The Heavy Duty Parts Report
In each episode, Jamie Irvine and his guests have conversations that empower heavy-duty people. They discuss tips, tools, and technology that help heavy-duty parts manufacturers and distributors sell the right parts to fleets, repair shops, and truck operators.
The Heavy Duty Parts Report
Making It Possible: The Century-Long Journey of AMBAC
Episode 275: Are you intrigued by businesses that have stood the test of time, constantly evolving and thriving through every change? Prepare to be inspired by our guests today, Justin Zapotocky, and Heather Woodbrey of AMBAC International, a company with a history spanning over a century. Justin takes us on a fascinating journey, tracing the company's humble beginnings producing Magneto's for radios, to the pivotal role they played in the Apollo landings and their current focus on fuel injection.
Ever wondered about the strategy that keeps such a long-standing business afloat in a sea of ever-evolving trends and customer demands? Find out in this episode.
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You're listening to the Heavy Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, jamie Irvin, and this is the place where we have conversations that empower heavy duty people. Welcome to another episode of the Heavy Duty Parts Report. I'm your host, jamie Irvin. I'm actually on site, on location, here in South Carolina, visiting Ambac.
Speaker 2:International.
Speaker 1:Now Amback's been on the show before. We've talked to their CEO several times, but today we're going to have a chance to talk to the people who actually make this great company work, the people who are here every day making things happen. Now Amback's been in continuous operation for over 100 years and we're going to find out exactly what makes a company that has been in business for over 100 years actually work. So come with me on our tour of Amback and our chance to talk to some of the people who work here every day.
Speaker 3:Hi, I'm Justin Zapataki. I'm the marketing manager here at Amback International.
Speaker 1:Nice to be here in person. We've talked many times via Zoom call but we've never got a chance to really chat in person. So great to see you. I'm glad to have you. We're here on site at your location in South Carolina and we're talking about how Amback has been in business for over 100 years. It's a truly remarkable story when we think about the trucking industry and we think about how it's the backbone of society and we think about the importance of manufacturers like yourself, american manufacturers, who are supporting that industry. What I really want to know is I want to learn about, first of all, the origin story of this company. I want to learn about what you've done in the past and what you're doing now to continue to support the trucking industry, hopefully for another 100 years. So let's take it all the way back. When did Ambac get started?
Speaker 3:Well, as you mentioned, we're 110 years going, so we've been serving customers for 110 years. We've been figuring out ways to solve their problems for a century. So we started with very humble beginnings. Early 20th century we produced Magneto's for radios. As time progressed, we started to look at other commodities. We ultimately ended up making parts for the aviation industry. In the mid 20th century we actually had some parts that facilitated the Apollo landings which we're extremely proud of as we got it. Later in the century we progressed more sort of fuel injection. It's kind of our main commodity as we stand right now. We're also proud to announce that we've been supporting our military for over 20 years now and we're very proud of that defense relationship.
Speaker 1:So literally out of this world on those Apollo missions. Let's break down the departments or the divisions in the company. So you speak of your military, so you've got a whole division dedicated to the military, and then you also have a manufacturing division that does spec manufacturing. What's spec manufacturing?
Speaker 3:Well, essentially, customers come to us with a problem. They have a part that they need to develop from the print status. So, whether it be a hose, fitting or something related to automotive or aviation, if they need a small round part, it's our job to develop the strategy to bring that to market. So we service through our many investments in the company. We service all kinds of commodities. A lot of our customers need parts that aren't typically made. We hold certain precision levels and tolerance levels that you just can't get at the local machine shop. Some of the tolerance we hold here are light bands, not plus or minus millimeters here. So it's a niche market and it's in high demand and we're proud to be out and about for solutions to our customers based on the unique capacity and precision that we have here at Ambeck.
Speaker 1:And then you've got the aftermarket division. Now this is the division that takes the parts to the trucking industry. So tell us a little bit about that division.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we provide a unique amount of product profile to several different commodities. One is the aftermarket, so we have a couple of divisions One where we produce parts that are remanufactured. Besides the obvious impact for the environment, reshoring has been a new thing for us too, and allowing us to use this commodity to rebuild and repurpose parts is exciting. There's a huge demand for that, given the market and given the cost and the price points on a lot of these things, and there's a lot of local legislation enforcing or reevaluating the need for repurposed parts, and we're proud to play a role in that. We also provide original OEM parts as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, now business, in my opinion, is it's a serious thing, right? Business is the underpinning of our society and moves everything forward. But at the same time, your structure here and the fact that you approach business as a game is an interesting and sometimes a different perspective than the average company. So, first of all, let's talk about employee ownership and let's talk about the great game.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, as you mentioned, we've been doing this for 100 years, but we don't fit the typical mold of a traditional automotive type supplier. As of 2018, we become an employee-owned. We start our affiliation. We're practitioners of what's called the Great Game of Business and it's an open book management system. That's just a phenomenal way to get your employees empowered and engaged. We're in love with it. We have our balance sheet on the wall. From the CEO to the janitor knows what our costs of goods sold were, what we're spending in marketing and to have that kind of engagement.
Speaker 3:It's really unique for our industry. The biggest takeaway is when people see it for the first time. There's a sense of casualness to it, where it's fun. We make it fun because we put a work-life balance model into our business as well and, as you know from the industry, this can be kind of a harsh, aggressive type industry and to have a business construct where people are engaged and encouraged to participate and question the management team. We don't understand why you had to spend that money on that.
Speaker 3:I had to justify this photo shoot to our team and for those that aren't familiar with it, it's very foreign, very alien, almost to point. But when you see how it is embedded in our philosophy and the way we make business decisions. It's very unique. We're very proud of what the open book management system has brought us. We've been a much more successful company in terms of our bottom line. Recruitment is easy. The workforce is engaged. That's half the battle on a lot of these places. So using the constructs of great game of business has really facilitated a more open and more successful business model.
Speaker 1:So first of all, amback team thanks for approving the cost of us being here. That's fantastic. I promise that we'll go light on the bar bill Now. When I think about the normal company, it's a hop-down management style. Maybe your company is like that. This is more of a bottom up. Does it make it harder to get things done? Does it make it so that there's too many decision makers in the process? How does that actually work Practically speaking, day to day?
Speaker 3:how is it better? It does present a unique set of challenges, but I think at the end of the day, what we're ultimately trying to do is get the management team to manage, and when you have to present something to 47 co-owners or 55 co-owners as opposed to just associates that work for you, you have to present the data more effectively. You have to do your homework. You have to stand and deliver I like to use that phrase a lot. We don't take an authoritarian view where the CEO says we're doing it, so we all need to adjust.
Speaker 3:That doesn't happen here. You have to convince the 53 other co-owners of the organization that this is the way to go and at the end of the day, it ultimately makes you a better manager, because not only do you have to come up with the strategy and the objectives to present what your long-term vision is, you need to also tie a tactical application to it to facilitate it and move it through the organization, and you just can't rubber-sam something. You have to prove that you've done your work, that you've respected the co-owner's ability to make a decision on that, and at the end of the day, it makes stronger managers out of all of us, because it's not our way or the highway. We have 53 highways here and they have to facilitate all of those, and it's a great way to really augment your management skills using this business model.
Speaker 1:And as a Canadian love hockey, I actually met a hockey player on my way down here at the airport, which is kind of cool. So Jerome McGinla, an awesome guy. You can Google him later if you don't know who. He was one of the top 100 players in the NHL of all time. In that sports analogy we often hear them talking about, everybody has to be rowing in the same direction to be a championship team. Is that what you've seen since 2018? Has this made Amback different, now that you have all of your co-owners going in that same direction?
Speaker 3:I mean, you get your day-to-day challenges but ultimately, at the end of the day, we've figured out a way to financial literacy training to our employees, to the detail, the finite detail of where we want to go. We've empowered our employees to the point where they know that there's objectives and strategies. In fact, what we're going to do today, in about two hours from now, I'm going to present the next six months strategic goals for our manufacturing department. I'm going to present that strategy to them and they all have to approve that strategy. My first pitch is not to a customer. My first pitch is to our internal workforce. They have to buy in, they have to see the vision. They have to see that the management team has committed itself. They've included their trials and tribulations into the equation. At the end of the day, we will ultimately succeed because, as I mentioned before, we can rubber stamp and push our agenda through. It has to be a collaborative effort. At that point, once you've got 53 people on the same team, it's pretty hard to lose.
Speaker 1:Your company has been on the heavy-duty parts for a while. As I mentioned, we've interviewed Robert. If you want to go back and look at those, we'll make sure that the links are in the show notes for those previous interviews. You and I have had the chance to work together at a different level. My consulting company, the Heavy-Duty Consulting Corporation, has been really privileged to work with Ambeck. Now for some time We've worked on a project that's really exciting because it's finally at a level now where it's going to get put out into the marketplace. Before we talk about the changes to the marketing, I want to talk about Ambeck's old slogan. What was it and what was the thinking around it in the past?
Speaker 3:The old slogan was fluid innovation, solid performance. It sounds good, it presents what we do. It's a play on words. It applies really to fuel injection and flow and how we facilitate flow. We're all pretty proud of it.
Speaker 3:But as the market started to mature a little bit, economic factors closed in and we had to circle our wagons on a more competitive market and all the other economic stresses that we've had over the last five years or so. We realized that it's a little too mad as an avenue. It really didn't hit home with who our core customer was. Our customers are the guys that wake up early in the morning and get in the truck and drive their daily eight-hour route, their long routes. Our guys are the guys that work at the parts dealership, at the counter and responsible for keeping the parts stocked. That's our core demographic.
Speaker 3:What we realized? That we're the same people. We don't come to work in the outies, we come to work in pickup trucks and people ride their motorcycles here and we're tatted up and we're a little off-kilter, little rebellious kind of that. We realized that that silent majority in the country is our customer as we figured it out that we're in that group with them, and manufacturing used the 5Y analogy. Keep asking questions to you, can't ask another why? At the end of the why we realized that why do we do that? We make things. We make things that people need. We facilitate the doers. We felt that we needed to capture that resonance or that emotional resonance somehow in our ad campaign. We felt that that Madison Avenue type just really didn't fit our style.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I work with clients on all the time is, if you're marketing, it might sound good, but it can be composed of what I call invisible marketing words. The same jargon that always is used, like quality and price and parts availability, is built into this marketing and then everybody uses it. Then the customer just doesn't hit at all. Then it's also got to to your point. It has to capture the spirit of who you are and what you're trying to do and the customer that you're trying to serve. You shifted from the old slogan, which was what was it again? Fluid innovation, solid performance. Now it's moving to what? What's the new, new slogan?
Speaker 3:We felt a more effective way to really announce what we do is we making it possible. So imagine, if you will, a bridge, two peaks and there's a big gap in the middle of the bridge. Our logo is in the middle. We want to bridge the gap between what the customer needs and what they currently have. And they don't come to us, for we like your slogan, we like your vision. They come to us because we're implying a sense that we can solve your problems.
Speaker 3:Our customers have unique micro problems all day long. Ask any of them to a man. They'll tell you oh, I'm always out of parts, the lead times are terrible, the costs are horrible, no one will answer the phone. So they essentially built my marketing plan for me. I just need to fill out those gaps right. So we thought the making it possible campaign was unique. It was not specific enough to provide whatever noun or verb you wanted to put in there Making it rain, so we can help. We provide pumps that help fire departments. Making it sizzle. We help the gear head in his garage. Making it real, making it on time. We thought that allowed us the freedom to substitute unique applications for each word, for each customer, and everybody will have that version of what making it possible means to them, and we thought it was a unique, autonomous way to do some very clever branding that really resonated with our core customer.
Speaker 1:Okay. So branding is important I think we all recognize that but it only becomes a brand that people value if it actually lives up to the promises made. So let's talk for a minute, a little bit about how this is going to change the way that AMBAC goes to market, the way that it serves its customers. Like a slogan is great, but it's got to be backed up by action. So what are the specific actions you, as a company, are going to take going forward to support the trucking industry, to support the men and women in that operate heavy equipment in agriculture and mining and forestry and all of these things that society really needs? I mean, without them doing that job, we don't live the way we get to live right now.
Speaker 3:Well, we kind of use the precepts of the theme in the way we actually develop the strategy ourselves. So we looked at all of our business units and tried to. Usually it was a wag the dog situation. We thought we're going to get a customer needs something when we run to them, or we're going to develop this particular commodity and then you just go sell the heck out of it on the market. We figured that was kind of the wrong way to go. So we took the making it possible concepts and applied it to our strategic objectives of how we want to sell. And we needed to do our competitive intelligence and our customer intelligence to look at.
Speaker 3:These are the pain points for people in this area and we kind of laser focused on how do we get the parts counter guy in Georgia? How do we present solutions to him that are real and tactical. So we set developing an e-commerce system. We have real people that answer the phone. We provide a unique part profile for them. We sell them open capacity. We don't sell them things we don't have time to build right now. We try to use time as a currency sometimes where we say, look, I can get this part for you in four weeks, but it's going to take you 16 weeks from India. How do you want to do this? So we try to present as many options as we can to make all their needs possible. And that precept of making things happen, being a doer it has really kind of flipped our marketing strategy, but it's also flipped our strategic initiatives inside the plan as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm glad you brought up that parts person in Georgia. You know who we're talking about. But what about the parts person in Alaska? Or the truck driver in the desert, or someone who's climbing the Colorado Rockies right now? I mean, you serve the North American market and there are people working in trucking and farms and agriculture, mining, all of these different applications across these really, really diverse environments and, to your point, they have different needs based on where they work and what they're involved in. So to me it's about going that inch wide and a mile deep with your customer. And what is your hope as you take this approach now with your customers? How do you hope it will change your relationship with those customers?
Speaker 3:Well, what we want to do is try to flip the script a little bit, and a lot of it's got to do with the very base level, at the very embryonic stage of developing a commercial relationship. You don't want to put yourself in a position where you're not going to succeed. Some of the sins of the past may have been you know, we were probably over aggressive. You know all the right intentions, of course, but if you don't do valued risk assessment or risk analysis of your distribution model, you're going to sign yourself up for something that's going to fail you and, more importantly, your customer. So what we've started to do is employ risk analysis practices where we look at, you know, can we present a parts profile for Alaska that we can maintain and sustain, or where are the gaps? You know, understand where our contingencies need to lie. If it's something that we can't make, is it something that we buy? Are there opportunities that we can use collaborative efforts with our competition?
Speaker 3:In some cases Most cases we want to make sure that the guy that has a tractor in Alaska will get a part. You know they're going to have to fly it in, but the part distribution center is going to have a part, whether we need to buy it from another distributor or make it ourselves. We want to make sure that there's a model employed, that a stock out is not an option, because that's the death toll for our industry. You can't run people out of parts. So, putting all the thinking up front and developing a competent business model with risk contingencies built in that you can quickly activate and make sure that you know if there's a fire or if there's a part shortage, that we always have your back. And, that said, we want our customer to know that, yeah, they've got to catch you slowing, but they take care of us, they're going to make it possible for us, they're going to get it done, and that's who we want to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and why are they doing all of that? Why are they doing all of that? Because you the fleet, the repair shop, the parts technician, the repair technician you are part of making everything happen in our society and we value that. We value what you do, we appreciate what you do on a daily basis and so, as companies, we're just trying to do everything we can to support you, because, at the end of the day, it's really kind of supporting ourselves as well, because they're the backbone of society, the way we get to live our lives, and even things like you know, you don't live too long without food, medicine and water and fuel and energy and all of that. So without you making things happen, without you making it possible for all of us, where would we be? So a big thank you to everyone watching. We really appreciate what you do on a daily basis and we're going to continue at AmBak to support you in every way possible. Justin, so great to talk to you. I think now we're going to get to do a tour of the factory, so we're going to be showing a lot of this and maybe we'll even get a chance to talk to some of your coworkers. Thanks, Thanks. Daniel knows about that as well.
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Speaker 2:My name is Heather Woodbray. I work in Inside Sales and Customer Service at Ambeck International.
Speaker 1:Heather, you and I have worked together for some time now, but always via a Zoom call, so it's so nice to be here in person?
Speaker 2:Yes, you too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, finally get to meet you in person. So it's been great that Ambeck has opened your doors and allowed the Heavy Duty Parts Report to come here in South Carolina to your plant, and we just finished talking to Justin. Justin did a great job of explaining the history of the company. He talked about your new slogan, making it possible, and what that means for the customer, and how you guys are going to actually use that to kind of change the way that you approach everything and that's what we're going to talk about is the everything part. So for those that aren't familiar with Ambeck International, it's a company that manufactures products, but you also have a remanufacturing component to it, and Justin did mention that. So let's talk a little bit about Ambeck International's manufacturing facility. First of all, when it comes to raw materials, how do you approach the whole raw materials thing and what has been the challenges around that over the last couple of years?
Speaker 2:So Keith is our purchasing manager. The biggest problem that he has had the last few years is lead times. The lead times are extremely long and sometimes when we're quoting to manufacture new parts, they won't own within three to six months, but you can't even get the raw material for two years. So that's a huge hurdle for us right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that was one thing Justin really talked about earlier in the interview was he was really interested in making sure that customers have the parts they need, and so he was talking about how you as a company are approaching that. You got to make it happen. So, when it comes to these lead times and how that affects price, and it comes to the acquisition of raw materials, once you actually get the raw materials here, what is the process for the actual putting all of that into production? Like, walk us through what happens there.
Speaker 2:So the raw material come into the warehouse are quality people. They review it, make sure it's what it's supposed to be so right specs and then it goes to our guys in the CNC area who put the raw material into a machine, they program it and turn it into a part. Once it's the part, it then goes to the area, into the plant, wherever it belongs whether it be on the remand side, the manufacturer inside, and then those guys and gals will use it to actually build an assembled pumps, injectors, whatever it is they're working on at that time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned about the quality inspection part. I know from my time as a remanufacturer if the parts you're making, the material, is that first foundational piece, right? And if you don't have the right material, all kinds of bad things can happen after the fact, especially with fuel injection, that the tolerances are so small, right. So that quality part and the inspection of it, what are they looking for specifically when raw material comes up, like how can they visually inspect it? Like, what do they have to do to say that's quality?
Speaker 2:So they can visually inspect it to a certain degree. We have a quality team, Dan, he's our gauge guy, so he goes in and he actually measures it. He does his gauge in, make sure it's the right thickness If it's supposed to already come. He treated, he makes sure that it has the right case steps, all that good stuff on it before they approve it to actually go into a machine to start making parts.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. Now you talk about the CNC machining. When I was working in that remanufacturer, this is about 25 years ago, we were still using conventional lathes, the CNC. Is that the only machining that you do? Do you also have the more conventional and I guess the company that's been around for over a hundred years? You probably got a few people around here. We've got quite a lot of experience, right. So let's talk a little bit about the machinists themselves. What is the composition of the people who work in that department?
Speaker 2:So we do have our CNCs that's going to be our newer machines. We do have a lot of older conventional machines that are still fully functional and operate every day, and there are quite a few people here that still do a lot of hand work. So we have a guy that's, I'm going to say, at least 30 to 40 years. He's been with us and he still handlaps the heads to the pumps. So that's, and that's very critical because it's hard to teach that skill.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, as my mentor said to me one time. He says how do you get 20 years experience? He said just come see me in 20 years. There's no shortcut. Yeah yeah, that's an interesting thing too when you're managing a manufacturing company, because you're balancing this knowledge right. There's the decades of knowledge on the conventional side, but then you need people who can run a, basically create a computer program for the CNC. So you must have quite the time recruiting for that department.
Speaker 2:Yes, a lot of times people already have those people before they come out of the technical school. Our technical school here has a great CNC programming program but they, like I said, a lot of times those employees are taken before they're even done. So it is hard to recruit in those type of people and you want to make sure that they know what they're doing. We are blessed with the people that we have, along with the older people that's been here or the more tenured people, to be able to teach them as well on the older machines, because that's something they're not used to, also so that they can cross-train and work everything.
Speaker 1:Right, and because once those people with 40 years experience leave and that knowledge leaps with them, so there's yeah, they've got to be able to get that Okay. So now a part. You said the raw materials have gone through the machine shop, but now they go to assembly. So let's talk specifically fuel injection and also pumps. When it comes to the assembly look, are you making complete brand new as well as reman, or is this just different parts that go into the reman only? Like, how does that work?
Speaker 2:It depends. So some parts are made completely brand new and the parts used to assemble those are completely brand new. Now, when it comes to the remanufacturing side, it's all based on a core. That's where it starts. That's going to be your raw material for that. So, dependent on how good the core is, depends on what you're going to need, and most of the time, those parts are parts that we do manufacture in the house and then they just use them to remanufacture.
Speaker 1:So I never did fuel injection, but we were doing pneumatics, and I remember a lot of times maybe like the housing was still good, but the internal parts were completely worn out and you couldn't reuse them at all. So then we would have to take those to the machine shop and actually create new replacements for the internal assemblies. Is that basically what we're talking about? Yeah, okay, exactly and okay. So now the parts made. Let's talk about another step in quality. Right Now we have to test it. So walk me through how that works in the plant.
Speaker 2:So we have tons of test stands, injector pop machines. Depending on what kind of part it is depends on what kind of testing it goes on. They go through the testing phase. We document all the calibrations, how it performed, and then, after testing, it still goes back through quality again for even more inspection and, depending on what their thoughts are, they may retest it themselves just to make sure that it's tip top shaped before it leaves.
Speaker 1:So at minimum, there's the two layers of testing, but then there could be actually a third or fourth, as needed, Right? Wow? Well, and that, let's face it when you got a failure on something like a brake chamber, okay, it's not that big of a deal, but when you have a failure on an injector in an engine now you're talking about taking a truck down for days, weeks, months it's a catastrophic failure. So that level of testing is absolutely required. So I see that, right from the beginning whether it's right from the day that raw material shows up, all the way through until the finished product there's all these quality steps in there to ensure that what you're producing is going to work for your customers.
Speaker 2:Yes, and then keep in mind each piece part, so we call them. So whether it's a screw or not a bolt, those go through quality as well when they're done, being produced. So every little aspect of the finished part goes through quality. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. So when we've got a finished part, now it's time to get it to the customer. So walk me through everything from packaging to warehousing shipping. What's going on there?
Speaker 2:So once the guys on the line, or the girls too, are done with the symbol in the part, they take it to our warehouse. Our packers, in packet, depending on what the part is, depends on the type of packaging. We are very, very, very careful with packaging because these are sometimes very expensive parts and they are critical to the engine. So we don't want them getting messed up or pieces breaking and shipping and then that's the end of the life cycle, I guess.
Speaker 1:And that's it. It's ready to go. They put it on the engine, all right. So you're in customer service, so you get to hear the questions from the actual frontline. You're talking to your distributors. You're probably at some point even talking to their customers, if the problem is something that they're trying to figure out. What's the common questions that you get asked, that you're dealing with on a day-to-day basis?
Speaker 2:Trem codes right now is a big one. A lot of the newer injectors, especially remanufactured ones, a lot of the OEs are plugging in these Trem codes for various reasons.
Speaker 1:So what are those codes? For those that don't know.
Speaker 2:It programs the injector to the ECM.
Speaker 1:So it's a calibration of the physical injector to the engine, to the electric. Okay, through the ECM. Okay, so when they're having problems with codes, is it just that they can't get it to calibrate, or is that there's some sort of fault code being thrown or what happens usually?
Speaker 2:So the biggest thing we're running into right now is up until about a year ago I only knew about cat injectors having Trem codes here. Recently they all have Trem codes, which is kind of new for the aftermarket world in general because a lot of different people I talk to it's new for them. So a lot of remanufacturers aren't programming these injectors via Trem codes because they just don't know they're supposed to. Like I said, it's something new that the OEs are throwing out there and there's a little bit of myth to Trem codes as well. So ultimately, as long as the injector is made within spec, that the OE writes the print to, you don't need a Trem code. The ECM will automatically adjust it. But a lot of mechanics these days and I'm assuming it's just because they were taught this way they will not even install it unless it has a Trem code, even though you technically don't need one. Okay.
Speaker 1:So when it comes to the warranty side of the business, I know that anything that has tight tolerances, contamination is always the biggest enemy. If you had some advice to your customers anybody listening? Who's going to be working on injection? What's your advice around dealing with contamination?
Speaker 2:Don't just change one injector, change all six to eight, change filters, anything that has to do with the fuel system. You need to make sure that everything is changed and up to par at that time, because if your filter or pump has contamination, it's going to push it to the injectors and then you're going to have a problem, and it's not really the injector's problem, it's a upstream issue.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And if you're a parts person, when I hear you say that, here's what I hear, because as a person who worked the counter, sold parts, I hear the opportunity. As one of my mentors also taught me, don't just sell them what they ask for. Sell them what they actually need. So if someone comes in and says I need an injector for port four, for cylinder four, it's like no, you don't. You need injectors for the entire engine. You also need filters, you need fuel, like whatever you need, cleaning equipment, whatever you need. Make sure you take that opportunity to tell the customer what they actually need, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay. So this is also an employee-owned company, so Justin did a very good job of promoting the benefits of it, but now it's just you and I, so you tell me the real deal. What's it like working in an employee-owned company?
Speaker 2:It can become a little stressful sometimes because you take everything personal. This is your company. So instead of just coming in eight to five and leaving whatever issues the company's having, you cannot help but to take those home, because at the end of the day, it's your problem. Somehow, some way you can help come up with a solution or help figure things out. It's also very rewarding, because when we win, everybody wins. Or when Ambeck wins, all the employees win as well.
Speaker 1:There's an upside, and with that upside, really, at the end of the day, it's just more responsibility. Yeah, yeah, and with responsibility you've got a little bit of stress, yeah, but there's the upside of it that you're actually working towards something that you are going to personally benefit from.
Speaker 2:Yes, and it's rewarding. I mean you do get a say in here, you do get to make a change. Not one decision is made just via our CEO. It's talked about amongst everybody, down to the guys that run the machines, the people that pack the parts. I mean everybody gets a say so. To me that's very important too, and you always know what's going on. You're never in the dark.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so can you imagine working for a company that is an employee owned ever again? Are you ruined for all other?
Speaker 2:companies I am. I have to show it to you, but we have a little picture out here. It's got this big fancy chair and it says when you just work for a regular company, and then it's got this chair that's falling apart when you work for an employee owned company, this is the chair you're going to keep, because you know we're not spending money on that fancy chair. That's because you look at it as your money, right? So it's. Yeah, elizabeth was laughing because I cut all the lights off behind everybody. We're at home. This is our home.
Speaker 1:That's right. Well, thank you so much for taking some time to talk to me about this. I love the opportunity. It broke my heart when I started the show and then the pandemic came and I couldn't. I had a plan. I was going to come out and visit all the customers. We were going to do this that we're doing right now, and you know it just had to wait three years, so we finally get to do it. So that's great.
Speaker 2:So thank you so much, yes, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1:I have absolutely loved my time here at Amback International in South Carolina. It is so great to finally get a chance to meet these people in person. This is a group of people. These are heavy duty people. They are salt of the earth. They care about what they do. They really take it quite seriously the role that they're going to play in supporting the trucking industry and the heavy equipment industry, and so it was just. It was a great opportunity. I hope that you enjoyed getting this view of this company, seeing the internal workings of it and how an employee-owned company is different and how that impacts the way that they produce the products that they sell.
Speaker 1:If you're interested in buying Amback Fuel Injection or Fuel Pumps, head over to our main sponsor, finditpartscom. You'll be able to find all of their products there, and if you want to learn about them specifically, head to their website, ambackinternationalcom. That's where you can get great information like cross-reference information and other information. You need to identify the parts and if you need any help at all, just give Heather a call. She's in customer service, she's going to answer that phone and you can talk to her directly. Thank you so much for listening. As always, if you're enjoying the program. Make sure that you head over to heavydutypartsreportcom and give us a follow. We have a weekly email that goes out, so you never miss out on any content. If you're on YouTube, hit that subscribe button, and if you prefer listening to us on whatever podcast player you're on, make sure you follow us for free, as always, be heavy duty. Thanks so much. Keep doing what you do. We need you.