A new web site aims to train dealer sales personnel. It also offers an entertaining glimpse of life in the heavy duty parts business.
According to the announcement, VarsityHeavyDuty.com will provide manufacturers' product and sales training for resellers and distributors of trucking and heavy-duty industrial parts. A curriculum of product training and online services will include on-demand sales tools and brochures, technical bulletins, direct Web links, chat and email.
But if you want a more vivid sales pitch, go to the site and click on "About Us."

There you will find a brief memoir of VarsityHeavyDuty.com president, Tommy Stone, who learned the parts business "starting in the back picking parts, putting up stock, sorting cores, running the delivery routes, taking occasional customer calls and generally absorbing enough product knowledge to make the big move to the counter."
That’s where Stone apparently met the trucking public head-on.
"The counter job was a taste of reality. All of a sudden the customers that used to tell you the joke of the day as you delivered their parts are frothing at the mouth in front of you because you don't know the difference between Q and Q plus shoes. Does it really matter? They both look the same.
"It only matters if you want the customer's truck to stop when he steps on the brakes. And it only matters if you want to get his size 18 hands off your size 16 neck. At the counter the phones are ringing off the hook and the customers are three deep and they all want the same thing... a KNOWLEDGEABLE counterman to take care of them right now."
Further on, Stone offers an entertaining list of learning experiences and another list of reasons why parts dealers should invest in practical employee training.