck body manufacturers in the industry today, most truck body manufacturers in the flat deck space are focused on something other than flat decks. So when I was at cm, you know, that business was a part of a larger, more professionalized trailer organization. At one point it was a $2 billion organization. Probably 80 to 85% of that was made up of, of trailer manufacturing businesses. So that portfolio was real focused in the trailer space. There’s other manufacturers out there that are really focused on trailers and not truck bodies. So truck bodies are kind of in the back seat where the front seat is trailers. And therefore a lot of the truck bodies resemble trailers. Which is when you look at the NXG marketing, we, we talk about next generation, we talk about purpose built, we talk about truck bodies. You know, there’s a standard in the industry today that really is a trailer body. And the NXG body is more of an automotive grade design, automotive grade type finishes. I think all of us have industrial finish for the most part. But you know, one feedback we’ve had in industry is we do have the most automotive grade looking body out there on the market today. So we’re really excited about how our finish has turned out and that’s one of the problems we were trying to fix in the market. So I think the, the reason, the biggest reason of, of truck bodies flat decks being really stuck is there just hasn’t been a lot of Time and attention placed in our space. And, you know, over the last gosh, I’ve, like I said, been in this business, you know, 13, 14 years now, specifically in the truck bed business. You know, there’s just not been a lot of time and attention placed on that, even as new manufacturers come in. You know, there’s manufacturers that have come in that are just focused not just on trailers, but other products that were really their core. So they haven’t invested the engineering and design resources into their flat decks. We’ve been able to do that.

Chandler Kohn: Awesome. And I’m excited to get into this design, engineering and manufacturing portion of this podcast to really talk about how you guys are next generation and are innovating in this space. What does your design, engineering and innovation team look like?

Joe Lewis: We have a team of engineers, one that’s been in the trailer and truck body space for many years, one that’s been more in the fabrication and design space for several years. And then Jeff Jackson, he’s been involved in trailer and truck body and metal fabrication, kind of all three. So his, his foundation was horse trailers. Him and his father started a large horse trailer manufacturing company in, in Medilla, Oklahoma. He then kind of transitioned into metal fabrication. He’s a brilliant fabricator, understands putting pieces together, cutting, bending, and, and, and then obviously when it went over to cm, Truck Beds ran that business for many years. And then when he retired from, from his metal fabrication business, he partnered with Ricky and started NXG.

Chandler Kohn: That’s fantastic. So, so three folks right on the. On the team, I believe.

Joe Lewis: Yeah, yeah, three. Three main contributors. Obviously from the commercial side, there’s myself and, and a couple guys that, you know, we, we sponge up customer feedback. And I think that’s something that, you know, we’ll probably get into later in the podcast. But we’re real focused on customer feedback and the passion that we have for ensuring that we’re feeding the customer what they’re hungry for is really what drives NXG and our innovation. And, and you know, it can be something as simp the same key on every toolbox latch on a body, and that’s important to their customer. Well, we want to figure those things out. You know, I think we really set out to kind of change the overall look and appearance of a truck body, but really there were three problems in the marketplace we had to solve. Powder coat delamination. Powder coats long been a challenge in the trailer and truck body space. Many of the larger truck body companies have struggled with it immensely. So we really focused on our powder coating Process here at NXG. Leaking toolboxes still today is a big issue in the industry. Companies across North America are really struggling with toolboxes that water doesn’t pour in. And not just water, but dust intrusion as well. We’ve solved that with our one piece weather stripping and then fuel filling up. Filling a work truck is always a pain for the end user and we’ve really solved that in the majority of our bodies here at an xg. So that stuff doesn’t just come from great engineers, that comes from good commercial teammates who are out there listening to customers, bringing that information back to engineering and letting them design the solution to the problem that we took from the marketplace.

Chandler Kohn: Let’s talk about this delamination process a little bit more. I know on your website you have a five step wash process before I think you apply the coating. Help me understand that a little bit more and help the audience understand that as well.

Joe Lewis: Yeah. So in our space, trailers, truck bodies, you know, metal fabrication like this, most companies are using a two to three stage process. In other words, they’re washing it with a corrosive chemical that actually opens up pores. They’re rinsing it with a control and maybe treating it with a pre treat for, for powder coat or powder primer and then a powder coat top coat. At NXG we actually wash our our steel with three different corrosive materials that open the pores, clean the steel and prepare it for powder coat. In between those washes, we actually rinse with a control rinse. And before we actually wash that material, we actually da it with sanders to ensure that the metal is smooth, the pores are prepared for the washes and that way when that metal enters the primer booth, that metal is very clean. The standard in the industry, like I said earlier, is two to three step wash. And it’s not just the fact that we wash five times. We’ve tested multiple chemicals out there in the marketplace. We’ve actually tested bodies, we’ve tested chemicals on specific bodies to understand what chemicals are causing the powder coat delamination. We’ve been able to formulate chemical washes that pull those chemicals out. And we feel very confident and have tested that powder coat process that we have to far exceed the standard in today’s industry in our space. So we feel like not only do we have five stage wash, but we have the right chemicals in that five.

Chandler Kohn: That’s fantastic. And let’s walk the users through your 110,000 square foot manufacturing batch manufacturing plant. Help us Understand that. You know, what does that look like? What’s going on in there?

Joe Lewis: Yeah. So we have a fabrication facility here in the front of the manufacturing plant. We have plasma cutters, HD plasmas, you know, big area for raw materials, you know, flat steel, flat tread plate, headache racks, hitches. All the, the raw materials are staged here on the front side. Then we have three separate weld lines. Each weld line is purpose built for a specific model. Everything we do in this facility is very time based, as you mentioned a second ago. We have a batch chain, but even in our weld shop, all of our welders are actually on a, on a time schedule. So so many bodies per minute or so many bodies per hour is probably a better way to, given the model of body. So some bodies have a higher labor content and a higher material content. They may take longer to actually weld in a simple flatbed, for instance. So once those bodies come out of the, the weld stations, they actually go to a, what they call a chip and grind or a pre coating stage where bodies are actually prepared and you know, welds are finished, the weld slags removed. They do the DNA to help clean the steel and smooth it out and give us that automotive grade look we’re looking for. Then they load that onto our batch powder coat system, which takes it through a wash powder primer, and then a powder coat topcoat. One of the neatest things in our facility that we talk about on social media and our website, at trade shows and through the different channels that we market the business is we use infrared cure. And our infrared cure allows us to decrease the edge coat delamination that, you know, most manufacturers struggle with in their body. And the reason is because we don’t have high flow of air through our infrared cure booths, which blows the powder coat off of the edges. The infrared plates bring the temperature to a higher temp, faster when a body enters that, that system. And it’s a very controllable temperature. When you have open air convection or kind of old technology, so to speak, you have a lot of air blowing hot air through there. Well, in the front of a open flame convection booth, it could be, you know, 30, 40, 50 degrees different in the back of the booth depending on where the flames are. Yeah, infrared everything is, is covered across the board, top, bottom, both sides, front and rear.

Chandler Kohn: That’s fantastic. And in terms of the equipment, the equipment brands you’re using, what, what are those?

Joe Lewis: You know, that’s, I think our, our most important piece is our IFS powder coating Those guys have been great partners to us. You know, we use HD plasma tables from Messer to cut all of our, the majority of our steel. We do have some, some laser cutting capabilities with some partners here in Mount Pleasant that ship in products to us. But anything that we cut in house, we cut on HD Messer plasma tables. And know we have a group of partners that help us with the powder coat process. Most notably, ifs. They’ve done a great job, of course.

Chandler Kohn: Awesome. And then in terms of the expansion, you know, you added 23 employees the past four weeks, which I have a question around that. Are you, were you, Is, was this to fulfill demand or are you building capacity to fill expected demand?

Joe Lewis: No, this is to fulfill demand. You know, we got out ahead of it in January and February. We had forecasted scheduled demand. Fortunately, I would say we went to the NTA’s work truck show and you know, we had a lot of, a lot of feedback, a lot of positive feedback and brought on many partners who were, who were very excited about the product. They understand how our products can change our organization. And you know, now we’re training, bringing onboarding, training, bringing on new customers and training those new employees to ensure that we can fulfill that demand. One of our foundations has been obnoxious lead times, and we still have those on the majority of our products. We do have one model that lead times have, have expanded some due to unforeseen demand.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah. And then in terms of. All right, I know you have kind of four major products on the website. I would think maybe there’s some variations there. So.

Joe Lewis: Yeah.

Chandler Kohn: Is there a number of model count that you have? Kind of right now?

Joe Lewis: Yeah, we have four models today. We have fifth model that will be launched probably over the next four to six weeks because of the explosive demand we’ve had for our products. You know, we’ve talked as a, as a leadership team and we’re going to really focus on scaling our facility. When you increase employee count by 30, 40% in a period of four weeks, you’ve got to be very focused on training employees. We’ve had very little turnover in this organization. So the good thing is we have a lot of experience. But when you bring this high percentage of new employees and it’s very important that those new employees are trained to the NXG way and the NXG quality standards and they understand the quality processes that we have in place. So before we continue to launch more models, we certainly want to try to stabilize the growth that we have with, with the current models that we have on the market today.

Chandler Kohn: Okay, and then how did you go about developing the training program? This is something that we, you know, talk about a decent amount, particularly at the shop level in the heavy duty space or the medium duty space. Well, you know, you obviously have to have a template. You have to have something to talk about for a couple hours at a time. What does that training development look like for you guys?

Joe Lewis: Well, we do it a couple different ways. You know, if it’s well training, we have outside consultants that come in. Anybody who’s been in the organization on our well road lines for over 90 days is certified. NXG Truck Bodies is an MVP certified manufacturer by the NTEA. So you have a choice, group of choices that you can use for accreditation or certification. And we chose to certify our welders. We thought that was the biggest, most important part of having good quality welds is certifying them. Taking those welders through that certification process and the training and the testing and that goes into that simply makes our welders better and more certified, more capable of welding in high velocity environments like we do from the powder coat standpoint. We also have outside consultancy that comes in and trains our wash crews, our primer crews and our topcoat crews regularly to ensure that, you know, we’re getting correct coverage, we know how to check for coverage and then that we’re, we’re getting the, the right thickness and, and that’s super important. And I’ll note this leadership team has, you know, nearly 150 years of manufacturing experience. A lot of what we do we already know. You know, the neat thing about the NXG team is we spent millions making these mistakes in the past. We know what not to do, unfortunately for, for all the right reasons.

Chandler Kohn: So yeah, that’s what the customer wants to hear.

Joe Lewis: That’s correct. Yeah, we’ve made those mistakes. And you know, our team understands the mistakes that, you know, many of our competitors and sometimes ourselves make. You know, our team’s making mistakes out there in the shop today. It’s our job as a leadership team to go out there, hold those employees accountable and, and train them how not to make that mistake again or what to do different so that the mistake doesn’t happen.

Chandler Kohn: And one of the most important roles, you know, at this size company, in my opinion, and what I see in the heavy duty space or medium duty for that matter, is having a good, good GMs or good middle management because you can’t be, you can’t watch 90 people at one time. So tell us about a little bit about what that middle management looks like for you if you have middle management.

Joe Lewis: Certainly, yeah, we have middle management throughout our facility. All of our middle management came with prior manufacturing experience. Several of those middle managers were very familiar with. We didn’t hire them from one company. We very strategically tried to find those guys at different organizations here and around Titus County. Our operations manager out in the manufacturing shop came from a large truck body manufacturer. Years of experience from, from when he was just starting his career. And then we’ve got a couple guys out there that have a lot of experience in metal working in our fabrication side and then down on our, you know, our coating and our, and our trim line. Those guys come from other manufacturing companies with coating and trim experience. So they understand the quality standards that we’re putting in place, how to enforce those and how to train those employees that are doing that, you know, so if it comes down to decals being straight, the little things that make a difference, toolbox doors, ceiling correctly, toolbox weather stripping being applied correctly, those guys understand that and they’re able to coach and train our teammates how to do it correctly and enforce it each and every day. Yep.

Chandler Kohn: Let’s get into this culture question. I always ask this when there’s, you know, decent sized team, but, you know, quality and integrity of the work is of utmost importance. Right. But when it comes to building a holistic culture, you know, doing the right thing when somebody’s not looking or, you know, being trustworthy. Right. How do you, how do you develop a culture? What are you focused on? Sometimes you can’t really force it. It’s all about making the right hire and letting the kind of culture go where it’s going to go. But how do you steer it in the right direction?

Joe Lewis: We’re very involved. I think we have a great culture here. It’s not rare for me to be in a Walmart on the weekend with my kids. Just happened Saturday. Me and two of the girls were at Walmart and a wife of an employee came up and said how great it was for her husband to work at NXG, how much he bragged about it, how much he loved the, the environment and the culture here. We’re out there in the, in the facility weekly doing employee of the month birthday celebrations. I think National Popcorn Day is, is right here. In the next couple days we’ll have a popcorn party. We do a lot of engagement with our employees. If there’s a new teammate or orientation, HR always invites us out to step into that orientation through that four hour process and we do, we go out and introduce ourselves and we try to get to know our employees and understand their challenges and the issues they’re dealing with. Whether it be a death in the family or moving into a new apartment or buying a new car, we want to be involved in that and helping to make the transition of a lot of our employees much easier. Because we have a wide range of ages and obviously men and women and different backgrounds out there. The numbers are going to be far different. But you know, I think our leadership team here is very invested in that and working hard to ensure that when we do see employees in Walmart, they are excited to see us and they understand that we do have their best interest at heart.

Chandler Kohn: Great, great. And you know, one of my colleagues, Stan Goesnock, he was the CEO of Cardone Industries, 6, 000 people. And, and he told me that he used to go out and walk the floor, right, and just, just talk to people and get to know them. Obviously that took time away from what he was doing at the CEO level. However, it’s, you know, he developed a cohesive culture there. So interesting to hear that feedback that makes a lot of sense, particularly kind of in a smaller East Texas town where you are going to run into your people outside of work and you know, hopefully they stay with you for a long time and you can kind of build that trust with them.

Joe Lewis: Yeah, they have, we’ve had very little turnover. You know, this time of year. You got to be careful to, to talk about how good your turnover is when you’re in a manufacturing community like we are with number of other manufacturers in town. You know, when, when you need, when you have exploded demand, you start paying more short term and then you get to July, August and you start laying people off. And that’s a very common cycle in a city like we live in and we’ve tried to really navigate that much differently. Hey, we’re going to pay you a fair wage, we’re going to treat you right, we’re going to give you an awesome environment. And if you, if you follow our company online, you see we talk about the customer experience and what it’s like to be a customer of NXG. Well, we jump that fence and have the employee experience and what it’s like to be an employee of NXG and why that is such a good experience not only for you, but for your family. You know, whether, you know, last Friday was Good Friday. We’re working five days a week right now. Well, we only worked a Half day last Friday because we understand that’s important to our employees. And we did that strategically.

Chandler Kohn: Yeah, smart, smart. And I like that. You know, let’s go back and then talk about how you actually spun up the operation. Manufacturing is capital intensive. My understanding is, you know, you bootstrapped it versus seeking outside capital. How do you think about bootstrapping and starting this up from a risk standpoint point?

Joe Lewis: Well, you know, our business is naturally well capitalized. We’ve got good partners, and we have a good financial partner that’s on board with us. You know, that that’s just something from experience. We’ve done it several different ways over the years. And, you know, we thought this would be the best way for us to do it. So all of our funding is local. And it seemed for us to get this organization off the ground the way we did it made more sense for us given the strategy that the founders had when they put this business plan together. So I think it just comes from more experience than anything. And what made more sense, both short and long term for the business, and not only where we are today, but where we’re probably going to end up going over the next five to ten years.

Chandler Kohn: Good, good. And, you know, we’ll segue into product strategy here in a minute and what that vision looks like. But did you, when you were setting up the operation, did you avoid spending where others may have initially?

Joe Lewis: Yeah, I mean, I mean, that’s a good question. But you always avoid spending where others make mistakes because you’ve been there before and made those mistakes, you know, without getting too deep into some proprietary information. I would say at a high level, we avoided spending too much money on fabrication in house. And we went out and found good fabrication partners for us that already had the equipment that had some extra capacity that could really help us. The neat thing about those fabrication partners is they’re all located right here in Mount Pleasant, Texas. So our supply chain is very strong. Yeah, good, good, good.

Chandler Kohn: And product strategy. So you’ve launched with four core models?

Joe Lewis: Yes, sir.

Chandler Kohn: Why four? Maybe. Why not three? Why not five? Tell us a little bit about that.

Joe Lewis: Yeah, good question. So we’ve been in this business so long and, and, you know, understand the flatbed industry vertical, whatever you want to call it, so. Well, we know where the volumes are. We understand what percentage of our sales will come from what models. The four models that we’ve already launched are. Are very fluid, very linear. And introducing them in the manner that we have virtually allows us to make subtle changes versus going extreme from one model to the other. So it allows our quality to maintain itself. It allows us to train our employees at the right time and it kind of gives us the right revenue at the right time for the business and the life cycle of the business at that point.

Chandler Kohn: That makes sense. And then in terms of standardization versus customization of each model, is, is there any room for customization for each client’s use case?

Joe Lewis: To an extent. You know, if the volume justifies it, we’ll do some custom stuff. I was, I was out in the facility yesterday and saw a pretty nice size custom order and, and you know, somebody said, I thought we weren’t doing custom. Well, we’re not. But for the right customer with the right amount of volume and, and you know, if somebody orders 200 bodies from you and they need some customization where it makes sense, you can do it. Now, you’d rather do it in September, October, November. But to bring in some of those high velocity, high volume customers like this specific customer, it made a lot of sense for us to make some modest changes. I would say our strategy has been manufacturing flow, not customization. But you know, depending on the size of the order and the repeatability of the customization, we want to look at everything again. Our foundation is built for the customer and customer experience. Well, if you want a customer to enjoy your product more, you probably want to build it to their needs. And you know, we’ll listen to any and everything. And if we can’t build it or don’t have the appetite to build it, we’re pretty transparent with our customers.

Chandler Kohn: That’s good. And then in terms of flow actual through the production facility, after it’s designed and engineered, how long does it take for the truck bed to come together?

Joe Lewis: Yeah, so from weld to actual completion in our facility, we can get one through our facility in under five hours. We build one body about every 25 to 27 minutes. Right now, you know, a month ago it was 40 minutes. In a month it’ll be 22, 23 minutes. So as our employees, our new employees are trained and onboarded and we onboard a few more over the next couple weeks. That number will, will come down into the, into the low 20s. I would, I would figure in a year will probably be just south of 20 minutes of body that we clear a body every 20 minutes and that five hours will come down to slightly over four from start of weld to completion.

Chandler Kohn: And you know, KPIs can be a really big thing in manufacturing. Are you guys tracking anything specifically? You know, maybe. What are Your top two or three that you’re really looking at.

Joe Lewis: Number one thing we track is safety because we think that is very important for our team. You know, we’ve, we’re at 206 days without a recordable right now. We’ve only had one recordable since we opened this business. And I think that’s the most important metric that we can track because if our employees can’t leave our facility every day safe, that’s a problem. You know, it doesn’t matter how much money you make or how many bodies you manufacture, if your employees can’t look at your organization and say they’re focused on me, then you’re probably not going to have good culture, you’re going to have bad quality, your labor rates are going to go up, and that’s a recipe for disaster. And unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned several times through our conversation, we’ve experienced that for all the wrong reasons. So that’s one thing that we’re super focused on as a leadership team here. You know, some other metrics, obviously labor per body is very important. Overhead per body, time of manufacturing. We measure that every day through our manufacturing facility. And then from a quality standpoint, our quality roadmap is laid out where we measure and manage defects. So that’s, that’s a very, you know, defects per hundred is something that is, you know, we’ve got to look at and, and manage and measure those as we go forward. So part of that training we talked about a few minutes ago is, okay, we had this issue happen this many times. This is not an acceptable rate. What are we doing to fix it? Whether it be new powder coat wands or our welders are turned up too high or, you know, toolbox doors are coming loose, we manage that stuff to ensure that, hey, we are continuously improving through a manufacturing facility.

Chandler Kohn: That’s fantastic. And go, let’s jump into the go to market side of things. You know, who was your first customer and how did you land those folks?

Joe Lewis: I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t want to divulge our first customer at this point. But I would tell you the way we’ve landed all of our customers is honest, transparent conversations. And you know, I’ve personally driven North America a lot the last four months, showing our bodies and telling our stories. And you know, I think when, you know, it’s, it’s kind of interesting. We launched this product and any new product that comes to market, human nature is to talk about everything that’s wrong with it. And you know, we live that life cycle for, for 90 days. Everywhere, everywhere I went, everywhere our team went, everybody we called because we know a lot of people in this industry. Everybody wants to look at the body and say that doesn’t look good. That’s not going to work. That’s terrible. And over the last 90 to 120 days, as more people have been able to see our products in person, they have have come to understand our semi gloss powder coat which doesn’t magnify weld marks on a body, looks more automotive. But the paradigm in this business is let’s go shiny. That’s great, that’s easy. The reality of it is chemically and scientifically, semi gloss actually performs better than high gloss. It’s got a slower fade rate. It doesn’t magnify weld marks and blemishes in the steel. It’s just, it’s got a lot of value. You know, some other things are lights. We’re very well known in the industry for the X light. It’s the only automotive industry in the bot in the business today that we’re very proud of that we don’t use trailer lights. We’re not building a standard truck bed. So you know, customers look at the X light, well, they don’t like it. Not because it’s a bad light, just because it’s something to say no to our commercial team. So I think going out and educating, you know, from the go to market strategy you were asking about, going out and educate, educating potential distributors and auto dealers. We don’t sell to auto dealers. We sell to distributors who sell to auto dealers. But yeah, we’ve kind of done a different strategy there by educating those auto dealers to pull business back through potential upfitters. And going out and educating upfitters and their customers or auto dealerships has really helped us because now a customer has gone from saying a hard no to how can I live without it? And in some cases they’re embarrassed not to buy it. And, and that’s been very fulfilling for us, especially since probably December. That’s been a very fulfilling and satisfying experience that our entire commercial team’s had.

Chandler Kohn: Good. And is the distribution network currently able to get the product all around the country?

Joe Lewis: Yes, sir. Yeah, we, we, we’ll ship into all 48 states. We’ve shipped into somewhere between 27 and 30 states thus far.

Chandler Kohn: Oh, wow. Okay. And then in terms of sales cycle, you know, obviously when folks ready to pull the trigger, they’re ready to pull the trigger. But how long does it usually take right to, to, you know, once you start talking with that customer to land that customer and give and begin production for them.

Joe Lewis: Well, that’s a. That’s an interesting question, because that cycle has changed a lot over the last 30 days since work Truck show, so many customers were able to get out and see our product. You know, we. We’ve probably really shifted from calling out to educate customers to incoming calls that allow us to educate customers. I would say, you know, six months ago, that process was probably 30 to 45 days today. And in some cases, literally. I mean, I saw one this morning come through that we’ve never talked to, but somebody saw that product at Work Truck show, and they said, we’re using a standard body today. We’re tired of that experience. We saw what we can experience. And, you know, quite honestly, we called one of your distributors, who’s been with you for four months, and they’ve used standard bodies for a long time, and they said, honestly, this is where the market’s going to be in five years. So, you know, that time frame and that cycle has come down significantly as our business has continued to grow. And one thing that’s important to point out, five months ago, we had two models. Today we have four. So we’re covering a larger breadth of the commercial and fleet business. And because of that, we’re starting to see more of those larger fleets come in our direction. Who, like this distributor this morning, is just tired of the standard bodies in the industry. They’re tired of rust. They’re tired of a bunch of caulk. They’re tired of trailer lights. Their users, their employees, their customers are tired of leaking toolboxes. Yeah, they’ve been able to see some of the neat, innovative things we’ve done on social media. You know, there’s a video we put out here a couple weeks ago, and it was kind of funny. I sent it to our marketing guy. Me and my daughter did it in the driveway one afternoon. We took a body and just put a pressure washer on every toolbox and opened the doors on all four. I sent that to him. I said, this is. This is where my mind’s at. You know, I’ve always been a very aggressive marketer, but I think as customers have started to see some of these marketing things that we’ve done that really show our product, we don’t have to bash another product. That’s not our strategy. As a matter of fact, our strategy is not to bash anybody else. Our strategy is just to tell our story. Our story is good enough, and our products are good enough. That they answer so many problems that customers are facing today, they’ll sell themselves.

Chandler Kohn: Yep, yep, I totally agree with that. And that’s a great way to approach it for any operator in, in the automotive space, really any space. Segueing into, you know, closing out the podcast. Where do you see NXG in the next three years in terms of product count, employee count, location, that type of thing?

Joe Lewis: Product count? I, I Suspect we’ll have 12 to 14 models. We’ll build 12 to 14 in house. You know, there’s some opportunity for some outsourcing of a few models. I think anybody that knows me well and has been, been around me for a long time knows I’m not opposed to that. After all, that’s how I entered the service body business. We, we did an outsourcing contract with the company and ended up buying them years ago. And that worked very well for us to get into the service body business. It’s a faster way to market and if we can market that product the way we market, as long as the product’s good and the partner allows us to make some changes that fit the customer we’re serving, we feel we can sell anybody’s product if we, if we have a little opportunity to make it, make it our way. So, you know, 12 to 14 models, maybe 16 models. We are about to double the facility here with a new campus that will actually add on, bolt on to our current campus. So that will double our acreage footprint or almost double our acreage footprint. It will give us another manufacturing facility for aluminum products. Really excited about the aluminum products coming out, obviously because of the success I’ve had in the service body space in the past. Probably an opportunity for some service bodies here in the, in the midterm, just depending on where that market’s at. We do a lot of analysis of the market and really try to understand what trends are going on in the macroeconomic space of commercial truck equipment. And you know, we’ll launch those models depending on that. I think the aluminum body verticals is real hungry for some next generation product right now. Some stuff that’s a lot more automotive grade than, than what’s out there in the space today. And I feel like we can really fulfill some of those appetites out there. So, you know, over the next three years we’ll, we’ll expand, obviously model count. We’ve got to expand revenue and throughput in this manufacturing facility. And you know, I think we’ll be a, we won’t be the largest flatbed manufacturer in the next three years, but we’ll certainly be a much further up the ladder than we are today. You know, today we’re probably in North America. We’re probably, gosh, 12th. I would suspect in three years we can be in the top five without a problem.

Chandler Kohn: That’s great. Just real quick on that market analysis piece. You know, there’s, there’s tons of reports you can buy that are expensive. But how are you guys going about it? Is it mainly talking to folks? You’re hearing what customers want? Is it paying for expensive reports? What does that look like?

Joe Lewis: Well, a variety. We do it all. We’ve done this so long. We, we, we are very proud to be a member of the nta. We utilize some of the stuff they offer through Work Truck Cert and S and P. You know, those guys have just started a great partnership with Work Truck Cert and, you know, there’s some good data there. There’s also, you know, what’s going on in the macro truck space truck equipment is very dependent on truck sales. The NTA puts that in NTA news every month. So that’s pretty easy to get. We can also buy some stuff directly through S and P, which we’ve done in the past and, you know, have started to do here at NXG. So we can manage and measure markets across the country broken down by BTAs or, or DMAs across North America and understand the different classes of trucks. And we understand what bodies fit those classes very well. And then there’s a fleet cycle. Understanding the fleet cycle. So we’re able to get feedback from, you know, economists, customers, and then data. And we take the combination of the three and put those together and, you know, we’ve got a lot of experience doing that. We’ve done that for years.

Chandler Kohn: That’s awesome. That’s fantastic. I appreciate you answering that question. And let’s wrap up. You know, if you had one piece of advice to give to somebody looking to scale or maybe even start a manufacturing or remanufacturing operation, what is that one piece of advice around growth and scalability?

Joe Lewis: Well, I’ve never had a shortage of words. I don’t know if I can give you one piece of advice, but if there was just one piece of advice, I would say that the most interesting, most valuable thing we’ve done here is had a strategy and worked it. Has our strategy changed? Certainly, yes. You know, things are a lot different than they were 90 days ago when we did the budget. You know, I just looked at our finance director and said we need to forecast the business. And it’s like, I know we just did the budget, but we need to reforecast the business. The world’s different. The market has seen our product. The market is really seeing our marketing, and people are liking what they’re seeing. Our business is different. We didn’t plan to hire the number of employees we’ve hired over the last 30 days, 90 days ago, but we’ve responded fast and we’ve almost double production in the last 30 days. So in all of that, we still have been able to follow our strategy, which is to build great products, offer a safe workplace, give customers the best experience they can have out there in the marketplace, be, you know, very transparent by, by offering transparent order updates, immediate order confirmations, immediate invoices. Some of the things that companies really want to do but they don’t know how to do, we’re already doing in our first year. So I would say develop a good strategy, think about everything you can think of, map it out and work it. It’s going to change, you know, the climate’s going to change. It’s a cycle of some kind, but work the strategy. And if you do that, chances of being successful are probably gonna be in your favor.

Chandler Kohn: That’s sage advice. Joe Lewis, NSG Truck Bodies. Thank you so much for joining today. Really appreciate you on, on the podcast.

Joe Lewis: Of course. Yeah, please do. Looking, looking forward to it.

Chandler Kohn: And maybe I’ll have you on it again in, in three years and, and see where you are and what worked, maybe what didn’t, and circle back up and go from there.

Joe Lewis: That would be great. Good luck to you and your business and we’ll stay in touch.