Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA) told its dealers last week that it plans to reshape into a segment-specific structure the product strategy, and sales and marketing teams for Freightliner and Western Star.
Under the re-alignment, which will take place through the rest of the year, Richard Howard, senior vice president of sales and marketing, will lead DTNA’s portfolio of on-highway trucks as the senior vice president of on-highway sales and marketing. Western Star President David Carson will transition to the role of senior vice president of vocational sales and marketing and be responsible for all of DTNA’s vocational trucks.
In its re-tooling of personnel, DTNA is seeking to put product experts in the specific segments – on-highway and vocational – under the same umbrella versus splitting them into two teams with similar responsibilities divided by the two individual brands.
“Looking at the customer experience,” Carson said, “the most important opportunity for us is to increase our focus. We also want to leverage our expertise and knowledge that we have built in our organization.”
“We love both our brands equally, and now you will see us put equal support behind both brands,” said DTNA President and CEO Roger Nielsen, adding both brands – and both applications – are wildly important parts of DTNA. “There are just as many on-highway customers as there are vocational customers.”
Consolidating expertise by segment not only gives dealers a singular point of contact, it also ensures and deepens their level of technical knowledge for the products offered in their segments as “trucks will get even more complex as we go forward,” Nielsen said.
The two brands have been operated alongside one another since DTNA purchased Western Star in 2001, yet their go-to-market strategies remained independent. A shift to a segment-driven strategy is not only a departure from DTNA’s prior way of doing business for the last two decades, it differs significantly from other OEMs like Paccar and Volvo Trucks North America, who each also sell and service multiple nameplates in on-highway and vocational segments.
