When Bruce Purkey, then a regional service engineer for a subsidiary of General Motors, landed an account with J.B. Hunt, there wasn't a suitable distributor for the starters, alternators and batteries the transportation company had ordered.
So, in 1990, he quit his job, moved to Arkansas and became that distributor himself.
The company he started -- Purkeys -- has become an industry expert in a quiet but necessary niche in the heavy-duty trucking world: electrical charging systems. As his son Justin, the current CEO, said, "We make systems that make electrical systems more efficient."
As to why it's a relatively under-the-radar niche, Justin Purkey said, "The industry just thought going through lots of batteries was the cost of doing business.
"We can help them manage that so that at the end of the day they spend a lot less by making good decisions early on. I always say fleets have a whole truck to worry about. Electricity for us is everything, but for them, it's a very small part of it," he said. "The other thing is, you can see tires, oil and headlights. You can't see electricity. And today that's still one of the toughest parts of the vehicle for technicians to troubleshoot."
Nearly 27 years ago, Bruce Purkey, his wife, Veronica, and their three children moved to Arkansas to open what has always been a family company. His 19-year-old daughter Robyn worked with him from day one. His wife put in some time as well, and his two other children worked summers in high school.
Since then, the company has grown and shifted its identity dramatically, but it has remained a family operation.
Justin Purkey swore he would never come back to the family business, but after a career in software implementation consulting on the East Coast, in 2010 he accepted his father's offer to take the helm of the Lowell company.
The company has more than tripled its revenue since then, from $4.6 million to $14 million and grown from 12 employees to more than 60.
From the beginning, Bruce Purkey has always solved problems for his growing list of clients like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and American Freightways, problems beyond just delivering batteries, alternators and starters.
Drawing on a mostly self-taught engineering background and familiarity with the industry, Bruce Purkey was able to do things like build a product to alert the driver when he hasn't set a parking brake and create a split battery system that would allow drivers to have some electricity in their cabs for "creature comforts" without running the engine.
Back then, Bruce Purkey and his daughter Robyn Wassman, who is now executive director of finance and administration, built and assembled systems for J.B. Hunt. His other daughter, India, designed the label, and within years, the product became an industry standard that nearly all manufacturers build into their trucks.
"Bruce probably knows more about electrical systems on a vehicle than anybody that I know," said Bob Ralston, former executive vice president for equipment and properties at J.B. Hunt. "He knows a lot. He helped our fleet a lot. He is very innovative and is widely respected in the industry."
As Bruce Purkey put it, "When we first started working with them, J.B. Hunt had 3,000 trucks. Now they have over 11,000, and today they use one-fourth of the starters they did before."
"They're all great companies in their own right," Bruce Purkey said of his customers. "All we did was try to make the electrical system on their truck work better and be more efficient, so that they were more reliable and electrical would not be a problem for the fleet."
"Someone once said Bruce Purkey has made a career of doing what the original equipment manufacturers should have done," Justin Purkey said.
Another product they developed was a way to keep trucks' lift gates properly charged.
"Long story short, now we work with all the lift-gate manufacturers," Justin Purkey said.
Purkeys also sells inverters to provide charging docks for drivers in berths powered by the truck battery, which feature a timer or voltage control to ensure the truck will still start. They make solar charging products and auxiliary power systems to keep the lights on in a trailer. Bruce Purkey has more than 10 patents and counting in his name.
"We didn't provide products, we provided fixes," Justin Purkey said. "We never said, 'Look at this new product we're going to take to market.' J.B. Hunt had a problem? We fixed it."
Justin Purkey has leveraged his business experience and his business degree to help Purkeys organize and establish efficient procedures and systems. When he arrived, inventory was still tracked on a white board.
"I suffer from shiny object syndrome," Bruce Purkey explained. "I'm not sure I really like to sell stuff, I just like to fix stuff."
The business administration was left up to Wassman, who learned everything as she went, beginning as a teenager. "I was just constantly putting out fires all the time. I didn't have a moment to step back and think about things," she said.
"When we got Wal-Mart's business, I thought we were going to go out of business," Bruce Purkey recalled. "You buy products a month ahead of time, you sell them, and then you wait a month to get your money. Those were tremendous hits we took." He and Wassman went without pay several times in order to keep the rest of their employees paid.
More than a year ago, signifying a big shift in company identity, Purkeys stopped distributing to focus on its own products.
To Justin Purkey, it was simple: "Margins. We lost a third of our business when we stopped distributing, but that third of volume didn't make any money. It was just legacy business we did because we thought we had to. But when we really looked at the numbers it didn't make any sense. We add value because we develop solutions. You can buy batteries at any dealer or any distributor."
Bruce Purkey said it was a difficult decision to accept. "When he showed me the numbers, my wallet said, 'You're absolutely right.' My heart said, 'But, that's what we do.'"
After leading the company through the adjustment, Justin Purkey said the changes "allowed our team to focus on our own products. How do we make our own products? How do we make our own products better and not get distracted by other people's products? It has really been successful because it's allowing our team to focus on what we do best.
"Purkeys wasn't really a company," he said. "It was Bruce Purkey, and he had this company that helped Bruce Purkey. And I think it's fantastic that he built this. But if there's going to be any legacy, any longevity, we needed to make sure it's not Bruce, it's Purkeys. We need to make sure without Bruce, we do have a Purkeys."
Purkeys does not have a "true competitor," Justin Purkey said. "For a very long time I could say there were none because we were so small that we really flew under the radar."
He said a few companies have started doing similar things, but Purkeys remains the "recognized industry expert in electrical systems for heavy-duty vehicles."
As to the future of this business, he responded: "Purkeys adds value. It adds value to the industry, to our customers, to our employees, to our families. If we're not adding value, there's no sense in being here. So as long as we continue to add value, we will continue to exist."
SundayMonday Business on 01/01/2017