Work Truck helps dealers grow commercial vehicle sales

Work Truck Solutions targets an auto retailing niche: helping dealers better manage their commercial inventory and connect with buyers. That focus fills a market void, leaving industry insiders such as Dan Bryan eternally grateful.

Bryan, a customer and general manager of specialty auto retailer Ricart to Business, explained that dealer-centric software companies typically overlook the space in which his company operates.

"I sat through an AI demo earlier that was so focused on the retail side, the commercial side wasn't even brought up," Bryan said. "The commercial side is behind the retail [technology] business in some aspects."

Kathryn Schifferle is the founder of Work Truck Solutions, a software company launched in 2011 in Chico, Calif. It employs roughly 80 people and has raised a little over $12 million in venture capital funding to date from investors including Autotech Ventures, WomensVC Fund and Golden Seeds, among others.

Schifferle stepped down as CEO in late 2022; she was succeeded by Aaron Johnson, an early Work Truck adviser. She remains as "chief vision officer," a new position for the company that focuses her time on priorities including business development and strategy.

As a private company, Work Truck does not disclose detailed finances but produced its first profitable year in 2022 in the "double-digit" millions range, Schifferle said. The company works with 1,300 dealers and counting, primarily franchised light- and medium-duty commercial vehicle dealers. Independent dealers are "a small but growing group" of Work Truck's customer roster, she added.

Basil Family Dealerships, a Work Truck customer in western New York, is working to develop a better online presence for their increasingly important sales of big trucks and vans to commercial clients.

The company told Automotive News in 2022 that the group sells about 1,000 vehicles each year for commercial use, including dump trucks, dry freight trucks and cutaway vans. Basil also maintains a commercial website separate from its passenger vehicle business, featuring inventory along with a page to custom order vehicles by vehicle type.

"We kind of spread the wealth around and help everybody in all facets of the commercial business," Bill O'Brocta, commercial fleet sales director for the group, said at the time.

Ricart of Groveport, Ohio, is five-year Work Truck customer, and Bryan said the technology has added considerable efficiency to his company's commercial vehicle purchasing process.

"It provides very, very good transparency to what it is that they need," Bryan said. "You answer a lot of questions up front when you put everything out there on the website [regarding] the detail of the vehicle."

An unconventional path led Schifferle to the commercial vehicle industry. After the serial entrepreneur finished stints in video publishing, strategic marketing and software/hardware for cable television, she became executive director of the National Ford Truck Club — a professional organization serving the B2B work truck sales force at U.S. Ford dealerships. Schifferle helped build the organization and published the quarterly FordPros magazine that went out to those dealerships. Through her work, she learned about the challenges work truck customers faced in finding vehicles to buy, which led to Work Truck Solutions' launch.

"I fell in love with the industry, and that's what got me excited about fixing this problem," Schifferle told Automotive News in January during the NADA Show in Dallas.

"You may need a dump truck. You may need a vehicle called a service truck that has drawers and [also] need a crane. All of that information was missing from anywhere in [a commercial dealer's] database and anywhere online."

Schifferle noticed that selling commercial trucks and vans for construction, plumbing and other specialized commercial uses didn't keep close track of those vehicles on the lot. Other than photos of the vehicles on a website, potential customers often couldn't find make, model or other details.

Work Truck attempted to address this issue with an initial plug-in for dealer websites that lets a commercial vehicle customer see a tab for "commercial" or "work truck" during their vehicle searches, which show all the vehicles they need by use case type. Additional tools help dealers manage tasks including inventory and pricing, with services such as digitization of both photos and modifications of customized commercial vehicles for sale on dealer databases.

The company also provides digital marketing tools designed to save time during the sales process, as well as market and product data, according to its website.

In addition, Work Truck displays dealers' commercial inventory on Comvoy.com, its national marketplace, OEM sites and upfitters' sites.

Work Truck is essentially a unicorn in the auto industry, according to Jim Press, a Work Truck adviser and industry legend whose previous positions include COO of Toyota Motor North America and deputy CEO of Chrysler after it merged with Fiat.

"Virtually all of the technology available in the retail business to the customer side is not applicable to the commercial. It's not suitable for business to business," Press told Automotive News. "[Schifferle's] interest is to help the dealers, the upfitters and the OEMs all succeed in becoming more efficient, customer focused and increase both their business and their profit."

Work Truck is unique, he said, because its software and services fill that void by linking its commercial vehicle dealer customers with upfitters who customize those vehicles and the OEMs/manufacturers, and "[Schifferle] knits them together" to promote greater communication and sales.

Schifferle said the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath has been a boon for Work Truck, with dealers recognizing growth opportunities with commercial vehicle sales because they became so essential.

"During COVID the only vehicles that were driving around were all the vocational commercial vehicles," Schifferle said. "They were allowed to do business because they were critical to the country. It is a recession-proof space."

Just as important, helping dealers take better care of their commercial vehicle customers can help grow the retail auto side of the business, Press said.

"The people that drive these [commercial] vehicles in their fleet, they come back and buy them, firstly, for their family," Press said. "It's a wonderful part of the business to … unlock."