6 minute read
BUILDING BETTER TRUCKS
A story about being part of an industry that makes a difference.
Tom Bateman, Director of Marketing
Royal Truck Body in Carson, California has been in business since 1971. They produce work truck solutions for numerous industries and pump out a minimum of 25 finished trucks a day. So, the next time you’re flying down the 101 freeway, pay attention to the tailgate of that white F-350 in front of you – it’s probably a Royal truck.
With over 200 employees and a 50-year history, Royal has become the go-to for many because of their approach to the truck build – get it all in one place. Rather than sourcing your boxes from one company, your ladder from next door, and your rack from 6 states away, Royal builds a finished truck to the specs you give them. That means the customer, whether it’s a one-off need or a fleet of 20 trucks, gets exactly what they need from one place from a company with a trustworthy name to back it up.
We sat down with Marc San Paolo, the Manufacturing Manager for the Carson facility to get an idea of what makes Royal Truck Body different, and why he’s spent his whole professional career with them.
“I think in this industry, it’s about the people that work for you. We take care of our people first and foremost. People stay here at Royal because of our culture; we have a lot of veterans out there – been here 10, 15, 20, 30 years.
There’s a common theme at Royal Truck Body. This isn’t just another job or something to do until the next best thing. It’s become part of people’s story, part of what has defined their direction and part of how they’ve built a career in an industry that makes the world go round.
I was working at a record store, and I was dating a girl whose father was the head of engineering at Royal Truck Body. Her dad told me if I wanted to keep dating his daughter, I needed to get a better job.”
For Marc, like many of the 200+ Royal employees in Carson, it started with a want to better themselves –to go from surfing, living in a van, and eating dollar noodles every night – to building a career that could support a family in a stable industry and make a name for themselves. “This is a place for growth”, Marc continued. “I came in as a gopher – just running errands for purchasing. That was August 24, 1994. And then yeah… just started moving up the ranks and took on more responsibility.”
Perhaps some of the most exciting insight into this Southern-California truck body builder is the stories and testimonies that come back from the wild. Afterall, what good is a truck unless it's got some exciting stories to go with it? Well, there's some good ones with Royal. Like, for example, the customer that got into a car wreck with his truck ending up going right over a mountainous embankment in Big Bear, CA. For context, that's not an experience that anyone should be walking away from with air left in their lungs. Yet thanks to the ladder rack on his Royal-built work truck, he lives to tell the story.
Beside the obvious cool factor of building trucks for explosive experts who blow up buildings and trees, another favorite among the Carson team is the SWAT type vehicles that raid drug labs. We’re talking full Breaking Bad vibes here – walk-in trucks complete with storage for automatic weapons and a shower to rinse off the meth cloud they just walked through. That’s about as badass as a truck build can get. Nobody puts it better than Marc did:
So where does SuperSpring International come in? With a heavy lean in recent years on the SumoSprings product line, a lot of people don't know that the company was built on the work truck industry. Out namesake product, the SuperSpring, is our patented stell helper spring that removes the need to send your fleet off to a spring shop and rebuild the leaf-pack. It's an American-made, maintenance-free, lifetime-warrantied solution that removes sag and body roll - not to mention slower turn times on breaks and tires. Work trucks, you might say, are our forté.
Marc noted. Why is that beneficial? Well, if you’ve ever had to deal with fixing a sagging work truck, the most common remedy is to have 2 of your drivers caravan to the nearest spring shop, drop the saggy truck, wait a week for a spring rebuild, lose all that time on building the rest of the truck body, then go back – 2 drivers again –and pick up your less-saggy truck. Not a bad solution and not an uncommon one, but definitely not the best.
With well over a thousand SuperSprings kits installed under Marc's direction at Royal, we asked him how many warranty claims, returns, or failures he'd had to deal with... (you probably see where this is going...) With a little chuckle under his breathe, Marc responded, "None. Nil. Zero. Nothing. Yeah, not a single one."
Ok so the truck builder is happy - quick to install, no maintenance to think about, and better for the build timeline. But what about the customer? We've got that covered too. We asked Marc for the feedback from his customers. The verdict? "The ride is a better one. And the SuperSprings enjoy the weight. The more weight – you feel it – the smoother it is.”
Creating a better journey isn’t just a tagline or catchy bit of marketing for us; this is our passion, and it goes way beyond the truck and enjoying the ride more. We’re determined to be part of people’s stories in a way that makes the whole experience better. For Marc and the folks at Royal Truck Body, that means, “No hassles and no hiccups along the way. No obstacles and nothing that hinders performance, or the business, or fun.”
