Marmon Takes Its Wares to Customers

Marmon Highway Technologies (MHT) is taking the products and services of its 10 companies to potential customers, and is impressing them with the worth of its wares reputation of its parent company and its legendary chief executive, Warren Buffett

. MHT's Ideas in Motion tour last week visited Springdale, Ark., the third venue where executives of major fleets saw what the companies offer and why they should purchase parts and services from them.

Last year Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Corp. bought 60 percent of Marmon Holdings, which owns MHT and other groups of companies, MHT officials said. Berkshire will acquire the rest over the next five or six years.

"I met him (Warren Buffett) after the acquisition and he said, 'You just keep doing what you have been'" - operating efficiently and profitably - "'and you probably won't see me again,'" said Kelly Dier, MHT's president.

MHT's products range from clutches, axles and brakes to wheels, mud flaps, fenders, fifth wheels and complete vehicles. Several carry the Fontaine name. Some can be spec'd on new trucks and others are sold through the aftermarket. MHT's companies are Fontaine Fifth Wheel, Fontaine Modification, Fontaine Spray Suppression (Fleetline, Hogebuilt and Nu-Line), Fontaine Trailer, Leland Brake and Wheel Parts, Marmon-Herrington, Perfection, Triangle Suspension Systems, TSE Brakes, and Webb Wheel.

Fleet managers from Wal-Mart Transportation, J.B Hunt and others headquartered in northwest Arkansas, plus many who were attending a state maintenance meeting were invited to view trade-show-style booths at a conference center adjacent to a Holiday Inn in Springdale. Executives from each of MHT's companies were on hand to explain their wares and answer questions.

Fleet people are seeking long-term supplier partners and like the "stability" that Berkshire Hathaway's ownership represents, Dier said. Those sentiments were heard from managers at two previous MHT shows aimed at Maverick Transportation in North Little Rock, Ark., and Swift Transportation in Phoenix, Ariz.

Booth equipment for the tour is transported on a Fontaine Revolution curtainside flatbed trailer pulled by a '96 Marmon conventional-cab tractor, one of the last trucks built before Marmon left the power-unit business and sold its plant in Garland, Texas, to Navistar International. A tour of Webb Wheel's plant west of Springdale was part of the program. The MHT tour will continue at other locations in the new year.