Lift trucks: What Crown's IC and IT strategies mean to you

In this exclusive interview, Senior Vice President Jim Moran explains what Crown’s entering the internal combustion engine lift truck market and its applying new information management capabilities will mean to customers.—Tom Andel

Q: Before getting into Crown’s IC strategy, let’s address how the economy has affected Crown.

Moran: As an industry we’ll probably end up in the 90,000 unit zone this year. We’re optimistic about next year but probably not as optimistic as others have been. If we follow the cyclical nature of this industry, we should be able to expect an upturn this time of maybe 8-10%. Maybe by the end of the year it’ll be tracking at 15%.

Q: What indicators are you following to lead you to that conclusion?

Moran: Crown has a fairly complex forecasting model that takes into account a number of leading indicators. We routinely review historical industry performance against our model and they are remarkably close. Of course, this downturn has been unique.

Q: How has this downturn differed from previous ones?

Moran: The speed of it. Last October the industry was off about 8% then in December that last quarter had fallen off just over 40%. As we look at this year and next, the fact we’re a privately owned company allows us to take a little different look at it than a public company. We haven’t reduced our field staff or our customer-facing group. That’s given us reason to be optimistic about next year because we’ve been able to gain market share in all three classes. We’ve had more people in the field as it relates to the aftermarket and supporting customers, which we feel is important when working with large fleet accounts. We see our customers frequently.

Q: That said, why is Crown getting into internal combustion trucks when so many fleets are moving to electrics?

Moran: I don’t believe anyone thinks that in the near term the IC market will disappear. We want to participate in it because we have a lot of customers who talk to us about their needs. Many customers buy a lot of electric trucks but also have IC and would like to single source. Our decision to get into IC is customer driven. We’ve been looking at this for six years. Every competitor we have has moved into our market, so to stay competitive and be viewed as a potential global supplier, we wanted to be part of the IC market.

Q: Talk about the trend toward being information managers as well as lift truck providers.

Moran: The industry has developed systems and software that will give you mountains of data. For the first six months a DC operator has that, they love it—but eventually they kind of hate it because it gets to be too much. They don’t know what to do with it all. At Crown, we’ve taken the approach of providing content-rich dashboards that give customers a chance to focus on the real opportunities and not all the noise that’s in the data.

Q: Give us some examples of “real opportunities.”

Moran: For example, we’ve done a lot of work on collision and impact sensing that will eliminate false impact readings. That required a complex algorithm by which you teach the truck in the warehouse before you set it up. The system learns the impacts that are important and those that aren’t. From that you set thresholds and then the dashboards can tell you when you really have a problem. What’s been happening in a lot of cases is you get so many false impacts that the manager eventually turns them off.

Q: So the end user selects the information they’ll focus on?

Moran: That’s one way. But we’re doing pilot work where we’ll host the system and the customer owns the data. We can then come in and offer advice on what to do.

Q: Will having access to all this information also help Crown? What can you do with it?

Moran: You start to learn customers’ real issues and design solutions to them. We’re hosting maintenance data on 55,000 trucks, and every day we get information from the field down to the component level. It shows the significance of doing planned maintenance on an hourly basis rather than by the calendar. There’s a real savings in that throughout the life of the truck. We’re learning how many hours people are really using trucks, how many days a week, whether they’re running all their trucks, and how one location compares to others in a network.

Q: What does a dealer have to do these days to be successful?

Moran: You need trained people not only in sales but also in applications, service and support. Customer transactions are transparent today. As an example, a dealer service technician shows up to fix a truck, doesn’t have the correct part on the van and then tries to bill the customer for a second trip. That just doesn’t work. The dealer’s commitment to the customer must be ongoing even when they’re not buying.

Q: How are mergers and acquisitions affecting dealers?

Moran: The idea that a dealer can have a focused sales force on three different brands or afford to have a separate sales force for each is unlikely. The challenge for the OEM is to make sure they’re getting enough sales time, otherwise they’ll lose. That’s why we’re focused on staying connected to independently owned dealers even though some of them would have an alternative brand.

Q: What are the chances Crown will be snapped up in some deal?

Moran: I’ve been here 44 years and worked for all three generations of the Dicke family. In every case they’ve said they’ll remain independently owned. I don’t see them changing that philosophy.

Q: How does that benefit Crown?

Moran: We can be quick on our feet and make decisions that are more long term. We didn’t cut our support staff. We’re staying focused on customers and their problems.

Q: Let’s conclude on the regulatory environment, particularly OSHA. Do you think as the economy gets better and work starts ramping up again that they’ll be more active in enforcing safety?

Moran: The Industrial Truck Association has done OSHA inspector training sessions. They’ve been helpful. There have been far fewer calls complaining about OSHA inspectors. As far as information reporting, I think you’ll see people build that capability right in the truck. Customers won’t have a device hanging off the truck; rather, it’ll be part of a system interface. The user is focusing on safety because it is the right thing to do and because there is a significant cost if you don’t. 

Tom Andel
tandel4315@aol.com