How This Local Trucking Company Opened 15 Locations in Just 20 Years
Nextran Corp., a trucking sales, parts and maintenance company based in Jacksonville, broke ground on its 15th location.
The new facility, which will open in 2016's third quarter, is actually the company's third location in Atlanta — and its largest.
"Atlanta is such a large geographical area," said CEO Jon Pritchett, "we had two locations and needed a third…. It really goes to the geographical size of that market. In South Atlanta, near the airport, is one of our facilities. If you drive from there to the new facility in Northeast Atlanta, it's almost an hour. With the amount of traffic, customers there want us to be easily accessible."
The new store will serve as a flagship location for Nextran, a 9.5 acre parcel with 29 service bays and 80 employees.
But the company's expansion is part of a bigger six-year plan for growth.
The company, which was founded in 1993 in Jacksonville and Orlando, started its growth plan when it made an acquisition in Tampa.
"I could see there was the additional opportunity for continued consolidation in this business," Pritchett said. "Each year since 1995, we laid in a five-year plan."
This year, Pritchett decided to take a step back and create a six-year plan,which is broken into two three-year plans that include not just acquisition, but internal growth.
"As the economy grows, we maintain increased market share," he said. "And we're anticipating and increase in market share."
So far, the numbers reflect that growth. Network-wide, Pritchett said truck sales are up 35 percent year over year, the company's parts business is up 8 percent and service is up 10 percent.
For 2015, Pritchett is expecting total sales for Mack and Volvo trucks (the two brands the company works with) to be about 2,500 trucks.
Nextran also has about 730 employees, with larger locations like Jacksonville, Orlando and Atlanta each having about 70 to 80 employees.
A major growth focus in the company's six-year plan is increasing the amount of service bays — now at 235 — by about 50 percent.
Pritchett aid the company plans to continue to grow its presence in the Southeast, adding locations to states that could use multiple Nextran locations for service and sales needs.
"A constant goal of ours is to meet customer expectations, because our customers make promises to their customers," Pritchett said. "We're a customer-focused organization and have developed that culture for more than 20 years. I couldn't be more proud of the strides we made."
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