Pouring energy into parts

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DeCarolis’ Heavy Duty Parts Division occupies 10,000 sq ft of the 24,000-sq-ft building, which includes an 1100-sq-ft showroom and a
24' counter with three manned computer stations.
Pouring energy into parts
DeCarolis, now 65, has a new home for its Heavy Duty Parts Division
By Rick Weber
snapshot from the archives of DeCarolis Truck Rental
Inc illustrates how long the company has been in business:
Founder Louis DeCarolis Sr made a $295 down payment
on a new $1,104 Chevrolet straight truck. After allowing for
a $351 trade-in, DeCarolis owed an additional $38 a month
for 12 months.
A snapshot from today illustrates how far the company
has come since then:
DeCarolis Truck Rental Inc’s fleet exceeds 3,000 vehicles
at seven locations in western and central New York. That
$1,104 wouldn’t cover the cost of many simple maintenance
orders on any of those vehicles.
The company—now guided by 62-year-old Paul
DeCarolis, Louis Sr’s son—has dramatically expanded its
host of services, including truck, tractor and trailer leasing;
customized maintenance agreements; heavy duty parts,
sales, and service; storage trailers through their Warehouse on Wheels program; daily rentals; and driver training
and safety programs.
To add another benchmark to the company’s 65th anniversary year, DeCarolis moved the Heavy Duty Parts
Division of its Rochester headquarters into a 24,000-sq-ft
building that houses a 10,000-sq-ft parts warehouse, with remaining space being leased until it is needed for expansion.
A
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“There’s not another one like it in our area,” says Mark
Davis, general manager of Heavy Duty Parts. “None of this
would be possible without the support of Paul DeCarolis
and his belief in this division. Being a relatively new entity
of the company, we’ve been backed 100% by him, and he allowed us to make the investment in the new location and
the people.”
Says Tim Coons, sales manager for Heavy Duty Parts,
“It’s particularly noteworthy in light of economic conditions. Everyone has been ultra-conservative with capital.”
Significant increases
DeCarolis held its grand opening week Sept 15–19, but it
was purely ceremonial. Ever since the company moved its
Heavy Duty Parts Division into the new building March 1,
it has experienced greater efficiencies in both inventory
and cost containment.
“Our first month, without even heavily advertising, our
sales increased just by word of mouth,” Davis says. “We’re
showing our customer base we are dedicated to them by the
investment we made. Before, I think they weren’t really sure
we were trying to be in the parts business, or what we were
trying to do.”
It was the culmination of 23 years of growth.
After opening a new facility in Rochester in 1980,
DeCarolis had a trailer fleet numbering in the hundreds
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DeCarolis . . .
and started looking at the possibility
of enhancing the operation with an
offspring of trailer parts, which would
give DeCarolis better buying power
for its fleet and make it more competitive in trailer service.
After securing the dealership for
Trailmobile in 1982, the company
found it was able to purchase all
makes of trailer parts and components competitively, and pass these
savings to parts customers. As customers found this new source of parts
available to them, the Heavy Duty
Parts business expanded. DeCarolis
ultimately became the third-largest of
Trailmobile’s 265 dealers.
Remodeled facility
A facility in Geneva, New York, was
remodeled and DeCarolis was becoming recognized as a quality source for
trailer parts. As a result of the
Trailmobile parts program, other
parts lines became available and the
parts offerings extended beyond
trailer parts to include truck parts,
shop supplies, and tools.
In 1989, the Heavy Duty Parts unit
was established with the purpose of
being a “total fleet supplier.” Through
the years, DeCarolis supplied its
branches and customers with the
parts, supplies, tools, and equipment
to keep their shops operating and
their fleet on the road. A dedicated
sales force was put in place, point-ofsale systems were established, and a
delivery network was created.
[Above] With everything laid
out
by
product
line,
DeCarolis is able to serve
customers in half the time.
[Left] President/CEO Paul
DeCarolis cuts ribbon at
grand opening.
“The biggest advantage of having
the Heavy Duty parts group is buying
power and support,” says Mike
Margarone, vice president of sales for
DeCarolis Truck Rental. “It’s that simple. As far as us trying to be competitive against the nationals in the marketplace, having the Heavy Duty Parts
division support us and being one of
their customers gives us preferred
pricing on parts to allow us to be more
The Heavy Duty Parts Division has come a long way since its inception in 1989.
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competitive in our contracts and what
we charge on our lease agreements.
“The other advantage is that it gives
us some value-added support to our
customers, whether it’s flatbed straps
or anything else they may need in addition to the lease we provide them.
We can support those needs in-house.”
Use what they sell
The Heavy Duty Parts Division’s
number one customer is DeCarolis
Truck Rental, which has six service
facilities spread across New York, so it
is geared up to handle any need.
“We’ve always tried to profess to
our customers that we use what we
sell,” Davis says. “A product might be
$2 less, but we have to be very careful
because inevitably that part would
end up on one of our vehicles. We
don’t always go for lowest price. We
go for quality first. We know the cost
of down time, road calls, loads that
don’t make it on time.
“To us, to make an extra couple of
points on margin to buy a lesser quality part and sell it higher is not something we really want to do. It doesn’t
pay, and it would end up on one of our
vehicles for sure and cost us money in
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DeCarolis . . .
the long run.”
Adds Coons, “That really differentiates us from our competition. We have
to be so sensitive to that. We’re not
just selling parts. That goes back to
our people. We have to be very knowledgeable to support our own shops—
diagnose problems and troubleshoot
properly, not just throw parts at a
truck and hope to find where the
problem is.”
A few years ago, it became apparent
that Heavy Duty Parts needed a new
home. It was sharing 4,000 sq ft with a
trailer repair shop, and had no loading
dock or staging area, and only a very
small counter.
The answer was next door.
DeCarolis purchased an adjacent
three-acre corner property and embarked on the task of refurbishing the
existing tool and dye building, a four-wall
structure designed as a machine shop.
DeCarolis constructed divider walls—
partitions that separate the lobby from
the counter, warehouse, and shipping
area—and retrofitted the building to its
standards. The exterior was repainted,
and a parking lot was blacktopped and
striped. In the end, only the roof and four
walls stayed the same.
Davis, who has been involved with
the opening of DeCarolis facilities in
Binghamton, Buffalo, and East
Syracuse, was the primary designer of
the new parts building. Collaborating
with DeCarolis employees—some of
whom have been in heavy duty parts
for up to 20 years—he incorporated
things that were used in other
DeCarolis buildings along with the
best things he has noticed about other
facilities.
“We asked ourselves, ‘What would
we like to see if we were a customer?
What’s the impression we would have
if we walked in?’ ” Coons says. “Paul’s
big focus is on what a customer sees
and his first impression. He’s big on
making everything look clean and up
to standards.”
“The showroom point-of-sale retail
has been a big part of our increased
sales and margin,” Davis says. “We
have 1100 sq ft of shelving and islands
that can rotate around and change
stock. A customer can walk in and grab
products and do that impulse buying.
“You walk in and there’s an 1100-sqft showroom and a 24' counter with
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three manned computer stations. We
have a purchasing office, shipping office, and employee area. Everything is
laid out by product line. Before, it was
difficult to put stock away and pull
stock and service a customer in an acceptable amount of time. It’s less than
half of the time now. It’s been a huge
advantage to us.”
All computers are point-of-sale and
Internet-based. DeCarolis is working
to get quick links on the screen to vendor catalogs, which will speed up the
process of serving the customer.
Inventory changes
The expanded warehouse gives the
company a better handle on inventory.
“We’re certainly able to carry more
lines and more depth in each line,”
Coons says. “It allows us to purchase
better because the purchasing people
can see what we have and what we
need. We’ve actually reduced inventory by having a better control on it.
We’ve tried to stick to JIT-style inventory and being able to see. We’ve
probably reduced our inventory by
$150,000—most of it slow-moving and
obsolete things.”
DeCarolis had hired three people—
taking the staff to 15—and is looking
to hire two more.
“We have people dedicated to keeping the showroom current with seasonal products and stock,” Coons
says. “They take ownership and pride
in what they’re doing.”
He says DeCarolis’ position in the
heavy duty parts marketplace is solidified by the company’s customer-driven model.
“The parts market is a mature market in that there aren’t new monies
coming into this type of industry,” he
says. “In a technological industry, new
technology and new products are
available, whereas in our industry, it’s
rather mature.
“As a matter of fact, with longer
warranties and longer-life products,
the aftermarket business is suffering
a bit. We think our position is an advantage because we are customerneed and service driven. We will get
whatever the customer needs when
he needs it. We don’t just do parts. We
do shop supplies, cleaning supplies—
anything that a transportation company would need, whether they be a
repair facility or leasing company.”
From the very beginning, Louis
DeCarolis Sr knew that the only way
he could support his customers’
needs was by expanding DeCarolis
Truck Rental’s multidimensional
image with a wide range of products
and services.
Truck leasing, once the domain of
giant companies, has become lucrative for a number of small, regional
firms. In recent years, changes in the
industry, including deregulation, convinced many executives that they did
not need to own a fleet of trucks.
Leasing became an option to enhance
their bottom lines by eliminating excessive payroll and business expenses. Executives preferred to deal
with local vendors with proven track
records for reliability and trustworthiness. This paved the way for regional
leasing companies.
Top company
Out of this evolution, DeCarolis—
which has been recognized many
times as one of Rochester’s 100 top
companies by the Chamber of
Commerce—became one of the “new
breed” of regional companies that
demonstrated it could successfully capitalize on the potential of truck leasing.
The company was the vision of Louis
Sr, who bought a truck and used it to
transport migrant workers to and from
farmers’ fields. Shortly after that, Clapp’s
Baby Food asked him to haul produce to
its processing plant. DeCarolis Trucking
Company was born.
In the early years, DeCarolis specialized in heavy-duty trucking and
outside repairs, sometimes renting
out its own equipment to customers.
Later, it added a truck terminal, and
expanded into warehousing in the
1950s. The business grew quickly
with the addition of a truck stop, a
Diamond Reo truck dealership, a
Thermo King refrigeration franchise,
and a rental and leasing company.
Louis Sr died in 1961, and was succeeded by his two sons, Louis Jr and
Paul. When Louis Jr was killed in a
plane crash in 1966, Paul assumed
command and began to phase out the
sales and outside service business to
concentrate exclusively on the rental
and full-service leasing.
Fleet and customer needs grew as
customers looked to DeCarolis for
other services. Trailers became a
prized commodity, with hundreds
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DeCarolis . . .
added to the fleet. Sizes increased
from 40' to 53'. Paint and collision demand intensified, and DeCarolis’
state-of-the-art paint booth was the
only one in the Rochester area that
could accommodate large trucks and
trailers.
New corporate headquarters were
built in 1980 on 15 acres at 333 Colfax
St—just one mile from where Louis Sr
opened his first truck stop. A maintenance facility was attached that would
serve as an additional transportation
resource for customers owning their
own fleets, as well as for specialized
work on DeCarolis-owned equipment.
Greater capacities
This new maintenance facility now
had the space, state-of-the-art equipment, and trained specialists to handle
more in-depth paint and collision
work, as well as perform any phase of
van body and trailer repairs. Fabrication, frame modification, and after-
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market installations were muchneeded services for DeCarolis’ transportation customers.
The growing customer base was
traveling more frequently in other upstate cities, and over-the-road customers were starting to travel coast to
coast and border to border. DeCarolis,
to support these customers, became
affiliated with Ameriquest, a nationwide network of independent truck
leasing companies.
The Buffalo branch opened in 1987.
With a shop and rental and lease base,
DeCarolis now had service and support for its Rochester customers and
the springboard to build more fullfledged branch operations. Steady
growth warranted a new state-of-theart facility in 1996.
In 1988, the Syracuse branch
opened after the purchase of DeLuxe
Leasing, a major storage trailer competitor. Originally, it was intended to
operate only as a storage trailer business and provide emergency mainte-
nance services for current customers
traveling in the area.
Almost immediately, DeCarolis
began renting and leasing power
equipment and further establishing a
base to provide complete transportation services. As this business grew, a
new Syracuse facility was built in 2000.
Other branch facilities, in Geneva,
Henrietta, and Perry, were created to
support the needs in those areas.
DeCarolis’ fleet of 3,000 vehicles
travel over 45 million miles annually
and are supported by a staff of over
170. That’s a far cry from one truck
transporting migrant workers to and
from farmers’ fields.
“You take a look at the past five
years at how many small and mediumsized businesses—even large businesses—have failed,” says marketing
coordinator Rob Merlo, “and we’re
still going strong. We’re anticipating
growth in the future. We’re extremely
proud of the fact we’ve been around
for 65 years.”
❏
Trailer/Body Builders October 2003