Leading Through Pressure: Navy Lessons, CEO Decisions, and Building a Stronger Wabash with Brent Yeagy

In this episode of Risk & Resolve, Ben Conner and Todd Hufford sit down with Brent Yeagy, President and CEO of Wabash, to explore his journey from small-town Indiana to the U.S. Navy submarine force and ultimately to leading one of America’s largest transportation equipment manufacturers. Brent shares how military pressure shaped his leadership, what it took to guide Wabash through COVID, why he refuses to accept the status quo in healthcare, and how leaders can drive breakthrough change by owning outcomes instead of delegating them away. This is a conversation about resilience, responsibility, and leading with clarity when the stakes are high.

Main Talking Points

• Brent’s Indiana roots, early dream of becoming a doctor, and formative years in Alexandria
• His nonlinear path from Purdue to enlisting in the U.S. Navy during the first Gulf War
• How leading young sailors on a nuclear submarine shaped his view of pressure, responsibility, and leadership
• Wabash’s origin story: disrupting the trailer industry through customization and entrepreneurial speed
• Brent’s rise through multiple roles at Wabash after joining in 2003
• The career-defining risk of moving into manufacturing leadership with only 24 hours to decide
• What changed when he became CEO in 2018
• How Wabash responded to COVID after losing roughly 70% of backlog in weeks
• Why command-and-control leadership was necessary in moments of crisis
• Turning crisis into opportunity by recapitalizing, reorganizing, and reshaping the business
• Brent’s philosophy on healthcare: leaders are responsible for outcomes, not just costs
• Why CEOs cannot delegate away stewardship of employee health
• His vision for Wabash’s future through resilience, culture, and strategic transformation

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Speaker 1 0:13

And now for your host, Ben Conner Hufford.

Speaker 3 0:18

Welcome back to another episode of Risk and Resolve. I'm Ben Conner alongside Todd Hufford, and today's guest is Brent Yeege, the president and CEO of Wabash. He's been the president and CEO since June of 2018 and joined Wabash in 2003. Prior to that, from 1993 to 2003 2003, Brent had several roles with Delko Raimi. And prior to that, was in the US Navy.

Speaker 1:16

Thanks, Ben. Thanks, Todd. It's a pleasure to join you guys and to uh have a conversation with you.

Growing Up In Rural Indiana

Speaker 3 1:22

Yeah. So before we get into Wabash and some of your other background, um, just tell us a little bit about yourself and where you grew up and what growing up looked like for you.

Speaker 1:33

Sure. So I I'm an Indiana kid. I grew up uh in Madison County in Alexandria, Indiana. Um the you know, I we were my mom was a school teacher at a rural school. My dad was a uh in management at uh Del Carimi and Anderson when Anderson had 40,000 UAW, you know, GM workers. And uh so typically a farming blue-collar background, um, surrounded by cornfields. My friends and I were in, you know, it was about sports and 4-H and you know, your typical Indiana kid.

Speaker 3 2:09

Yeah. So what was your uh what was your dream growing up? When you grew up, you wanted to be what? What did that look like for you?

Speaker 2:18

Yeah, my my dream uh was to be a doctor, was was, you know, so I can think about being, you know, six, seven, eight years old, you know, getting a doctor kit for Christmas. And, you know, that's what I wanted to be because that's what I I thought being successful looked like at that time. And you know, I held that dream really all the way through uh high school, and then you know, started to, you know, you learn about what other things are going on in the world, and that starts to change.

Purdue To Navy By Choice

Speaker 3 2:49

Yeah, for sure. So you went to Purdue University um and then ended up uh going into the United States Navy. Tell us about going to Purdue, your experience there, and then uh you know uh your decision to join the Navy and and in that experience as well.

Speaker 3:10

Yeah, so that's uh that's that's a nonlinear story. Uh so you got to bear with me here for a second. Uh and and it somewhat mirrors, I would say, a host of choices in my life. Um so I uh you know, I you know finished up um high school and was looking at you know colleges all around the Midwest. Um knew I wanted something in the engineering uh fields. And at the time, um yeah, I was thinking in the you know chemical biomedical area. Purdue was the a natural fit. My my father went to Purdue, and so uh I you know my first year would have been fall of 1989, and uh you know, successful at Purdue. Uh when I as a sophomore, um you know, you I went into initial engineering, and um you know, with a lot of kids, you know, you go through that first, second year and you go, uh, where I'm starting out isn't exactly what I like. And you kind of lose a little bit of your purpose during that time period. And what was going on for me at the time um was the first Gulf War was breaking out in March of um what would that be March of 1991, which would have been the you know second semester or the um spring semester of my sophomore year. And um I have always been somewhat of, I guess, a a leader in what I've done. Like I was captain of the football team, president of National Honor Society. I just do those things, right? Um, and I gravitate towards them, and I always wanted to lead people. And something was hitting me watching on the couch, you know, in my apartment, and it said, you need to go, you need you would be happy in the military, go do that. And you know, we had some conversations as a family with my mom and dad, and you know, I wanted to go down an R or an ROTC path. They uh weren't big fans of that. So you do what you do when you want to take control, I enlisted. So I I finished that sophomore semester. I enlisted in May, and by November of 91, I was in the Navy in boot camp. Wow, wow. So I uh, you know, I you know the Navy is its own story, but uh the bridge back to Purdue is I was in the military, I was in a nuclear power program at Purdue, or I'm sorry, at in the in the Navy. And while doing that, successfully completing those schools, uh, I was picked up for enlisted commissioning program. Uh basically it's an officer candidate program uh that you applied for, sent back to Purdue to uh finish my degree, uh, and then did that, and then was commissioned uh as an officer in the United States Navy.

Submarine Pressure And People Responsibility

Speaker 3 6:23

Wow. What uh what were some of like your key takeaways, or how did the Navy shape you as a person, as a leader with what you learned through that experience?

Speaker 6:38

Yeah, so you know, there's there's so many different unique experiences that you're exposed to, and you're and you're exposed to them at the ages of I was 20 when I enlisted. I was leading, you know, 20 people at 22. Yeah, now you're 24, 25, and you're running uh a nuclear reactor on a submarine underwater for 80 days.

Speaker 3 7:07

Yeah, high stakes.

Speaker 7:09

High stakes at an age where today you would, or even then you'd look around, and your typical 25-year-old is you know not doing that. And doing something different. It's a little different. And so the the I talk about it at work all the time. We talk about pressure, you talk about risk, you talk about uncomfortableness. I have felt uncomfortableness that is far beyond what I deal with on a day-to-day basis at Wall Bash or any place I've ever worked. Um, and that's hard sometimes because I don't necessarily have the same reaction as others. That's a learning for me, and it's also a learning for them. Um people, um, you know, being like ultimately responsible, not just for their job, but for their lives of 18, 19, 20, 22-year-old young men primarily. It was in the in at that time, it was the submarine force was an all-male uh service. Um you know, I'm I'm everything's about operational readiness. So I care, I cared about their lives, their their finance, their housing, their kids, their wives, their relationships, because they had to be dialed in at you know at high stakes in a high-stakes game. And so you're you're barely figuring out how to run your own life, and you're managing and you're being taught to manage and you know, anticipate and lead these people 360 degrees assets of their lives because you have to. And I think that's been you know, between the high pressure, uh diverse, um almost existential type issues you deal with in the military, you know, life or death, to the holistic way that you have to think about people, those two things have stuck with me uh and probably shape more than I even understand about how I do what I do.

Speaker 3 9:18

No.

Speaker 2 9:20

In 1998, I'm a junior at Purdue in organizational leadership. And they were real strong about um frontline supervise supervision in a manufacturing setting. And I'd say what Wabash National, obviously Wabash now, was a big partner of the school of technology back in that day. And I remember we talked about you know the speed to which you could affix a tire to a rim and then affix that assembly to a trailer.

Speaker 9:47

Sure.

Speaker 2 9:48

Just do a little research. I guess I didn't realize that Wabash National came into existence as that entity in 85. 1985. That's not that long ago, considering that was less than 20 years ago. You at that time when I was there, oh three, you start there in 03. Um, you know, business isn't 20 years old. Um, how many employees does Wabash have when you start in 2003?

Speaker 10:15

Uh 2003, uh, we had approximately, I would say 23 to 2,500 employees um nationwide. We had a couple different facilities at the time. Most were in Lafayette. Um we had uh a small plant in Illinois, we had a plant in um Arkansas, uh so about 500 people between those two and another 2,000 in Lafayette.

Speaker 2 10:46

Go ahead.

Speaker 10:47

And today we're 13 manufacturing locations. Um uh I'd say our over over a five-year period, our average employment's 6,500 people, and we're in 13 states.

Speaker 2 11:00

And how many acquisitions from 2003 until today have happened?

Speaker 11:05

Um uh there have been I would say three major acquisitions. Um the the Walker Group and I'm sorry, um our Transcraft, which is now platform trailer operation in 2007, uh the Walker Group was which is now tank transportation equipment in 2012, and then uh Supreme, which is our truck body business in 2017.

Speaker 2 11:34

And during that that time, how many different roles have you held at Wabash?

Speaker 11:41

Well, let me think here. I started out in uh environmental engineering, uh safety engineering, and plant engineering, uh basically facilities. Uh then I became director of manufacturing, VP of manufacturing, then um general manager for the trailer business, then uh vice president, general manager for um we'll call it additional, took over some of the branch operations. Uh then I became president of all trailer operations, then chief operating officer, then CEO.

Speaker 2 12:20

That's an impeccable recollection of every role and title. I'm not sure I can do that. I think I've only had two.

Speaker 12:27

They've all left a mark. So there it's it's relatively straightforward.

Speaker 2 12:32

You know, three, did you think you'd still be at Wabash in 2026?

Speaker 12:37

Uh no. My when I left El Karimi, Del Kareemi has went through let me start there. It it they went through were going through a lot of transition at that time. Uh we had I was with General, I was there when they spun off from General Motors. So I went through that process. They were the first parts manufacturer to be part of that whole redo of General Motors.

Speaker 4 13:01

Yeah.

Speaker 13:01

And by the time you know 2001, 2002 came around, they were financially, you could kind of see the handwriting on the wall, what was going to happen between their uh pension obligations and benefits and just the market in general. So um Wabash had recruited me. They've been recruited, I knew him from Purdue, just like you. Yeah, right. And actually, I took a OLS class on leadership and I got to did the do the tour at Wabash in 1996 or seven. Sure. And Dr. Weeble and all that. Yep. Um you ever have Dr. Vandevere? Uh it sounds familiar, but that you're my my memory's not that impeccable. Um so I went to Wabash um, you know, after they had recruited me for some time, um, which is that specific why is a different story. But the the the fun the punchline is I thought maybe three years, maybe four. I thought it was just a waypoint. Um, I thought based on the trajectory I was on, I would move into you know uh big three automotive, I'd be heading towards, you know, Detroit or something like that. And you know, I get the type of home I had, the way we were running our lives, everything was about three years and out. And I um I was there about two years and a little bit less than two years, and the COO at the time um came to me and said, We have an opportunity for you. We want you to be director of manufacturing. I go, I've that's not what I do. And they and he's like, Well, that's the point. It's a developmental role. We want you to do this, and it will open up your world to so many different options, but you got to take the risk. And he, I go, Okay, um, how much time do I have? 24 hours. Oh wow. Go talk to your wife. Yeah, okay. Went home, talked to her, said, Okay, if I do this, everything has changed. Everything has changed. Yeah, and she's we went back the next day and said, Okay, let's roll the dice and make it happen. So now it's 26 years later, and it seems to have worked out.

Speaker 3 15:23

Did that COO turn into like a mentor for you ongoing from that? Or was that just more or less, hey, this guy has got skills, let's give him an opportunity, and then they entrusted that mentorship to somebody else, or yeah.

Speaker 15:39

So that gentleman was and is Dick Gerimini, and he was the previous CEO that that transitioned out when I became CEO.

Speaker 3 15:49

Oh, really?

Speaker 15:49

So he literally made every decision that um propelled my per career, every move I ever made, he was at the heart of it. Wow. So I owe him a lot.

What Wabash Builds At Scale

Speaker 3 16:03

Yeah, yeah. Before we dive in a little a little further, um, just to level set for the audience, could you give a little bit of an overview of Wabash, the operations, what you guys do? Yeah.

Speaker 16:17

Uh we kind of touched on a little bit. So uh Wabash is a primarily a manufacturer of transportation equipment. Uh, and that equipment is a mix of over-the-road trailers, so your class A trailers that you see being pulled behind a semi-tractor going down the road. Uh the tank trailers, so the very large, you know, 53-foot tankers that are hauling everything from milk to uh raw and kit chemical goods. Uh, we produce platform trailers. So when you see the large construction jobs where you've got pipe and concrete um um uh bridge members being pulled, those are our trailers. Uh and then the truck bodies. So truck bodies are so think about those. Those are everything from the Penske rider, small moving vans, uh, and uh rental and lease vehicles, all the way to how food gets delivered to most of the inner city uh and metro area restaurants um and everything in between. So that makes us the United States' largest provider of transportation related equipment in the country. Um we're not the largest of truck bodies, we're not the largest of trailers, but we are the largest when you put everything together uh in terms of transportation systems. Um and like I said, we're roughly about 6,500 people formed in 85, went public in 91.

Speaker 3 17:49

It's quick. Yeah, from formation to going public.

Speaker 17:52

Yeah, the the founder was very entrepreneurial, and they went from zero to a billion dollars in revenue between 85 and 92. Wow. So Wabash was founded on an entrepreneur who took a chance, who found value, exploited the moment to build a company.

Speaker 3 18:14

Hustled his tail off.

Speaker 18:15

Yep.

Deregulation And The Custom Trailer Edge

Speaker 2 18:16

Wow. What was that moment at that time? What was he exploiting? What was unique in the marketplace?

Speaker 18:21

Yeah, so uh in 1985, um trucking was regulated very much the way that uh utilities are today. Uh alcohol beer was you know coming almost through early 90s to where there were regional protections um around the country. And and so goods could not be hauled from one coast to the other on the same trailer because everything had to stay in its region. So that curtailed the size and scale of uh and protected small carriers and medium-sized carriers around the country. It also promoted regional manufacturing. Deregulation occurred in '85, opened everything up. He moved, had that, he knew it was getting ready to happen. He was working in a company um in um uh near uh what do you say? Monon, Indiana. Monon, right. And paying the lap fiat. And his vision was I'm gonna go sell exactly what those carriers need who I believe are gonna scale nationally, therefore grow quickly, and I will basically let them propel me to scale. But I got to give them exactly what they want because they all want something different. And the predominant way at the time was uh the old the saying was, I'll give you exactly exactly what you want as long as it's exactly what I make and it's white. And he's he said, I'm gonna do the opposite of that. And he ended up buying the assets of the largest, the previous largest global trailer manufacturer in 1997. Who was that? That would have been Fruhoff. Fruhoff, yeah. He could have totally disrupted the market by his move.

Speaker 2 20:17

Well, how did the product differ in call it 1986 from what was being built in 1984?

Speaker 20:24

The uh the specifications and the combination of almost an infinite level of variability. So the products that we make, if you watch it go down the road, it doesn't look that sophisticated. But that product is ridiculously high, highly engineered to be ridiculously light, but carry 80,000, potentially 80,000 pounds. Um, well, not 80,000 pounds, but 40 to 50 to 60,000 pounds of goods. Right. And there are 500 different choices from your lights to your wiring to your tires to your rims to your brakes to your calipers. Extremely customizable. Completely customizable to your operation for what you're gonna haul, your cost of ownership, your asset life management, and we allow them to do that. Actually, we facilitate them doing that. Yeah. Interesting.

Speaker 2 21:25

Was um is every facility there in Lafayette, did you take over an existing manufacturing facility of any sort? Or was it all ground up, brand new stuff and anything you guys built?

Speaker 21:36

When you talk about when the company was first formed, yeah. Yeah, so it was National Homes, uh was owning the site at that. It was it was an old National Homes plant. Uh the two of them, that's the plant on State Road 52. Yep. Um, which was a uh a business that was formed post World War II to build pre manufactured homes for GIs coming back, yep. Um, as part Of the leveraging the GI Bill and other programs that they had, you know, they all needed housing. Um, you know, that ran its course and went through multiple owners and uses and wabash, picked up that asset, started to in 85, kind of rounded it out by 87. And then we have um two other plants in Lafayette, but the primary one is south uh on Veterans Memorial, and that was a um a um Purina. I'm sorry, it was a one of them is a Purina dog food factory that we converted, and the other one was a pudding pop factory, and those now make trailer products, and so we have a million, a little over a million square feet of manufacturing space in Lafayette, Indiana.

Speaker 2 22:52

Wow, how much total across all your other sites? Uh about 2.8 million. So a third is in still in Lafayette.

Speaker 23:01

Yeah, yeah. Half our employees are in Lafayette.

The Skilled Trades Talent Shift

Speaker 2 23:03

So talk about that a little bit. I mean, it's it's it's a symbiotic relationship. Um is finding and attracting and keeping talent in Lafayette easier, harder, or the same as it was 20 years ago.

Speaker 23:19

Um well, I I'll start. I I would say it's changed. It's neither better nor worse, it's just changed. Um the city of Lafayette, Greater Lafayette, has done a really nice job creating an environment that attracts people. And you know, it's one of the few environments over the last 15, 20 years that you can almost say consistently has continued to grow and prosper as compared to other areas of the state. Uh, we benefit from that because it's a constant attraction of people. Um and we Lafayette, I would say, somewhat dominates this region uh from an employment poll. So we're we're pulling people from Danville, Illinois, right? To give you the example, you know, hour and 20 odd minutes away. I think what has changed is the like you hear from a lot of industrial players out there, specifically in manufacturing, um the talent and the workforce is becoming less less attuned to labor-related, hands-on work, and basic industrial understanding that you would have learned in your shop class in 1989 or even 1995. That's tended to go away. And you know, there's a there's a gap there um across the board. So the ability to utilize talent well, scale it, and it, and have uh sustainability of that talent is different than what it was 20 years ago, whether it's available or not.

Speaker 2 25:06

Can you give us an example of how you guys have deployed artificial intelligence in any phase of the manufacturing process?

Speaker 25:15

Yeah, so um I I would say there's two ways to think about the application of artificial intelligence in um an industrial application. Um, one of the things that people think that manufacturing is you know about tools and force and assembly and those types of things, but every manufacturing operation starts with a ridiculous amount of information that has to be processed when you convert you know sales specifications into engineered orders, into uh procurement, um, you know, to shop drawings, to instructions, to now I gotta put my hands on something or lay it into a machine to do whatever conversion needs to be done.

Speaker 2 26:02

That was a lot of steps before you touched a single piece of touch.

Speaker 26:05

So most of the AI that we deploy is upstream in that process to control and speed up and make more accurate the information flow from the start to the finish. And when we can do that, not only do we mitigate defects and cost and waste, uh, we enable the worker to have a much more streamlined and better chance of being effective, you know, doing what they have to do. Okay. That's probably 75%, maybe even 80%, of where we've deployed it. And that's typically in our cost and quoting process in our uh conversion of sales orders into engineered bill materials. So we can what used to take weeks can now take minutes in what we do. Um and then on the shop floor, it I wouldn't call it explicitly AI per se. And in the not yet on a soapbox, but um AI is is just uh from a layman's perspective, just a upgrade of what we are doing in terms of data analytics. It's just data analytics at scale, in some cases, uh what we call an agentic environment where there's a level of self-learning that goes with it. It's just another version of it. So the ability of using uh analytics out on the shop floor to predict, manage, and control what we do has always been there. At our South Plant, where we have moved to a much more robotic um automated process, there is a level of diagnostics and control that is it's not the same level as agentic AI, where when we think about kind of the self-living uh uh and perpetual learning environment, but it is absolutely an enhanced version of what we'll call as you know you know the 2000s version of analytics, so that we have a a much deeper, more um robust access to data that we manage the business by, is how I would frame it.

Robots On The Line Humanoids Later

Speaker 3 28:21

Yeah, and you mentioned you yeah, I was gonna go there too. You mentioned robotics. Do you do you have a vision of even like a humanoid robot being in your workforce at some point in time?

Speaker 28:37

Um I would say uh no. That's a short answer. No, I think it's nice uh and cool to talk about, and I think there are as you push to learn what it would actually take to have a humanoid robot, and we're just talking about something that's bipedal mobile, right? Because everything else that thing does, we already do. Right? There's that's all we're doing. Something can stand up and move, right? And what's the difference between that and it being on on an AGV on wheels? Yeah, there's not a big difference. It's I would argue somewhat it's a cool factor that people want to play with, and I'm not sure how much it really matters in your setting.

Speaker 2 29:25

I mean, you got a fixed line, you got things exactly, yeah.

Speaker 29:28

You want to talk about a military application? That's different, maybe warehouse, maybe, uh, but not necessarily an industrial setting. Now, when I think about the upper section of a humanoid-like robot and its ability to articulate and do things, and if I can think about putting an AI application inside of it, that allows it to do more assess the environment differently so it is more adaptable to changing conditions. Now that is interesting. That is probably actionable at scale in the next three to five years for we'll call it a broader tier of manufacturers. Um, and we can put those in places where we have high ergonomic issues, force the strength ratio issues, high repetition, dangerous applications, all kinds of things we can probably do there that will enable us going forward.

Speaker 3 30:24

Right.

Speaker 30:25

Um, but there is, they have yet to show us that there is something that is adaptable to the environment as a human being that is dialed in and is cognitively cognitively fully capable, right now, will beat that thing day in and day out economically.

Speaker 3 30:51

What would be a time horizon where you think that could possibly change? Obviously, you mentioned that right now, no go, and obviously this is pure speculation, but how long do you think it would take for that technology to um AI is a big force multiplier um on this?

Speaker 31:10

But so Hyundai Automotive just showed this at the um I forget which technology it was, CES in Vegas just three or four weeks ago, humanoid robots that they are are talking about deploying at one of their plants in um it's either in Mississippi, South Carolina, maybe Illinois on a trial basis. And they're partnering with with um Boston Consult, or uh, I'm sorry, um, I forget the term. But anyway, um I think we'll we'll start saying versions and and we'll hear stories in the next 12 to 24 months. Uh I but to say that those will be at scale to where the typical operator can you know call their automation company and and and it be cost available, like in the ballpark for what a general manufacturer, you're probably I'd say at least eight to ten years away from that. And I think your big guys will be experimenting with it. You know, the Eli Lilies of the world will probably be doing something in their plant here. Um but the the wabashes and the um even the Cummins of the world are not probably maybe experimenting, but they're not using it at scale.

COVID Backlog Collapse And Command Decisions

Speaker 3 32:36

Right. So um you became CEO in 2018 of June, and less than two years later, obviously we experienced a pretty um pretty large change in business and society uh through the through the COVID experience. Um what was that like for you as you had you know, how did things change for you as you had an experience before COVID as a leader? And then how did that change for you coming out of COVID? And how did the business change? And what were some of the things that you guys uh uh you know faced through that experience?

Speaker 33:18

Well, uh I just just from a business condition standpoint, um I would say between mid-March and the first or second week of April, we had a 70% reduction in backlog. Uh, we had roughly almost a billion dollars of backlog, and we saw that evaporate.

Speaker 4 33:42

Oh my god.

Speaker 33:43

Uh just gone. And so um that you know translates directly into revenue reduction. And so you're looking at that going, well, that math doesn't balance anymore. Uh, which so that required and in beyond dealing with COVID itself, now you've got to redo the entire workforce because you're completely overcapacitized for the reality of what you have and what you're showing. So we had to go through that. That affected thousands of employees uh in that moment on top of COVID. Uh, we just couldn't have them anymore. Um, there was nothing out there, and we didn't know when it was going to turn back on. Right. We're all sitting there in April going, I don't know if this is two weeks, two months, two years, forever.

Speaker 3 34:27

Yeah, 14 days to stop the spread, turned into something different than that.

Speaker 34:31

Is this an existential problem, a transient problem, an overblown short-term? And we had no idea at that moment exactly what was the scale of um you know local state national international response and where that was going. I mean, it's being made up on the fly. And I think that was one of the issues that we we we talked about, and I'm kind of looking outside my window here because we went really, I leveraged somewhat of my, I would say, my military background, and we went to a very deliberate and strict command and control environment, which was a departure from where we were, which was much more decentralized and and collaborative, because clarity, someone had to call clarity in the moment, and no one around us was giving us clarity. CDC wasn't giving clarity, national government wasn't giving us clarity. We had we had 13 states that we operate in that were wildly different, uh, giving us all kinds of missed messages. Some are like let it fly, and others were you know shutting down left and right. Um, we had to operate all of it. So, you know, we were meeting as a team, an executive team, like top five, every day just to assess what we had found out in the previous 24 hours and what decision had to be made and communicated and put into effect immediately. Um to operate, we were considered essential based on transportation equipment and what's required to do that. We saw the strain on the supply chains that was occurring. Um and you know, we the risks that we took, uh, we had to get, you know, I'm not gonna get too far into the political weeds here, but yeah, some of the decisions that were being made were not based on what I would call a scientific basis where someone could pull up the paper and say, Yeah, I get why you're doing this. And we had to make calls at times to go, we're gonna do this because we actually think this is better. And we're not gonna do this because one, ineffective, and two, might actually be more dangerous. Right. And so we had to make calls and stand on those calls, and I got my legal group going, Well, you're exposing yourself to A, B, and C. And I go, that is not my only concern here. Yeah, I got real people doing real things, and if I believe that makes them safer than that, even though it's being given by ABC national group or government, that might be the wrong choice, and we need to go do this. And we did that on a daily basis.

Speaker 3 37:24

That's that a lot of courageous moments needed, right, in all of those meetings.

Speaker 37:30

A lot of lonely moments because you're the only one that it sits with when it's said and done.

Speaker 3 37:37

Right.

Speaker 37:38

And we knew the way we had to lead, and I knew is that in that moment, inaction or over debate was unacceptable. And you know, it's like I it's a submarine when you're in a a combat situation. We're not choosing and debating. When when the order comes down, you do it. We will analyze it later, right? But but we got to do it because standing around looking at each other is worse.

Speaker 3 38:09

Right. Well, it's interesting because you know talk about lonely moments. I mean, you go to your your council of advisors and you get multiple different answers. So you get to make the call.

Speaker 38:25

Yeah, I get to make the call, and you guys can talk to me later. Right. You get when you get more information. Your fear is not the actual information I'm looking for.

Speaker 3 38:35

Right. We can talk about in that in in those years negatives that came out of that, but maybe drill into how did going through that experience and coming out of that experience, how how did you actually turn you know lemons into lemonade and your business become better through that?

Speaker 38:56

So we took that opportunity. It was uh uh an exercise in organizational behavior and science, right? People need structure in those moments, people need something to focus on that feels directed and concrete when everything around them is the opposite. And so we looked at and we took the opportunity to do some things inside our business that would have been really tough to do under normal circumstances. We totally recapitalized the balance sheet, we reorganized the company to move away from strategic business units into what we call a one-wall badge functional approach, which also facilitated a more command and control environment. We uh addressed uh I'll call it waste in management layers and structure that had been weighing on the business so that we could make decisions faster, more cost-effectively, um fresh. And we knew we would need that coming out no matter what happened. We knew we needed it right in that moment, we needed it going forward. Um, and we did all of that by the end of May. And so, you know, the debate was well, our our people are gonna be so challenged with everything else going on. My argument was they're gonna know exactly what they got to do when they come to work, right? And and they're gonna be able to accomplish things and do something. And I and my bet was that's gonna create engagement and a comfort that we know exactly what we're doing, and we made it all happen. Good opportunity.

Healthcare Costs As A CEO Problem

Speaker 3 40:44

So um one thing I want to highlight, and just uh you know, experience that we've had getting to know each other briefly over the last year or year, a little less. Um, you know, we've gotten an opportunity to talk healthcare together. Um, and I was um just super impressed with uh your leadership around pursuing uh strategic uh improvement. And you know, what I saw was hey, let's be concise about what we want to talk about, but you quickly brought together your leadership team to have a direct conversation about a topic, but to bring your team along with you to build consensus, to establish what a project is and really how to compete in an area. Um, you know, that that was super impressive, regardless if it was a topic around healthcare. I'm assuming that's exactly how you look to solve big problems in general. Yeah, so I thought that was super impressive. Uh, to double click into um to healthcare a little bit, um, what do you see within healthcare that this is my opinion, that most leaders don't see with the opportunity to take control and make improvements, not just for the financials of the business, but for your people in general. Um, the opposite of that is I can't control anything. And so um we're just gonna let it ride. I'm gonna focus on areas where we can control. Where did your mindset change around that business unit in particular?

Speaker 42:39

I I I think I think the way I would frame it for me is it never actually changed. It's the way it's always been. Um I the generally the way I look at the world is very people will say too much at times, but very visionary and breakthrough-oriented. Like I I don't do very well with going, okay, here's the status quo, and you need to operate inside of it. That's typically gonna make me do something different just because um because there's nothing that feels right about that, right? It typically is a red flag that something's wrong. Um and so I had initial exposure to the world of benefits in a traditional setting at Dokarimi when I got put in charge of workers' compensation, short term disability, um, family medical leave, and long term disability as part of my time in in HR there. And you're going, This is ridiculous. Like no one would ever do this on purpose. And um, and then you know, so I got involved into the you know, back. Office management of all those accruals and the accounting and all the stuff. And you're going, oh my God. And then as you get into it, uh, and then the couple with that, which is I'm generally curious anyway, is learning about the system more and more. And that's that's a 25-year journey, and understanding the structural issues inside of American healthcare and how it then expresses itself through how an industrial company or any company has to work through the cost of that and the waste inside of it and the lack of control that you accept. And I don't do very well with accept accepting a lack of control. And um so you couple that with a general idea of the issues, really a high propensity of not accepting, a willingness to challenge, uh, and then you couple that with just an intrinsic need that you know, Wabash on a given year is anywhere, and we are highly a cyclical business because of our market. Well, let's just pick a nominal number of um $2.5 billion in revenue, that's $50 million in just in healthcare costs. And the rule of thumb was well, your consultant comes in, tells you the average cost is a 12% increase year over year. So we're gonna forecast that, and then let's put our stuff around it to make sure it's not 13. And you know, when I first got into a rule that I could manage that, you know, and going, I does not seem like that's gonna work for me in any way, shape, or form, just fundamentally. And then, you know, then I started getting to work on it and saying we're not gonna do that. So cut it in half, right? I don't I didn't know what the right answer was. Okay, we're only gonna accept uh six percent.

Speaker 3 45:58

Right.

Speaker 45:59

You figure it out, right? Well, that would mean we have to do this very well, make it happen. Yep. What's different? Yep. What's risk? Take it because this thing becomes 75 million in five years, and I got a bigger problem. Yeah, that presents a different risk, right? Yeah, and people don't think about it that way, they just accept it, or they try to pass it on to the customer or take it from the employee, right? And I just felt like that was one of the biggest, I don't know if I shared this with you or not, one of the biggest fights I ever got into with my mentor was on this topic. And he's like, You don't know what you're talking about. And I said, I do think I know what I'm talking about. We just are accepting two different realities. And um, you know, I lost that argument. He was the boss, but when I became CEO, then I won that argument, right? Um, and we've been approaching it that way, and the challenge that my team's got right now um is I want to go to the next level of challenging, right? And the world has progressed significantly in its understanding of how to innovate in and around the healthcare system. And I'm saying to our people, go look at that, bring it to bear inside of Wall Bash. Be willing to be disruptive. You don't have to do it, you don't have to blow it all up, find a way, find what is most applicable for us. Use a 80-20 Pareto principle and figure out uh where you can make innovation happen. And then I'm gonna turn them loose. And I'm waiting for them to work it and come back. And if it's not big enough or disruptive enough, they'll get sent back to the to the uh proverbial dry erase board to give it another shot.

Advice For Leaders Who Stay Out

Speaker 3 47:47

Yeah. What what advice would you give? So to carry out that that analogy earlier, a CEO thinks they can't control the cost of health care, they then delegate it to HR and don't engage, there, which is unfortunate for both parties.

Speaker 4 48:04

Yeah.

Speaker 3 48:04

Um, and then um when trying to engage, there's now like a fight, right? Of why is why why are why are you getting involved now? Um, what advice would you give to a CEO that uh maybe is afraid to get involved? Because, well, if my employees' healthcare, you know, I don't I don't want to get involved with that.

Speaker 48:30

Yeah.

Speaker 3 48:31

Um, or that's gonna disrupt HR and that's gonna create some issues there. What what advice would you give to a CEO who has those kind of thoughts that go through their mind?

Speaker 48:42

Um I think the first thing I think I would say is they need to look in the mirror and and try to come to terms with they're actually responsible for the outcomes of the healthcare with their people. They have responsibility to their owners and their shareholders to make sure that that asset is taken care of well to show up and to perform uh and to manage their lives is very similar to my what I learned when I was in the military. It's exactly the same. And I I lean on that. And so the outcome matters, right? The physical, literal health outcome matters for your employee and the and and then the way that you can best maybe take care of the world around them and how much you can or feel comfortable doing. But just checking a box saying you've got competitive benefits, you're allowing yourself to stay outside of any meaningful engagement and understanding that and and accepting and being curious enough to figure out that you can actually have a material impact in the lives of people that is a much more legacy-based way of thinking about your role as a leader, as a total leader of your business. And you don't get to delegate that. That's first. Second is our job is and when you're the CEO of a company, is everything is a potential breakthrough opportunity. Even when you don't think it is, you still challenge it to be a breakthrough opportunity because maybe they'll prove you wrong and you they can actually pull it off. So you couple those two things together um and drive for different. I mean, even if you drive and you get halfway there, you've moved the needle within your business.

Speaker 3 50:36

Right.

Speaker 50:36

Um, and it's just a way of showing up. And you don't have to be a healthcare expert, but you can be an expert of leading, right? And I challenge them to do that.

Speaker 3 50:48

What uh just change the topics a little bit, and thank you for that. Um, I love that it's you know, most people think they don't want to get involved in healthcare, and this isn't what I signed up for, but the idea that it's a missed opportunity and more or less the reality of you might not have chose to be involved in healthcare, but it chose you, it chose you. So yeah.

Speaker 51:13

Well, think every time if you don't get involved and materially understand the choices that are being made, when you give that high-level direction of, well, you need to control healthcare, that's getting too high. Nine times out of ten, they're going to make a decision that is the negative impact on the current state of that employee's life. Period. That's what you just authorized. I think you have a responsibility to do better than that.

What He Would Tell His Younger Self

Speaker 3 51:46

If uh you mentioned we talked a little bit about the um the idea that you were in a submarine as a 26-year-old with high-stakes decisions. Um with the seat that you sit in today, what would you be telling your 26-year-old self on that submarine?

Speaker 52:14

Huh? About 10 things don't ever do again. I'm not going to repeat. You don't know how privileged you are to have this ridiculously unique experience that will shape you in ways you cannot comprehend. The memories will be extremely pronounced in your life and will live beyond most of what you experience. And uh at times it's really, really hard, but the meaning you're going to take from it is gonna support you during different hard times because you know you can do a lot of things and and you can weather a lot more than you think.

Speaker 3 53:13

That's awesome.

Message To Employees About The Future

Speaker 2 53:15

That's awesome. Brent, as a as a steward of a business, we're all stewards in some way, shape, or form. Uh, you're stewarding materials, you're stewarding facilities, you're stewarding customers. But as we talked about with healthcare, one of the greatest assets you have is you're stewarding your team. Um let's say your your teammates from all levels catch a hold of this podcast. Talk to them. You know, you your time in this role, like like Ben's and mine, it's finite, right? You we don't know the exact when you'll step down or do something different, but this is today's reality. What do you want your team to know about where Wabash is going? What do you want to implore them? You've already done it, I'm sure, through many different ways.

Speaker 53:56

But specifically around healthcare.

Speaker 2 53:58

No, no, not necessarily, just broadly to say, you know, hey, you guys know me as your CEO, but this this is where my real focus, this is where we gotta go. If you haven't heard me in all my talking from from as a CEO, here I am talking as a guest on a podcast. Wabash team members, this is the message, this is where we got to go.

Speaker 54:21

Um that's a great question. Um, I think I would start by saying as a whole, now remember, I got a whole group of different people, so it's hitting them all different places. You know, you want to meet people where they're at. Well, I got a lot of people in different places. Um the more the generic way, because it's a different answer to different people. But I would say this over the last five years, you've done a tremendous job of adapting to a to a playbook that had never been used at Wabash. And as a result, we're sitting here today. We've survived COVID. We are in the midst of a the worst uh freight-based uh recession. So the industry that we serve right now is three years into a recession, we're in the trough in freight activity in the United States, and it was really driven down when tariffs uh curtailed manufacturing activity. Um, that's not a political statement, that's a mathematical truth. Um and so if you hadn't done everything that we had asked, we would not be resilient right now. We would not be looking to the future, and we would not be able to um maintain a level of security that we are now. What got us to this point is not gonna get us to where we need to be in the future. So while we are focused on the near term, there's more change that we're gonna have to make to further improve the business, uh, not only for our shareholders, but for you, so that we're even more resilient in the future. And so we're gonna have more change coming. Um, it's gonna be deliberate, it's not gonna be reactive, it's gonna be forward thinking. And over these next three to four years, we're even gonna do more to position Wabash to be stronger um than we are right now. That would be the base message.

Marriage Risk And Unfinished Resolve

Speaker 3 56:39

That's awesome. Well, Brent, uh this went real fast. That was an hour just like that. But uh, we we ask our guests two questions of ever we ask these two questions to all of our guests that we want to ask you, and I'll ask the first one. What is a risk that you have taken that has changed your life?

Speaker 57:01

Um I don't know if I'd call it a risk, I guess it is a risk, but um when I was in the Navy, I was I had just finished nuclear power school. I was getting ready to get weeks away from um me back up. I finished nuclear power school, and I go on to this next school called Prototype, where you qualify on a reactor, and it was in going from Florida to South Carolina, and I was dating a girl in Florida, and I went down there going, I'm not dating anybody because that's just baggage, and I got a Navy career and I'm moving all over the place, and I don't want that. And through all of that, when I knew I was leaving, I'm like, I can't leave without her. Like, that's a distraction that's unacceptable. So I asked her to marry me. We had known each other for at that time about four or five months. We got married at seven months, and we've been married 33 years.

Speaker 3 58:10

Awesome, so good.

Speaker 58:12

So I'd say that one in the scheme of it, is as big as has been more shaping than anything.

Speaker 3 58:20

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 58:21

Well, she's also decisive because when you were presented with the offer for the director of manufacturing with 24 hours, took her about 24 seconds to say you take that job.

Speaker 58:30

She did. She's like, What do you want to do? I think I should do it. Well, okay, well, let's do it. Awesome teammate.

Speaker 2 58:37

Second question. Uh, you know, you've been uh at the company, looks like what 20 plus, 22, 23 years. First 15, uh various different roles, the last seven as the chief executive officer. So, Brent, what is left yet unfinished that you have the resolve to complete? Yeah.

Speaker 58:55

Well, uh, I think you can tell by looking at me, I have clearly less in front of me than I have behind me in my my time at Wabash. Um and I think it's a little bit of the message we just talked about. My when I think about the next call X period of time, and we'll just use um three years, four years for relevancy. I'm sending no signals about my time at Wabash, uh, but that's relevant for our people. Uh, and what I want to accomplish. I I'm gonna get them through this downturn uh and get us back on the upswing when the market rebounds. We're gonna, I want to climb it better than we ever have. But at the same time, I'm not done reshaping how they receive health care and the outcomes that they that they get. I'm not done building the culture here uh for whoever gets the reins after me so that it is impeccable. Um, hey, we're never perfect, but we're pretty good. Um and but there's more that we can do. And um there's a set of hard choices of some things that we're in that we need to not be in, things that we need to grow into, that we're going to grow into. And so we got some big choices that I want to set the table for. Um, so over the next three, four years, um, Wabash can we'll say fully express its brand for our customers uh in a way that is more exciting than what it is right now. Very cool. Thank you.

Closing Thanks And Sign Off

Speaker 3 1:00:40

That's excellent. Well, Brent, thanks for the time today and your insights with your personal experience, your leadership. Uh excellent, excellent. So thanks again for joining us. And I want to thank all of our listeners for joining us for another episode of Risk and Resolve. We'll catch you next time. Thanks, guys. Thanks for tuning in to Risk and Resolve.

Speaker 4 1:01:01

See you next time.