Wheeling Truck Center, Inc.
BY MAGGIE MATSKO. Wheeling Truck Center, Inc. was founded in 1933 by C. H. Remp as a White Motor Company truck dealer. Forty-eight years later, Volvo Truck purchased the White Motor Company, and Wheeling Truck Center became a proud truck dealer for Volvo. The company has remained in the family for the past four generations.
This small, family-owned business is committed to serving the heavy-duty trucking industry while offering new and used trucks, truck parts and top-notch service. It has stood out above its competition by receiving awards for being one of the top Volvo Truck dealers in North America.
Wheeling Truck Center was already operating throughout the tri-state area for many years when the company gained the opportunity to broaden its reach. While working with the U. S. Commercial Service and the West Virginia Development Office’ s International Development Division, the Wheeling-based company was able to find new customers in foreign markets. With a push in online marketing efforts, as well as traveling around the world to visit both customers and prospects, Wheeling Truck Center has been able to hit the milestone of selling truck parts in 109 countries.
Management soon discovered that distributing Wheeling Truck Center’ s products around the globe comes with a different set of challenges.“ Selling our products internationally requires additional paperwork, and we are also faced with many regulations that do not apply to domestic sales,” says Chad Remp, the company’ s operations manager.“ These regulations are critical to follow properly to ensure compliance.”
The company was able to find a way to overcome these challenges, and its success was marked with sales transactions in more than 50 countries in the first year.
Wheeling Truck Center has also been able to extend its reach in the U. S. through its e-commerce website, class8truckparts. com, which was launched in 2009. This website has helped the company expand its sales into all 50 states.
Wheeling Truck Center currently has 18 employees, but it is looking to enlarge its size and international reach.“ Looking toward the future, we are working on growing our sales in all departments,” says Remp.“ We will also continue to focus on our e-commerce truck parts sales and our international expansion.”
This small West Virginia business with a global success rate credits its achievements to having its headquarters in the Mountain State.“ We have benefited greatly from our location in West Virginia,” says Remp.“ We have a stable, highly skilled workforce and access to resources to help our small company transform for success in the future.” •
CONGRATULATIONS, SUSAN
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Chief Executive Officer Susan Lavenski is an embodiment of our culture and values, and we couldn’ t be more proud to congratulate her on being recognized as one of this year’ s WV Executive Sharp Shooters. charlesryan. com
WWW. WVEXECUTIVE. COM SPRING 2018
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