Lucas Deal (TPS Cheif Editor)
The team at HDA Truck Pride recognizes the distractions distributors are facing today. You can’t miss them.
But the HDA Truck Pride team also says dwelling on distractions doesn’t solve them. That’s especially true these days, with tariffs and trade uncertainty looming over all industries.
During the organization’s general session at its Annual Meeting Wednesday in the shadow of Washington, D.C., in National Harbor, Md., HDA Truck Pride’s team urged its members and supplier partners to keep their heads down and remain focused on their operations, not the distractions occurring five miles up the river.
Similar to the early days of COVID-19 pandemic, there are unquestionably challenges ahead. But there are also opportunities. HDA Truck Pride’s team says uncertain times are often the best times to bring innovation and advancement into business.
It happened during the pandemic, and it will undoubtedly happen again now. HDA Truck Pride wants its members to take advantage of it.
“We know everybody is hypersensitive to what is going on in the market. But we can’t do anything about that,” says Clint Carter, chief commercial officer. “This week, we can get caught up thinking about the tariffs and those details, or we can focus on these two days and this opportunity.”
And Carter, COO Bryan Funke and Education Manager Martin Redilla say this week’s meeting agenda was built with that goal in mind. In addition to conference mainstay features like the booth show and 1-on-1 distributor and supplier meetings, HDA Truck Pride also expanded its educational and networking sessions for this year’s conference to showcase how the organization is providing resources for members to strengthen their operations.
Funke says three particular areas where HDA Truck Pride is committed to supporting members are education, technology and engagement. He says many of the group’s current initiatives were created to support those areas, enabling HDA Truck Pride to “get deeper into our network” by supporting members in their operations and making them stronger.
“We help work on your business for you so you can work in your business,” says Redilla.
The good news for members is those initiatives have been working, Funke says, and uses the group’s efforts to bring members into the e-commerce world as an example.
“When I asked pre-COVID about e-commerce, you looked at me like I had three heads,” he says, adding just ten members were engaged in online sales in early 2020. Today, he says that number has grown to 60. “We’re getting great engagement.”
Carter says he hopes similar engagement occurs this week, adding there’s never been a better time for distributors and their vendors to sit down and address supply chain and fulfillment changes and ways to make their partnerships together.
“We’re all here to get better. We’re all trying to evolve,” he says.
