PETERBILT MOTORS: GM Bill Jackson adapts quickly to job he loves

The Trucker News Services

6/1/2007

By LYNDON FINNEY, The Trucker Staff

DENTON, Texas — This time last year, Bill Jackson was in his fourth year as general manager of the parts division at PACCAR, the huge multi-national technology company known for its design, manufacture and customer support of premium light-, medium- and heavy-duty trucks under the Kenworth, Peterbilt and DAF nameplates.

PACCAR Parts operates a network of parts distribution centers that offers after-sales support to Kenworth, Peterbilt and DAF dealerships around the world.

He was in his ninth year with PACCAR having joined the company almost by chance after a call from a headhunter while working at Belden Wire & Cable in Richmond, Ind., in 1998.

PACCAR was seeking to fill a position and the headhunter wanted to know if Jackson was interested.

“It just happened to be the right day at the right time and I said I’ll talk to them,” Jackson said recently. He had friends in Seattle and thought that if nothing else, he’d just go to Seattle, where PACCAR is headquartered, do the interview and visit his friends.

But when he returned to Indiana, PACCAR called with an offer.

“I was ready for a change,” Jackson recalled.  “So about a month later, I took my whole family out there and didn’t tell my kids ? they were 8 ½ and 10 at the time ? and when we got there, I said, ‘I’m thinking about taking a job here in Seattle.’  My wife was OK, but my children were dead set against it. We moved to Seattle anyway and it worked out very well for the whole family.”

Fast forward to 2007.

Jackson had moved up through the organization as an operations controller for various divisions, eventually being asked to become assistant general manager for PACCAR Parts. Nine months later, the general manager of PACCAR Parts was promoted and Jackson was elevated to general manager.

“PACCAR senior management has confidence in people they put in these roles,” he said. “They don’t do it for you and you have to do these jobs on your own.  But PACCAR does offer support and guidance, and provides all the tools you need to be successful. So I was assistant general manager for PACCAR Parts for nine months and manager for a little more than four years, some of the most successful years in PACCAR Parts’ history.  It wasn’t my doing; it was the organization at work.”

Then came a request.

PACCAR officials asked Jackson if he would move to Denton, Texas, to be general manager of Peterbilt.

“How could I say no?” he said. “It’s one of the best known brand names in the world.  It was a yes.  I said I absolutely wanted to do that. The only reservation I had was that I had a senior in high school and I’m very close to my family. I said I’d love to do it, but I have a family situation to work out.  They said we would worry about the timetable later.   It was a great conversation [with PACCAR executives] and it was totally unexpected.”

So on January 2, 2007, Jackson officially became general manager of Peterbilt Motors Co., succeeding Dan Sobic, who had been promoted to the position of senior vice president at PACCAR.

“At the time I was asked to move to Denton, I thought I had the best job within the company running the parts division,” Jackson told The Trucker during an interview at Peterbilt headquarters here. “But not any more. I have the best job in the company now.”

Jackson is acutely aware of the importance of the role he’s assumed and can tell you in only a few words the overarching goal for his work at Peterbilt.

“The success Peterbilt has today isn’t my doing, it’s Dan Sobic, Tom Plimpton, the people who set the stage and helped build this brand before I got here,” he said. “All I can do is continue on that path and make sure my legacy here is that I leave the company in better shape than when I got here. And that’s my intent.’”

Jackson, whose father was a truck driver for Borden’s Dairy in Akron, Ohio, said, “I never thought that I would be in the trucking business, but I guess it’s been in my blood since I was born.” He takes over at Peterbilt during a very pronounced downturn in heavy truck sales which primarily are a result of the new 2007 emissions standards (OEM sales are off 28.2 percent this year).

So was there any apprehension about taking over as a GM knowing what was happening in the marketplace?

Not one bit.

“We have a great team here at Peterbilt that will get us through it,” Jackson said, adding that Peterbilt’s  percentage share of industry orders has exceeded its percentage take for the same period of time last year. “It’s a difficult situation to go through, but we are doing the right things to position ourselves to come through this successfully. I think from a business viewpoint, we do very well in a down market; we get our fair share ? we had record market share last year at 13 percent ? but we weather these storms better, I think, because of the quality of the people and the quality of the product. Can we do better? Yes, always. But we can get through this.”

Quality and quantity in terms of service is another way to put it.

At the Denton facility there is a combined 17,000 years of cumulative service.

The plant opened in 1980 with 81 employees and over the past 27 years more than 275,000 Peterbilt  trucks have rolled off the line. Some 10 percent of the original employees are still actively employed at the facility today.

One person familiar with the employment scene in Denton told The Trucker a job at the Peterbilt plant is one of the most coveted in the area.

Jackson also believes the speed with which Peterbilt responded to the new emissions standards has been and will continue to be important to the company’s success.

“I believe we have been successful by being the first company to be 100 percent compliant with the new environmental 2007 engines,” he said. “We’re doing the right thing for the environment and the right thing for the customer. We’ve adapted that technology quicker than anybody else and we’ve implemented it quicker than anybody else. We’re doing the right things with our new product lineup introduced in January, which was the result of largest product investment in Peterbilt’s almost 70-year history.  The customers are accepting the new products, they are accepting their performance and they are accepting our strategy. I wouldn’t say it’s been easy, but it’s been a great time for me to learn the business. If I had walked in here at the beginning of last year when the market was stronger, I may have had a different approach and a different way of getting involved in the business.  At this point in time, I have no time to figure it out.  I have to solve the issues and get on with it.”

Jackson is not sure when, but he’s confident Class 8 sales will rebound.

Some in the manufacturing industry have even expressed in open forums a belief that the total Class 8 sales for 2007-2009 will rival sales during the unparalleled three-year period of 2004-2006.

“I think you are going to see the market come back. I don’t know if it will be as strong, but it will be a good market,” Jackson said. “What we need to think about is what the Europeans have gone through in their emissions cycles.  We have an advantage with DAF and learning from their experiences.  Europe is not experiencing the wide swings in the market because they receive some governmental incentives and support. The government has stepped in and said ‘it is in our best interest to protect not only the industry but the truck drivers as well.’ So they have put incentives out there that their people adopted and smoothed out that process of technology changes. I think if we look at the next cycle, which is 2010 ? 2009 before and 2010 after ? there is some assistance and support that can be given to protect this industry and get the technology adapted faster, which is good for the environment, but also protects the industry from wide swings in the market where we sell 320,000 trucks one year and some 200,000 the next.”

Jackson is a man with an infectious smile and outgoing personality ? and then some.

He’s a “wanderer” who may show up unannounced anywhere in the headquarters building or at the company’s huge manufacturing plant, which is located in an industrial park less than 10 minutes from his office.

“Yes, I walk through the building and say, ‘good morning, everybody.’ At first, I got no response. It was kind of like ‘what the heck is this?’ But I’m noticing now that I get responses back as I walk through the halls,” Jackson said.

He is also very vocal about his open door policy and very much desires to be known as a leader rather than a “boss.”

“Although I have the title of general manager and I’m vice president for PACCAR, I’m more of a facilitator,” Jackson said. “We have great people here at both Peterbilt and PACCAR. All I have to do is make sure we stay on the right path, do the right things, make good decisions. My role is to foster future leaders of the organization and leave the organization in better shape tomorrow than it was today. And I hope I’m doing that.”

Although he’s only been here a short time, Jackson already has developed a firm understanding of the culture that drives the company.

He can describe it in one word.

“Proud. You’ll hear me use that word a lot, because it’s true (and true to his word, Jackson repeated the word numerous times during the interview).  Everyone is very proud and honored to work for the best brand in the industry,” he said.  “We see that across the line, in the division, the plants and at our dealers.  People don’t leave this company.  There are very happy to be here.  From a PACCAR viewpoint, we have a hard time getting employees to leave Denton and the Peterbilt environment to work at other PACCAR locations because they truly feel pride in being part of this team.”

It’s a culture that makes it easy for him and others to come to work each day excited about what lies ahead.

“I’m working for the best brand and company in the world,” Jackson said. “How can I not be excited? The unfortunate thing is I am literally living in the office, down the hall. We’ve had a great success at PACCAR in having what I would call a bed-and-breakfast attached to our facilities. When we added on to this building three years ago, we built the Peterbilt House. We have a four-room bed-and-breakfast in the back that works out great as I am staying there. So I’m literally here all the time.”

(His family will move to Denton after the school year ends in Washington state.)

Jackson said he’s in a quick learning cycle at Peterbilt.

“I’m trying to learn everything in the shortest period of time,” he said. “What’s going on in the industry has helped me do that but I want to learn more.  Executives promoted into the general manager position at Peterbilt are typically promoted within the company.  I’m the first general manager in a long time to get promoted into this position from outside of Peterbilt.   So I’m learning more about the culture and the company every day.  It’s been great.  The employees have been wonderful.  The customers and dealers have all been very supportive.   No one has been hesitant to call me and say, ‘here’s what’s going on, you need to look at this or dig into this.’  There’s really a great team here. I read every e-mail I get every day.  I read every memo that comes across my desk every day so I can get up to speed and respond quickly to satisfy our customers, dealers, suppliers and employees.”

Even though he may be in a learning cycle, he has a solid vision for where he wants to take the company.

“We are going to continue to grow and deliver solutions to customers and provide them greater value than they can get anywhere else,” Jackson said. “That’s going to gain us market share, profitability and it’s going to gain us more efficiencies in the plant. We’re always adding technology to our trucks and to the factory. Even though we absolutely make the best quality truck, we consistently strive to make it even better.  We will provide every Peterbilt customer, whether a large fleet or an owner-operator, not only the best truck, but the best truck experience possible.  We will continue to enhance our systems by investing in technology and products to build a truck that is easier to use, more environment friendly, providing customers lower operating costs and maintaining the highest residual value in the industry.”

As is customary, the reporter interviewing Jackson asked if there was anything he’d like to add before the session concluded.

“My goal is to leave Peterbilt in better shape tomorrow that it was today and to make sure we develop future leaders for Peterbilt and PACCAR,” he said.

Then with that infectious smile lighting up the room, he added: “And did I tell you how proud I am of this company?” 8