Hytrol Conveyor Company: David Peacock

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David Peacock of Hytrol Conveyor Company shares how his time in the Marine Corp has influenced his leadership skills as company president – both during the modern age of lightning-fast digital and technological advancements… and especially during the COVID era.

 

 

Danny:

Well, thank you for joining me today on today’s Executive Series. I am joined by David Peacock who is the President of Hytrol Conveyor Company from Jonesboro, Arkansas. David, thank you so much for joining me today.

David:

Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity.

Danny:

Absolutely, well, I’m excited to kind of jump in and just talk to learn more about you and about Hytrol. But, before we jump into everything, can you just tell me and the audience a little bit about Hytrol, who you guys are, and what you guys do?

David:

Okay, we’re a family-owned private company making conveyors. We were founded in 1947, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and relocated to Jonesboro, Arkansas, in 1962. We make high-speed sortation equipment controls, the full breadth of conveyor products that you expect from a company in our industry. And, we’ve got about 1,300 employees. We’ve really grown over the last three or four years in terms of the number of employees and the volume of business that we’ve been doing. So, it’s been a very exciting time for us.

Danny:

Excellent, well, there’s a lot going on, obviously, in the industry, a tremendous amount of growth and we’ll get into that a little bit here later in the episode. But, before that, I want to know a little bit more about you, David. Tell me your background. How did you get involved in the industry?

David:

I grew up in North Carolina. I have moved around quite a bit. I’ve actually lived in 13 states and so I’ve got–

Danny:

Oh, wow.

David:

I have moved quite a bit. Coming out of high school, my best friend talked me into going to the Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina. And then, he decided that he didn’t want to go, so I went down there by myself. Fantastic opportunity. I recognized that that was the start of the journey that opened a significant number of doors and so I’m very appreciative of the experience that I got there. The Marine Corps actually paid for me to go to college and so I went there. I earned a scholarship from those folks and went into the Marine Corps and served as a First Lieutenant, then got promoted to Captain for about a little over 10 years and got out in the mid 90s, then joined corporate America. I went to Rubbermaid to begin with in an operations role. Had a really great time there. Got an opportunity to move into material handling, but it was on the vehicle side in 2001 up in Wisconsin. I worked for a company called OmniQuip. We got purchased two years later. I moved to Pennsylvania with JLG Industries. Again, material handling, but again vehicles. And, in 2007, got recruited to move to Texas to stand up a facility for a European company in an operations role and was there until 2014 when I got the opportunity to come here. Most of my experiences, you see, is primarily in operations. But, coming here was a huge opportunity. I’m the third president in the 73 year history of Hytrol.

Danny:

Wow.

David:

Was founded the company, was president until the early 90s, and then Gregg Goodner was the president until I took over in 2015. So it’s been a really… It’s the American dream story. I mean, it’s where I started and the path that I took to get here. I’m very fortunate to be in this role. Mr. Loberg created an incredible company and love being at Hytrol.

Danny:

That’s awesome. No, I love the hearing about the American dream. And just hearing your sense of gratitude on that. So, tell me a little bit, like, in your career, where were some… where were some big moments that, some big learning lessons that you’ve taken away? Maybe, you mentioned that when you were at the Citadel, you were in the Marine Corps, there was a lot that you got from that. Can you maybe share a few things?

David:

Yeah, the Citadel opened my eyes to the world. I mean, I hadn’t traveled a great deal. The first time I got on a plane was when I flew down to Charleston my freshman year. And so, it really exposed me and I became friends with young men all over the country at the Citadel and developed some great relationships to this day. We talk very regularly and are there to support each other. So, it’s understanding the importance of the friendships that I developed and just the breadth of exposure to people from all over the country. And even internationally, we had several students, classmates that were from Panama and other places around the world. So, that was a great experience just to get me started in terms of thinking more of a national global level. Marine Corps, the two lessons I tell people that I took from the Marine Corps, the first one is how to be a good leader. Now, we all drop the ball on and we mess up on occasion, but that gave me the skills that, to understand that treat people the way you want to be treated and don’t ask folks to do things you’re not willing to do yourself and just be out there, engage with people and having those conversations. Huge leadership opportunities and a great learning opportunity for me.

The other one is a little less obvious and that is the value of making a decision. When I got out of the Marine Corps, I was often surprised at how slow some folks would be to make decisions. You get paralyzed by not having adequate information and, at some point, no decision is a worse decision than a bad decision. And so, I learned the value of collecting information and making the decision based upon what you know at the moment and moving forward. And so, that was, I think, a very valuable lesson that I’ve lived with for the last 25 years and probably one of the things I’m most grateful from the Marine Corps for. Then, and the other item, I think, is just the willingness to take an opportunity. That’s when JLG bought OmniQuip, they offered over 100 people opportunities to move from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania, and only four of us actually took ’em up on that opportunity. And, if an opportunity is presented to yourself, be open to those opportunities because you don’t know where they’re going to lead and that led, it was a chain of events that have led me to have Hytrol. And so it’s, I think, just being aware of opportunities and then being, having the willingness to step through the door and take that challenge.

Danny:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s awesome. So, first of all, thank you for your service. Not to be cliche, but seriously, thank you because I… you mentioned you were in the Marine Corps for 10 years. So, I imagine that was a… there’s a lot of sacrifice involved. There’s a lot of things that you probably necessarily didn’t want to do that you kind of had to do, and you kind of had to have some grit. So, thank you. And I love those lessons, those takeaways, so certainly the leadership aspect. The decision making thing is fascinating to me, especially right now where you want to talk about people being fraught with having to make decisions with very limited or constantly changing information scenarios. Analysis paralysis is a real thing. Or, maybe what I’ve heard a lot- just decision making fatigue is definitely been a big challenge. Then, obviously, there’s this third piece of really being aware of opportunities, but not just aware, but really just jumping, taking advantage of them, and actually taking action on them. That’s awesome. That’s great.

David:

And I, it exists both on a personal level, but also on a company level. I mean, we have to be, as a company, as Hytrol, we have to be aware. This is a tough year. We all know it’s a tough year, but there’s huge opportunities that are being presented to us as a result of that as well. And so, being willing to exercise that same philosophy at the corporate level as you do on a personal level, I think is important.

Danny:

Absolutely. Well, okay, so let’s pivot a little bit and talk about Hytrol with those things. And, actually, maybe we can run with those themes of what you’ve talked about, which I would love to expand on a little bit more from a leadership standpoint. How is that influencing you right now at Hytrol?

David:

I think the– First of is taking care of our people, right? The way we have, we’ve spent a good deal of money this year that was unbudgeted, unplanned, to put safeguards in place, so we can take care of our folks. The last thing that we want is to have a bunch of folks come down with COVID. And, both from a personal perspective, doing the right thing for them and also, for the company’s and our customers’ perspective, making sure that we can deliver product. And so, whether it’s the temperatures, all the different protocols that the CDC suggests that you do, if we have someone who is exposed, we send them home, that Congress passed the, and I don’t recall the name of the bill, but it’s for companies smaller than us, so it doesn’t apply for us, but the right thing for us to do for our folks was to mirror that program.

And so, when we send folks home, we provide COVID leave pay for them, so that they can stay home and take care of their families and not be hurt any more than, and they can really focus on getting well and not have to worry about the financial impact of staying at home. Doing those types of things, making sure that we’re creating opportunities for our folks to grow. So, whether it’s through tuition reimbursement and helping our folks get an education, so that they can move from their current role into a higher role in the organization, doing all of those types of things to make sure that we retain the very best people that we can, that it doesn’t do any good to have a great product if the folks that we have here can’t go out and we can’t keep, maintain the folks that we need and that we want to have in the organization. So, really, the focus is on the people. And, we do that, everything else takes care of itself.

Danny:

Absolutely, no, that’s great. Now, obviously, it’s… going to feed into a great culture. And you have to have a great culture if you want to have a great company and so on. That’s fantastic. As far as this decision making piece on here, obviously there’s a lot of companies that are, quite honestly, very struggling. I’ve heard from many who’ve told me, “Hey, Danny, listen, we’re really just, honestly, we’re a little paralyzed. We don’t know what the right course of action is across many things from an operation standpoint, from a sales standpoint, from a marketing standpoint. Like, what do we do? Because things are changing so quickly and we have… we don’t have anywhere remotely near all the information.” How have you guys been able to sort of manage that? Is there, I don’t know, is there a certain process that you go through? Say, hey, we don’t have all the information and this all could do a complete 180 tomorrow. How have you been able to navigate that?

David:

Well, I look at it at two different levels. There’s the tactical level, the day to day execution of the business and then the strategic level. Looking at the tactical level, I got here in ’14, became the president in May of ’15. We’re twice the size that we are today that we were in 2015. And we’re very high-tenured employees. I have a gentleman who works for us. He’s worked for us for 52 years.

Danny:

Wow.

David:

He’s a manager. Does an awesome job. I can’t imagine him not being part of the company. But, we have 53 people who have been here for 40 years. And so, we have a very high-tenured workforce. But, we also have– 50% of my folks have been here four years or less. And, we’ve, historically, everybody just knew how to do their job and, as we’ve transitioned and grown, there’s less and less of that. And so, encouraging our frontline leaders to make the decisions that they need to make to execute their responsibilities on a daily basis is instrumental in making sure that they’re, they feel safe and comfortable with making the decisions. So, people are going to make mistakes. And, as long as we don’t hurt someone, we can recover from that and move forward. But, it’s much better to encourage our frontline leaders to be making those decisions on a daily basis, particularly in light of… if we have a situation and someone in a key role can’t come to work because they’ve been exposed to COVID or they have COVID themselves, then those decisions can’t come from my desk. They’ve got to come from the people that’s closest to those impact areas and move forward. And so, encouraging people to make decisions at the lowest level on tactical issues is instrumental. On a strategic level, where do we, what do we need to do and we recognize that the business is changing.

Right now, this year, retail distribution has historically been a huge part of the business. But, e-commerce has dwarfed retail distribution this year and being able to pivot from that one focus to another focus at the strategic level is instrumental for us and that’s just a matter of us getting together at the, my direct reports, having conversations, staying engaged. We have, we’ve done a lot of work to make sure that while we protect ourselves from the– If I get sick, we already know who’s going to take my place and making sure that that individual and I spend as little time together face to face as possible, but that we engage, we continue the conversations is critical. And so, we’re doing a lot of those types of things to make sure that we can continue to move forward. But it’s really the two issues. Let’s make sure we take advantage of the opportunities that are available to us today at the tactical level, but let’s make sure that we that we stay plugged in on where business is going to take us over the long term, and then we put the resources in place to be successful over those longer term periods.

Danny:

Yeah, absolutely. So, kind of transitioning and to kind of pivot a little bit, well, let’s talk about pivoting. Let’s talk about those opportunities. You mentioned that that was a big thing you’ve learned to say, hey, look, to be aware of what those opportunities are and then be able to take action on them. What are those opportunities, and you’ve kind of mentioned a few of them here. What are those opportunities that you see that obviously are in the short term and then, but certainly, in the long term, relative to this whole COVID thing?

David:

Yeah, I think– People have always been the challenge, right? There’s still the challenge. It just has taken a different form this year because in the past, if you go back six months, unemployment in Jonesboro was below 3%. Well, unemployment in Jonesboro is not 3% today. You have, that doesn’t mean that having, getting the right resources, the right people in place is any easier. It’s just a different methodology or different issues that are challenging us to have the right people. And that applies internally and it applies to our customers and recognizing that, what do we need to do to support them? And so, if we understand that it might be difficult for us to provide field service by putting somebody in a plane and flying them to one of our end user sites to do maintenance on a piece of equipment, what technology exists for us to be able to provide that same level of support, protect our employees, but also make sure that our customers are able to have the functionality that, the uptime that they need.

And so, that’s one of the challenges. Internally, how can we continue to increase our productivity, our efficiencies, in this environment? When you think about, we don’t want one area having someone with COVID wandering into a different part of the facility. We have 700,000 square feet, so how do we protect folks? We have a health clinic that does an excellent job for us in terms of medical staff to make sure that we stay on the front edge of any possible issue that we might have and that we’ve been very fortunate. We’ve had a few people that have been diagnosed with COVID. All of them have been minor. We haven’t had anybody hospitalized. And I attribute that to the fact that we recognized the challenge early on. 100% masks in the facility, temperature checks, limiting people’s going to the cafeteria, a lot of those types of things. And so, just staying ahead of it, I think, is the opportunity for us.

Danny:

So, and pardon me if you’ve already answered this, but you mentioned you have a 700,000 square foot facility that’s in Jonesboro. Do you have other locations, or you’re in, it’s all in Jonesboro?

David:

Well, we’re all in Jonesboro right now. We have our tech center, which is about a half a mile down the road that we bring customers in that has about 90% of our product in demonstration configurations, so that we can run product for them and they can see what our products are. We do R and D down there as well and then the facility we have here. But, everything is located in Jonesboro.

Danny:

Gotcha, okay. So let’s look at maybe some of the industry challenges and maybe those industry opportunities that are out there right now. What are you- what are you seeing? What do you think, if you could take your crystal ball out and forecast, where do you see things going?

David:

Well, we’ve talked a little bit about people, so that’s going to be ongoing. The other side is technology. Technology is advancing at an incredible pace right now and making sure that we stay relevant by understanding what technology offers us and how do we plug that into our indoor equipment. So, for example, we have a significant R and D program to continue to take noise out of our equipment. Noise is one of the challenges that everybody faces. We’ve partnered with the University of Arkansas and Arkansas State. Both have programs that are underway, working with us to try to figure out is there different materials that we can use, are there, to eliminate noise? Are there other materials that we can use to buffer that noise? And so, that’s just one example of where we’re applying technology. How do we go faster using less energy and more reliability? How do we predict when we have… if we have a motor that starts to draw increased amperage or heats up where it’s vibrating, that we capture that data and make sure that we recognize that we probably have a problem coming up with that particular motor and we’re in a position to change it on our schedule and our customer’s schedule, as opposed to it failing in the middle of a run and them not being able to, they’re loop having downtime.

So, taking advantage of technology as we insert it into our equipment, looking at technology that we can use to make our products better or move into a different area, and then, also, technology inside our facility. I have to be of two minds. I look at, when I think of technology, how do we employ it in our products, but also how do we employ it in our production facility? So we have a huge robotic cell, seven robots that are building products for us that used to take 18 people. It’s very heavy, and so we did it for safety, but we also did it for productivity, not because we want to reduce people. We actually had to hire 200 people more to do other things in the facility that complements what the robots are doing.

Danny:

Absolutely.

David:

Robots grow our workforce, not reduce our workforce. And, it also created opportunities. Some of our highest paid employees are those that are robot, that are involved in the robot cell to make sure that we’re attracting the best talent possible in that area. But, we have to look at leveraging technology in our production processes as well.

Danny:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that technology definitely is a huge thing and that’s going to continue to be the story for years to come. It was a big story before, but now it’s even… it’s even more, so. Well, David, I really appreciate it and enjoyed our conversation, learning a little bit about you and about Hytrol. For those who would like to learn more about you, what’s the best way to learn more about Hytrol?

David:

My marketing team does a great job of putting us out in the public’s eye. Come to our website. We only sell through our distribution network, so, but you can come to the website, you can find an integration partner that we work with that fills, meets your needs. If you need some additional help, reach, give us a call. We love hosting people in Jonesboro to see our facility, but the website will connect you to us and then we will be able to connect you to the right folks from there.

Danny:

Excellent. Well, David, thank you so much for your time today and thanks for coming on the IndustrialSage Executive Series.

David:

Thank you very much. I appreciate the invitation.

Danny:

All right. I enjoyed it. Well, there you go, wrapping up today’s Executive Series with David Peacock from the Hytrol Conveyor Company. You can go check them out if you have any information, like to learn more about them. And, this is, this wraps today’s episode. Be sure to subscribe if you haven’t. You can go to industrialsage.com and subscribe to get the Executive Series sent to you and other content that we have around sales and marketing. We’ve got news and a lot of other things there, so if you have not subscribed, go ahead and do that today. If you are tuning in or watching us on social media, hey, jump in the conversation, add a comment, ask a question, and we’d love to hear from you. So, that’s it. I’m wrapping up today. Thank you so much for watching and I’ll be back next week with another episode on IndustrialSage.

 

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