We first met Rick Hodges in 2010 when Professional Distributor featured the driven independent with a route in Athens, Ga. and the surrounding area (VehicleServicePros.com/10117756).
Since then, he’s still visiting mostly automotive shops and a few industrial places that service motorcycles and county maintenance vehicles. Though his customer base hasn’t changed much, his business model has. Hodges recently reorganized his business and added a second truck. He decided he could be more effective — and keep his sanity — by managing two trucks instead of running just one.
“I always thought I’d just keep my one truck, but almost 30 years on a tool truck, after a while I needed a break… to just do it a little differently … and that was the big reason behind it,” Hodges says. Long-time employee Ed Claytor now runs the original 20’ Freightliner step van he and Hodges used to work on together, while Hodges sits behind the wheel of a GMC pickup truck pulling an 18’ trailer full of roll carts and toolboxes.
“We are in contact every day but he runs that truck, which let me step off of it. Then I went and hired another gentleman (Jake Savage) to run a second truck. Now we have two trucks on the road and I keep both the trucks happy,” Hodges says.
Aside from the extra selling support, Hodges’ wife, Krissi, is still an indispensable asset to the business. “She does a lot of behind-the-scene things that keep me out here on the road,” says Hodges. “It’s been very good.”
Hodges says letting others take the reign takes a little getting used to at first, but it has clear advantages.
“I speak to [Claytor and Savage] every day. I make sure they have what they need and it gives me time to look into deals and promos ... that I can set up.” He says finding the time to do some of the "extras" was difficult when he ran a truck solo.
“I’ve learned that other people can do what I do even though I might not think they can,” he laughs.
The pay-off for a well-planned delegation strategy is less stress. “I’ve learned how to relax a lot more. I needed to. And my wife told me I needed to [relax],” Hodges says. He adds, running a tool truck is “probably a good two- to three-man business and one guy tries to do it all. I think that’s why there’s a lot of turnover.”
He didn’t want to give up the business, so he thought of ways he could tweak it, instead.
In fact, this isn’t the first time Hodges has changed things up. He’s revised his workload a few times throughout the years, and continues to reevaluate. The trick, he says, is to stay organized.
“First thing I did when I felt like I was burning out after about 12 years, is I went to four-day week instead of five and it helped me a lot. Then another 10 years went by and I felt burned out so I hired Ed to help me on my truck. Five or six years after that I decided that he could run the truck.
“If this keeps going like it’s going, in another year I’ll probably push to put one more truck on, and then three trucks will be a good number.”
