IN HIGH GEAR - Idaho Wrecker Sales

Towing & Recovery Footnotes
Section II
March 2008
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25
IN HIGH GEAR
Master of Design
He will soon share several secretly developed innovations
By Lynn Ford
C
huck Ceccarelli would rather
talk about his towing inventions than his upbringing but
in many ways the two are inseparable.
For instance, how did a boy who left
home at 14 wind up selling custom
wreckers and owning a state-of-theart design and manufacturing company of towing products, a place where
anyone can yell “Whiffleball!” at any
time and everyone takes two at-bats
in the parking lot?
And how did that boy go from riding rodeo to inventing the Sidepuller,
an add-on accessory that turns a carrier into a recovery unit, has saved
lives, and enhanced the towing capabilities of towers across the country.
Miller Industries recently licensed the
Sidepuller for production, further
ensuring widespread distribution and
success.
According to Ceccarelli, one thing
just led to another. He followed his
nose, pursued his passions, straightened out his values, and wound up
just about as happy as anyone has a
right to be.
But that would be about him.
What’s more important, he says, are
the people who intervened in his life,
who took the time to help him out
and point him in the right direction. “I
know this story is about me, but I
have to give credit to all the people
who have helped me, including my
employees, my wife Laurie, my sons
Ben and Alex, and Donnie Cruse,”
Ceccarelli said. “Without them, I don’t
think I would be here. I’m sure of it.”
There’s also a rancher named Asa
Black, but more about him later.
“There’s a saying in our shop that
you can see the farthest when you
stand on the shoulders of giants,”
Ceccarelli said. “You meet people
along the way that help guide you. I
wouldn’t be here without them.” Well,
Ceccarelli may have had a lot of help
through the past 42 years, but from
the look of things, he had a speck
of gumption of his own.
A Day In The Life
It’s a brisk November morning in
Mountain Home, Idaho about 40
miles southeast of Boise. By 5:30,
Ceccarelli is pulling into the parking
lot of the 10,000-square-foot building
that houses In The Ditch Towing
Products, one of the top design and
production facilities for innovative
Chuck Ceccarelli with some of his gear innovations
towing products in the country. This
is also the home of a separate company, Idaho Wrecker Sales, distributor
of Chevron and Century for Idaho,
Montana, and Northern Nevada. And
it is the headquarters of Aircraft
Recovery Solutions (see sidebar).
It’s about 30 degrees. Clear skies.
The sun is breaking over the Trinity
Mountains. At this time of the morning,
the serenity has yet to be disturbed by
jets from the nearby Mountain Home
Air Force Base. It’s a place where taking
a walk is called hiking by the rest of us.
Ceccarelli’s the kind of guy that gets
just a little misty-eyed over something
this beautiful. “I’m very thankful to
be living out west,” he said, mentioning his cabin. “If you’ve never gotten
up in the morning in the mountains
and made breakfast and smelled the
coffee….” His voice trails off for a
moment before he resumes. “Well,
how many times in your life will you
do that?”
As other employees begin to arrive,
the production day begins and excitement builds. The facility for the three
businesses includes eight production
bays, two paint booths, and requires a
full-time engineer on site (Take a virtual tour at www.wreckerbuilder.com
/tour.htm).
They do their own machining, have
a CNC high-definition plasma cutting
table, 3-D computer modeling, and
a 130-ton CNC press brake for bending up to 10-foot sheets of steel. The
facility has a full-service fabrication
shop and can completely restore or
customize new and used tow trucks or
carriers.
Ceccarelli has delegated control of
his successful tow truck dealership,
Idaho Wrecker Sales, which opened in
1994, to one of the managers who
worked his way up from the paint
booth. The product line includes
wreckers and carriers with custom
installation of towing equipment,
detailed painting, and custom graphics and lettering.
Ceccarelli also runs Aircraft Recovery
Solutions specializing in recovering
and retrieving aircraft, including disassembly and transportation of disabled
or wrecked airplanes. For $3,999, towers can come to Boise in May for a
three-day training session in airplane
recovery run by Ceccarelli.
Mystery Gear
But almost all of his focus these
days is on In The Ditch, specializing in
designing and producing new towing
products like the recently patented
Speed Dolly, a lightweight self-loading
dolly for recovering disabled vehicles
with a wheel lift or sling.
It’s just the kind of innovation that
is propelling Ceccarelli to his own
mountaintop. “We’re going to unveil
some stuff (at Florida’s PWOF tow
show) that will blow away the industry,” he said. “That’s how cocky my
crew is. We’re so excited. It’s so hard to
keep what we’ve got contained.
“The Generation 2 Dolly design will
be unveiled in Florida. It’s never been
seen before in the world. It’s under
total secrecy, behind closed doors. We
think it’s that big. And we have a car
carrier design that is going to rock the
industry.
“If you watch our web site, since
November of last year we’ve introduced over 500 new part numbers.
We’ve invented, developed and marSee MASTER OF DESIGN, page 27
T&R Footnotes
MASTER OF DESIGN
continued from page 25
keted 50 new products. And we have
90 new distributors. Everyone in this
company wants to leave their mark.”
Ceccarelli has been in the towing
business since 1990. He is a WreckMaster certified instructor in light,
medium, and heavy-duty recovery, air
cushion recovery, and a leading authority on airplane recovery. He was president of the Idaho Towing and Recovery
Professionals for five years, served on
the state Traffic Incident Management
(TIM) committee and was voted
WreckMaster of the year in 1999.
In November, Ceccarelli was named
Towman of the Year by American
Towman magazine and featured in a
cover story in the January 2008 issue.
So he knows his stuff. But how did
this guy who left home at age 14 get
to the point where he’s flying all over
Europe talking about the next generation of towing equipment and the
future of the industry?
The Cowboy Life
Ceccarelli won’t say why he left
home at 14. He shrugs off the question, saying, “Somebody out there
had it worse than me.”
Piece together a few details and a
story of sorts will emerge. Ceccarelli
was riding rodeo and didn’t have a
parent to sign the releases or anybody
to take him for medical care when he
got hurt. He was living on his own,
trying to go to school, and having a
tough time making a go of it.
That’s where Asa Black stepped in.
Asa’s gone now, but Ceccarelli’s son’s
name is Alex Asa Ceccarelli. So that
tells you something.
Asa was a real cowboy with a big
ranch, big enough for ranch hands
and multiple families – two sons with
their own houses and families – to live
together community-style. Asa and
Ceccarelli struck a deal when
Ceccarelli was about 16. If Ceccarelli
❘
March 2008
❘
27
worked hard on the ranch, stayed
in high school, and didn’t cause trouble, Asa would sign his rodeo releases,
pay his medical expenses, and feed
him. “They said they lost money,”
Ceccarelli said. “I ate more than I
worked.”
But Asa gave Ceccarelli much more
than food. He ingrained a work ethic
in the boy that stuck and he taught
him ingenuity. “When things break,
you have to solve the problem,”
Ceccarelli recalled of those days. Asa
and his wife also taught the young
man some ranch-style manners. “If
someone came to the house to work,
they got fed. When the neighbors
helped brand the cows, they got fed a
good big lunch to thank them for
helping.”
He learned that his word was his
bond. “You say what you’re going to
do and you do it. If you’re late, you’re
saying your time is more important,”
Ceccarelli said. The young man
learned to take his hat off when he
ate and show respect to his elders.
“I was at a point in my life where I
was on the fence and one side was
really bad and one side was really
good and Asa kept pulling me toward
the good side,” Ceccarelli said. He
tells the story of the Indian who was
asked how to make a canoe. The
Indian responded: “It’s easy. You just
cut away the tree.”
Of his own life, Ceccarelli says: I
knew what I didn’t want to do. No
drugs, no prison. I wanted to treat
people decent and leave a mark on
the world. So, everything fell into
place. Like the canoe, I stripped away
what I didn’t want to be.”
Ceccarelli invented the Sidepuller, now from Miller Industries
Getting Started
What was left was a keen curiosity
into technology and an inventive
streak that wouldn’t stop. “When I was
10 or 12, I was doing design work,
fixing a neighbor’s lawn mower. I
remember to this day she paid me
three dollars. Somebody paid me for
This HD plasma cutter will be replaced by a laser
working with my hands and using my
mind,” Ceccarelli recalled. “It was too
easy.”
What Ceccarelli is doing today
wouldn’t be called easy, but he’s still
using his hands and his mind. “It’s
frustrating the amount of money and
investment it takes to make a product.
You invent something, get a patent,
get product liability insurance, create
a process for making it, create part
numbers for replacements, advertise,
set up distributors, set up a credit
approval process. Those are all the
things you don’t see from the outside,”
he said. “When I look way back in
the towing history at NoMar, Weaver,
Holmes, I pay great homage. Anybody
who can invent something, then
develop, market it, and realize a profit
is extraordinary. It’s a lot of work.”
To sum up his life experience,
Ceccarelli just says, “You don’t have
to be great to start. But you have to
start to be great.” His professional life
in the towing business began in 1991
in Bruneau, Idaho, a town of 300. “You
couldn’t overnight UPS,” Ceccarelli
recalled. “Every phone call was long
distance.”
Eventually, Valley Towing operated
five light, medium and heavy trucks, a
Landoll, and air cushions. In 1994, a
driver rolled and totaled one of the
wreckers. Ceccarelli had to drive five
hours to find a truck with rusted
wheel wells, a smashed exhaust pipe,
rusted floorboard, and a broken windshield.
That did it for Ceccarelli. He talked
to the people at Chevron. They gave
him a line of credit and asked how
many trucks could he sell? He said he
figured two or three the first year. He
ended up selling 18 or 19. Idaho
Wrecker Sales was born.
See MASTER OF DESIGN, page 28
28
❘
March 2008
❘
T&R Footnotes
MASTER OF DESIGN
show and sold dollies and sidepullers.
Now we’ve got them in Europe and
Japan. They’re all over the world.”
Ceccarelli’s goal is to become the
number-one towing accessory manufacturer in the world. He has agreements with independent companies
to design products. “We’re really good
at designing and building quickly,” he
said.
continued from page 27
Eventually, he sold the towing company but as wrecker sales took off, so
did its repair business and his innovative technical solutions. Ceccarelli
began to think bigger, about solving
bigger problems. “It was insanity,”
Ceccarelli said. “The police would
send us 90 miles to a location at three
a.m. We’re in the middle of nowhere.
The car’s down the embankment and
we can’t get it with a car carrier. We
needed better information or we
needed to solve the problem.”
Fast & Lean
Side Solution
The obvious design question was
whether it was possible to design a
carrier with recovery capability. The
solution, Ceccarelli believed, was to
design a winch system while stabilizing the carrier to pull the weight.
The idea for the Sidepuller was
born and the SP8000 was first publicly offered for sale on June 6, 2002.
Installed on a carrier or wrecker, it
combined the capacity of a car carrier with the recovery capability of a
wrecker.
Today, there are two additional
models: the SP12000 and the SP20000.
The SP20000 has a 20,000-pound
planetary winch, winch tensioner and
free spool, hydraulic stiff legs, flipper
foot spades, eight tie-back points, two
removable D-rings, and a center pivoting boom head.
The shear rapidly cuts flat sheets of material
When Miller Industries approached
him about licensing and distributing,
Ceccarelli jumped at the chance. “I’ve
had a long relationship with the engineers and managers at Miller,” he
said. “They could take our product
and go worldwide with it. It’s been
unbelievable to have them producing,
selling, and servicing that product.”
Ceccarelli could focus once again
on his first love: inventing. “A lot of
towers wanted a lightweight towing
dolly. Now, I had capital freed up
from licensing to Miller. I could start
research and development and spent
about eight months designing,”
Ceccarelli said. “I got so excited
watching the birth of that dolly that
I realized we could design a whole
new company around it. I wanted to
design at my own shop and then
license the products out. Donnie
Cruse let me use the name In The
Ditch, and by November of 2006, we
were on our way.”
Ceccarelli hired a mechanical engineer, built new offices, and hired
more people. “Now we can’t even
catch our breath. We had our new
products unveiled at the Tokyo tow
Design has gone high-tech since
Ceccarelli started. With the help of
consultants at Tech Help, the company
has streamlined its processes and purchased three-dimensional computerized design and engineering equipment. They can do rapid prototyping
on new designs, test them, and tweak
them before going into production.
In 2007, the company won the
Idaho Spirit of Continuous Innovation
Award. “With Tech Help, we went from
hand-cutting to computer-cutting
and took our assembly processes
from four days to one day,” Ceccarelli
said. “They helped us establish a new,
quick, lean philosophy.”
Ceccarelli has learned a lot from the
past. Now, he’s focused on the future.
“I want to know how cars will be towed
20 years from now,” he said. “I’m continually looking at better ways to solve
problems. In Europe, I was looking
at buying a laser for my shop that
starts at a half-million dollars. People
are laughing at me like I’m Dr. Evil and
want to take over the world. Well, yeah,
I do!”
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❘
T&R Footnotes
❘
29
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Ceccarelli ended up buying that
laser and in February he will break
ground on a brand-new 10,000square-foot manufacturing facility
dedicated to innovative techniques.
Meanwhile, employees are working
hard and having fun during these
exciting times. “If somebody has a
bad attitude, they can call ‘Whiffleball!’
and everybody goes out and plays,”
Ceccarelli said. “It’s pretty hard to stay
mad. It happens about once every 60
days. If there are customers there, they
join in.”
March 2008
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359930
Once a month, the company has a
cookout with entertainment, scavenger hunts, or guest speakers. They
play bingo, Family Feud, golf, dodgeball. They have a “dartboard of death.”
Anyone with perfect attendance gets
to throw for a half day of paid vacation,
a $100 bill, or a mystery gift.
Ceccarelli invests in his employees,
recently spending $14,000 on training
for managers. He paid for everyone to
spend a day at a Zig Ziglar conference.
There are inspirational quotations on
the walls like: “Never doubt that a few
passionate people can change the
world.”
“That’s all it’s ever been,” he said.
“It’s never been a million people at
once changing something. It’s one or
two dedicated people.” V