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The pathway to rapid growth for one Indiana trailer fabricator

3 small steps for long-term financial, cultural, and manufacturing success

metal trailer fabricator

In a very short amount of time, Liberty Trailers has taken steps to grow the business not just in revenue, but from a square footage and employee standpoint, while cultivating a culture where change isn’t the enemy. Here’s what the company did. Images provided

Mike Teso didn’t plan on purchasing Fillmore, Ind.-based Liberty Trailers on the brink of a global pandemic, but that’s exactly what happened. The industry vet didn’t panic, and he didn’t shield himself or his company from what unknowns the pandemic might bring. Instead, he got to work learning the trailer business; he surrounded himself with people with experience in the industry; and he listened to his production team, analyzing how their strengths could best be used to promote growth.

The company, which was founded in 1998 by Kurt Clearwaters, designs, manufactures, and sells utility trailers, car haulers, equipment haulers, tilt trailers, dump trailers, and flatbed trailers in a variety of sizes to a network of dealers throughout the U.S. and Canada. At its peak, Liberty Trailers had 23 employees and pulled in $6 million in revenue.

The company was in a good place when Teso took over as president/CEO, but that didn’t stop him from looking for areas to improve and expand.

“I’ve been in manufacturing my entire career but had no trailer manufacturing experience. In any manufacturing business, what remains constant is focusing on your product, your process, and most importantly, your people,” Teso explained.

In a nutshell, the product might vary, but once you have an understanding of the process and the people who are executing that process, you can begin to understand the ebb and flow of the operation. Teso is big on people. He understands that a company’s most important asset are the people doing the work.

Today the company has 61 employees and will pull in a little more than $20 million in revenue by year’s end. They are ready to take the next step in growth, which, Teso said, requires integrating an automated welding cell to help streamline the manufacturing process of two trailer models.

In a very short amount of time, Liberty Trailers has taken steps to grow the business not just in revenue, but from a square footage and employee standpoint, while cultivating a culture where change isn’t the enemy. Here’s what the company did.

1. Lean on Your People

When Teso took over the company, one of his main focal points was to look for areas that needed a little personnel boost. As someone who was not from the trailer world, it was important to find someone who was.

“I wanted to find the best of the best. We were lucky in that some of the folks who wanted to join Liberty were industry veterans, one of those being Randall McMinn, our vice president of sales. He’s become a really key member of our organization, and he joined us because he wanted to come into a smaller company where he could use and leverage his experience in the trailer world to help propel our growth.”

The bolstered sales initiatives that McMinn implemented, along with his connections in the industry, helped propel Liberty’s revenue from where it started to what it is today. More trailers sold meant more production. They could continue doing things the way they had been doing them—all manual GMAW—or look for ways to become more efficient.

metal trailer fabricator

In a very short amount of time, Liberty Trailers has taken steps to grow the business not just in revenue, but from a square footage and employee standpoint, all while cultivating a culture where change isn’t the enemy.

Teso, tapping into his deep knowledge of advanced manufacturing technologies, started to look into ways an automated welding cell could help meet the demand without displacing employees. This wasn’t about addressing a welder shortage; instead, it was about growth, efficiency, and complementing the skill set of existing staff. The result, Teso hoped, would help usher in new jobs as a result of the company’s overall expansion plan.

The answer to whether or not the company should explore robotic welding rested, in part at least, with its production welders. Teso took a look at the expertise and past experiences of his welders and found that four welders had a background in robotic welding.

“From that standpoint, it made the decision to explore robotic welding so much easier because of their previous experience. Just the idea of sending these guys in for programming training and knowing that they already have somewhat of an understanding of the fundamentals means there would be less of a learning curve than if they were to go into it blind,” Teso said.

Another driver in favor of integrating robotic welding was the company’s team of engineers, many of whom had experience designing parts with robotics in mind.

“Our engineering group can handle a lot of the internal tooling buildouts that are required to make a robot venture successful, so that was a huge factor,” Teso explained.

The final drivers were the obvious ones: efficiency and output. If Liberty could automate the assembly of its two most popular trailer models—the car hauler and the utility trailer—not only would that free up the production welders to do other things, but it could also open up the possibility of adding staff.

“Putting these units on the robot would allow us to produce enough to be able to bring in a second shift to process them,” Teso explained.

2. Have a Plan; Ask for Help

Teso turned to the Indiana Economic Development Corp. (IEDC), an organization established in early 2005 to replace the former Department of Commerce. The IEDC focuses its efforts on growing and retaining businesses in Indiana and attracting new business to the state and offers programs and initiatives to provide business support and expertise to companies that are investing and creating jobs in Indiana.

Teso put a plan together to apply for the IEDC’s Manufacturing Readiness Grant. These grants were first launched in 2020 to help Indiana businesses make technology-based capital investments that would help modernize the state’s manufacturing sector.

“The application process was detailed in the sense that you had to have a very structured business plan together before they’d even consider you as a viable candidate for this grant,” Teso explained.

metal trailer fabricator

Mike Teso, who purchased Liberty Trailers in February 2020, is big on people. He understands that his best resources are the employees, like Welding Operations Manager Justin Strange, who are doing the work.

In other words, you can’t ask for money for a piece of technology, like a robotic welding cell, without first laying out what the plan is and what role this piece of equipment will play.

The company has a shell building, which is essentially a pole barn with a gravel floor where it stores axles, tires, and lumber. The plan is to convert that into usable manufacturing space by adding internal siding, electricity, and a concrete floor. Once complete, it will be used to house the robot as well as a research and development center.

“From there, we're going to build an additional outdoor storage building where we can move the lumber, tires, and axles that we need to bring into our final assembly line to finish the trailers out,” Teso said. “That's the investment that Liberty will have to make.”Teso and Liberty applied for the grant in May of 2021.

“After developing a plan and including it with the application, the process was fairly simple. We shared the total investment necessary to achieve what we are looking to achieve, and then we provided a statement arguing why this would be beneficial and how many new jobs this would create. From there we sat through a series of interviews where the committee dove deeper into the details of our plan,” Teso said.

The IEDC alerted Liberty in late summer that its grant application was approved, awarding the company $100,000 to use toward equipment.

3. Develop a Culture Where Change Is Good

A lot has changed at Liberty in a short amount of time, and it will continue to change as the company completes the building renovations, gets the robotic welding cell up and running, puts staff in place to operate the robot, and implements new work procedures with automation in mind.

That much change in such a short window can be fairly disruptive to a small company, but Teso said weathering it successfully comes down to the company’s culture.

“I’ve tried to develop a culture of change where everyone feels like it’s OK to look for new and better ways of doing things. I think what helped was that this wasn’t some sort of dictatorial decision. It was very much a team decision. The team felt that this was best for the company given the vast amount of experience many of our team members have. Their input on this was crucial.”

There’s still a lot to do. Once the company decides on a robotic welding cell, it will begin prepping staff for the equipment’s arrival.

metal trailer fabricator

While Teso didn’t have much trailer experience, he did have plenty of manufacturing experience. What he lacked in knowledge he made up for in hiring people familiar with the industry and leaning on the existing workforce who knew the ins and outs of the manufacturing process.

“We want to weed out any potential problems ahead of time. The biggest thing is getting the material tolerances correct.”Teso added all the material that will be fed to the robot will be cut to length with very tight tolerances. The material will undergo a quality check as it comes through the door, and if any of it falls outside of that 1/16 in., Liberty will reject it. The company also is building its own fixture system that will compress the material to avoid problems with fit-up.

It also will change production processes slightly for the car hauler and utility trailer models.

“Typically, we have two people on the fixture welding and one person on what we call top side. With this robotic welding cell, we’ll need two people unloading a finished trailer and reloading the fixture with material. Then we’ll need a production welder trained in programming to do any kind of final touchups or tacking material on the fixture itself before the robot begins its process.”

Teso said the robot will facilitate the hiring of 30 staff and the addition of a second shift.

“Everyone’s excited, and that includes the production welders. We are evolving our welding processes, and everyone is excited to learn something different.”

metal trailer fabricator

The company applied for and was awarded a Manufacturing Readiness grant from the Indiana Economic Development Corp. to use toward technology—in Liberty’s case, a robotic welding cell.

About the Author
FMA Communications Inc.

Amanda Carlson

2135 Point Blvd

Elgin, IL 60123

815-227-8260

Amanda Carlson was named as the editor for The WELDER in January 2017. She is responsible for coordinating and writing or editing all of the magazine’s editorial content. Before joining The WELDER, Amanda was a news editor for two years, coordinating and editing all product and industry news items for several publications and thefabricator.com.