Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/58364
Diversions Profile » Jeff Zehrer Trucker's buddy Inspired by lifetime friend with ALS, owner-operator launches toolbox system for driver-side storage compartments by TODD DILLS C entral Minnesota-based owner-operator Jeff Zehrer in 2011 made good on a friend's legacy. ALS sufferer Ken Stepan, in the last "three to four years of his life," Zehrer says, really began pushing him to pursue an idea the pair had held since 1984. Today, Zehrer has sold more than 1,000 units of his own custom-designed Cubby Buddy toolbox in a little more than a year. Designed for truckers, the storage system comes in 10 different models with mount- ing configurations for a truck's driver-side storage compartment, offering quick and easy pullout access to tools on the road. "If you need a half-inch wrench," says Zehrer, "instead of wrestling your old toolbox, you can get your tools out just like that." Zehrer started trucking as a company driver in 1981. When he bought his first truck in 1984, he was surprised by the difficulty he had finding a convenient toolbox for the driver-side cubbyhole. "It was a pain to bring the toolbox I did have in and out," he says, and Stepan proposed a wooden box with pullout drawers, sized to fit the space. "He was going to build me one," Zehrer says, but time and life intervened. Zehrer, in the meantime, learned what it takes to run a business in trucking and other arenas — for six years beginning in 1996, he and his wife, Debbie, dedicated business partner and a frequent passenger on his runs today, built and operated a bowling alley. After returning to trucking leased to Hensley Inc. with his Freightliner Century and Great Dane dry van, Zehrer's doing better than ever in income, even through the recent recession. All of which provided him the needed resources, five years ago, to follow through on the toolbox idea, resurrected in conversations with Stepan. "He was the one pushing me to get this done," says Zehrer, so "I built my first proto- type in the home shop." The four years of preparation work that followed ranged from designing the brushed stainless box and drawers (with handles built in) to working with U.S.- based fabricators to get the best product for the lowest gross cost (West Central Metal Fab in Alexandria, Minn., won the job) to filing a patent for the toolbox's cradle. Many different prototypes were built before Zehrer finally Under "Editorial videos" on TruckersNews.com find a video in which owner-operator Jeff Zehrer shows off one of his Cubby Buddy toolboxes (the seventh one ever made) mounted in the cubbyhole in the side of his 2003 Freightliner Century. Since that prototype, the Zehrers have sold more than 1,000 units in the first year, proof the system fills a need. Scan the QR code with your phone or tablet to pull the vid up direct. 20 | TRUCKERS NEWS | APRIL 2012 TODD DILLS