DaimlerChrysler Truck Financial on Monday, April 9, announced a regionalization initiative that it says will improve service to Freightliner, Sterling and Western Star dealers and all industry segments across four regions of the United States, encompassing the Eastern, Central, Southern and Western sections of the country. The four components of the initiative operating on a regional basis will be sales, fleet credit, dealer credit and a new small business credit department.
Geoff Robinson, director of sales, marketing and remarketing for Lisle, Ill.-based DaimlerChrysler Truck Financial, previewed the initiative to dealership finance and insurance professionals at the business unit’s annual Truck Series business meeting for Freightliner, Sterling and Western Star dealers.
“This approach to customer service will enable our sales and credit people to share knowledge of regional market conditions, which will result in stronger relationships and consistent communication with our dealers,” Robinson told the dealers. “Moreover, this straightforward, regional approach to the market further enhances our dealer and customer value proposition as the dedicated captive financial services source for Freightliner brands.”
Robinson said the newly-formed small business credit team would handle fleets with fewer than 11 trucks or less than a $500,000 line of credit with DaimlerChrysler Truck Financial. Fleet Credit will service fleets with more than 11 trucks or credit lines more than $500,000.
Other features of the regionalization of the sales and credit teams, according to the company, will be:
“DaimlerChrysler Truck Financial does a good job of keeping us in the loop on new initiatives to get our feedback,” said Dave Bibler, finance manager for Stoops Freightliner — Quality Trailer Inc., an Indianapolis-based operator of six new truck dealerships in Indiana and Ohio. “We’re very much behind this program because it is a common-sense approach to industry issues. At the end of the day, my issues in Indiana are different from a single store operator’s in Utah.”
Bibler, a former banker who has been with Stoops Freightliner for 16 years, is the chairman of the Finance & Insurance Dealer Council, a 20-member group of dealers that meets several times a year and serves as a sounding board for programs and initiatives in the formative stages at DaimlerChrysler Truck Financial.
