and Knoxville 7-8 hours away on worse roads. There were no nice 4 lanes, no local airports. There were no dealers with accessible inventory across the street, no place to find parts close by - WE were the option. Customers worked long hours and needed to be serviced on their job sites so Wendell Wells became one of the first outside parts sales people at the ripe old age of 18 and from this humble start moved to the top executive level of our company before retirement after 43 years.
TERRYDOTSON President/CEO
Welcome to our celebration and thank you for sharing this special event with us. 50 years, 600 months, 18,262 days, 438,291 hours, 26,297,460 minutes, 1,577,847,600 seconds - simple measurements of time. Our 50 years is not as much a measurement of time but is a story of its people. This company was founded on a dream of Fred Langley, who was involved with a company called East Tennessee Ford, the largest Ford Truck dealership in America in 1966. Fred knew a change was coming in their business and that the Ford line was not going to satisfy the demands of the coal fields of the sixties. He also knew the offerings of the Mack company could satisfy those needs, so Fred flew to Allentown and sold Zenon Hansen, the Chairman and President of Mack Trucks, on granting a dealership as soon as Fred could secure an acceptable location in Eastern Kentucky. It took Fred 8 days to the secure the land and property where our corporate headquarters stands today in the little town of Prestonsburg, KY. Eastern Kentucky Mack was born January 4, 1967!
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The new company brought in talent from the Knoxville Ford dealership and also acquired talent from the region. John Smallman, the manager, Jim McClung, the finance person, and Gene Crass, the salesman, along with the leadership of Fred Langley, were the nucleus of what was to become Worldwide Equipment. Local people were added, folks like Phil Nelson, Lester Freels, Floyd Greene, Wendell Wells, Willard Adkins, Billy Lafferty, Carl Sellards, Truman Shepard, Slim Campbell, Wilma McClure, Mary Hall, Phil Nelson and others were hired many of these original folks worked until their retirement, many worked in multiple locations and job areas of our company. Some helped start new dealership locations which helped the company grow to Middlesboro, KY, Charleston, WV, Bluefield, WV, and Jane Lew, WV during the years from 1967 to 1975. Accomplishment came early for Eastern Kentucky Mack when the dealership was named dealer of the year from Mack Trucks in 1971; from a start up business in an unpopular territory to “Top Dog” in
four short years! This was accomplished by hard work and good people that had a strong belief in accomplishment, a dedication to customer service, and a “can-do” attitude. The values of our people today are the same values as the people that founded our company. Worldwide has always invested in people - given our people the opportunity to grow, trusted them, and challenged them to be all they could be. We were blessed to begin our organization in a part of America where strong work habits and loyalty were common core values. Our beginnings in this region taught us much about customer service and loyalty to our relationships with our people, our partners, and our customers. We learned early it was our job to fulfill each of these core responsibilities. Our rural beginnings forced our organization to find ways to solve customer problems because a simple alternative was 5-6 hours away. These values remain as they began in 1967 when WE solely operated in rural markets. Lexington, KY was 5 hours away on a crooked single lane mountain road
WORLDWIDE EQUIPMENT, INC.
As the company grew to other markets, we continued to seek out good people, people that believed in our core values and concepts. People that worked hard and believed in the caring attitude WE had for our customers, our partners, and our communities. These were folks like Larry Howerton, Randy Polk, Skip Burdette, Mike Pendleton, Jeff Bates, Mike Null, Chuck Bradley, Jeff Taylor, Kenneth Kidd, Greg St. Clair, Raleigh Neil, Larry Hicks, Steve Clark, Doug Goble, Molly Price, Joe Willis, Larry Whitt, Bart Brown, Tim Matthews, Jimmy Baker, Ron Fater, Jerry Beckett, Jimmy Duncan, Tommy Smith, Liz Sparkman, Berta Adkins, Raleigh Neel, Lloyd Oslonian, Ron Teter, Scott Blevins, Glen Webb, and others. These folks attending our anniversary this weekend and ones who could not be here are the pillars of this organization.
WE the People - May 2017
Some ran stores and departments while some sold products, fixed trucks, and swept floors. All were equally important to the building of this organization. As the company grew and took on new opportunities, new franchises in new markets continued to build solely on an investment in people. Steel, wood, concrete, and asphalt make buildings, but people make companies - good people make good companies and great ones make companies like ours. In every state and every location WE are our people. I pray our first commitment will be to our people! It is our utmost promise to put our people first and ask our people to take good care of our customers and honor our relationships with our partner suppliers. If we make a choice between a good customer and a good employee, we will choose the good employee every time! As we look back over this 50 year period, the good and successful times far outweigh those that were not so good. Most of our bad times were caused by choices that were in the best interest of the person, rather than the best interest of the company. In every good time, I know our people made it that way and in every bad time I saw our people rise up and pull Worldwide successfully through the storm. I learned the use of prayer was helpful in more than one opportunity in our past.
In the last 50 years we have been blessed with good partners in our choices of franchises, suppliers, bankers, and accountants that, in most cases, have been there for WE daily and in tough times especially. We have seen challenges in our markets and in our market friends. We have always been blessed to have good friends that have seen us through and people that have helped us be successful - none more than John Conkin and Dan Clark! Since 1977, our corporate logo has been WE, something we are very proud of. “We the people” are the first words of the preamble of our constitution and these words are the core of our company. I am extremely proud of our company and what our people have accomplished over these 50 short years! I am extremely thankful to our God that has blessed me and my family to have shared most of the last 50 years being a part of this thing we call WE. God bless each of you. It is my hope that at WE’s 100th year celebration, our values are the same and our appreciation of our blessings are properly focused!
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