Though a leader in service and innovation for the St. Louis medium- and heavy-duty truck market for more than 50 years, Broadway Truck Center found its success as a mixer dealer limited. Gary Ebersol, vice president of sales, determined that matching a customer's immediate need for a mixer truck required balancing chassis and mixer manufacturers' production times. Ebersol found that fellow dealers shared the same problem. At ConExpo-Con/Agg in Las Vegas last March, Ebersol corralled 16 other Sterling distributors who agreed to form the Concrete Collective, a distributor alliance with London Machinery and Sterling Truck.
Since the Sterling and London plants are less than 20 miles apart, the Concrete Collective was able to create a unique truck and reduce mixer-mounting time.
The Concrete Collective truck will feature in-dash mixer controls. Sterling engineers found other ways to reduce London employees' mounting time by changing production-line procedures. Concrete Collective trucks feature factory wiring harnesses into which London installers merely plug their controls from the dash. Sterling chassis builders now pre-punch holes that match the London mounting pattern, eliminating extra holes and mounting time, and now Sterling factory employees also add brackets for the water and hydraulic tanks.
In August, the first new Concrete Collective truck rolled out of the London plant. By mid-September, Concrete Collective distributors hope to have a number of demonstrators spread around the country for producers to test-drive.
Keywords: Broadway Truck Center, mixer truck, Sterling, Concrete Collective, London Machinery
