since 1992 . NATDA sat down with Derek Canady , former co-owner of Canady Trailers , and Ronnie Enns , CEO of Happy Trailers , to check in on the integration of the two companies — and discovered that some things are just meant to be .
A Partnership Nine Years in the Making It was Derek who first took notice of Happy Trailers when he started working for his father ’ s business .
“ It was 2015 , I was about to graduate college and close to working full-time at Canady Trailers . I was starting to learn everything . At the time , nobody in Tulsa had their trailer inventory online . And we were still using the same website my grandfather had implemented , which was as basic as you can think , “ Derek explains . “ That was when I began the process of upgrading our website . ( Because of it ) we were the first Tulsa dealer to have our inventory online .”
A couple of years later , Derek met Poncho Froesse , Happy ’ s Director of Operations . “ We hit it off at a vendor event and started a friendship from there . We kept in communication – talking back and forth on what we were seeing in the market and sharing ideas ,” Derek recalls . “ It had always felt like our two dealerships ran parallel with each other : the way that we ran operations , the types of customers we serviced , our approach to business and our desire to provide our customers with the best products possible .”
In 2022 , Ronnie joined in their conversations , even visiting Derek and his brother-in-law , Devon , together with Poncho and Johnny ( Happy Trailers ’ COO ). It was another year before everyone agreed on a partnership with each other .
Total Alignment Makes for an Easy Transition Ronnie admits that in the beginning , he was unsure about adding an existing company to the Happy Trailers organization . “ This was outside of our typical approach to expansion . We weren ’ t exactly looking to acquire a dealership . To be honest , a lot of dealerships wouldn ’ t mesh very well with ours . It would be like a rejected organ transplant , and
24 NATDA Magazine www . natda . org