Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/354293
helping develop the relationship there on a local level. This small step goes a long way in getting the service relationship off to a good start. "Or I'll send in an order and he'll look it over and call me. He'll say, 'I see this truck is going to North Dakota. With the working conditions there, I'd like to rec- ommend an additional battery and heat- ed mirrors. I didn't see that on the quote.' "He's always looking to make sure that the equipment is the best fit for the application." Graybar has partnered with a body upfitter that completes the build of most of their trucks. "It's a three-legged stool between Peterbilt, the upfitter and Graybar, and every leg of that stool has to be in com- munication for our equipment to be best equipped to be successful in the field. Peterbilt has been very instrumental in that. Say if we have a problem with a lift gate, they don't look at that and say, 'That's not our lift gate.' They see a red oval on the front of that truck, so they see it as our problem and say, 'Let's solve it.'" That approach to problem-solving — or the lack of it — is what drove Hughes to consider Peterbilt fleet options in the first place. "We were all on the bandwagon with the trucks we had run for years but we saw these problems developing and exac- erbating with the EGR, the fuel injectors and re-gen equipment," he says. "For a period of time it was easy to blame driv- ers but it started to become obvious that these issues ran deeper than that. "So when I started looking at Peterbilt, it wasn't so much at the truck itself, although we've had no complaints about the Model 337. It was more about part- nering with a company that had a great service infrastructure. "The Peterbilt dealership network gives us that." "When I started looking at Peterbilt, it was more about partnering with a company that had a great service infrastructure." FC 18 l FIRST CLASS GRAYBAR