Heavy equipment and truck dealer prospering
With a thriving equipmentrental business in place, Leslie Doggett Industries was ready when supply chain disruptions and manufacturer shortages put a crimp on new construction vehicle sales.
So, when builders couldn’t buy new John Deere tractors, Toyota forklifts or Link Belt cranes to meet their needs, they had to rent them from Leslie Doggett Industries. Lots of them.
“There’s a lot of commercial road, bridge and industrial activity requiring dirt work, so our rental business has been better than it’s ever been,” founder and CEO Leslie Doggett said. “That’s more than made up for the lack of new equipment for sale.”
The banner business in rentals helped Leslie Doggett Industries, which operates John Deere and Freightliner semitruck dealerships, boost its revenues last year to $1.87 billion. That put Doggett, whose Deere dealerships make Doggett North America’s largest dealer owner, at No.9 on the Chronicle 100’s list of top private companies.
Sales still played a big role in the company’s success last year. Leslie Doggett Industries had generated enough Freightliner orders in previous years to ensure a sufficient allocation of new trucks from the manufacturer to set an annual record for semitruck sales last year.
And while supply chain issues hamstrung new-vehicle sales at the company’s Doggett Ford dealership, some of that lost revenue was offset by a jump in both usedvehicle sales and service revenue.
With interest rates on the rise, Doggett is cautious about growth prospects in the immediate future since many of his company’s sales are financed. But he added that his company has weathered downturns before.
“We’re eyes-wide-open for a recession, and when you do have one, usually used (vehicle) prices are the first to tank,” he said.
Still, the company, which employs about 1,600 people, believes it may have girded itself against any future shortfalls in new-vehicle sales when it acquired Freightliner, Western Star and Detroit Diesel semitruck dealerships in Austin, Georgetown and Buda from the Austin Freightliner Group late last year.
“We’d been trying to acquire that (Austin) market for seven or eight years, as we all know there’s hypergrowth going on there with the tech companies,” Doggett said. “We’ve doubled profitability in the short time we’ve had it.”