Industry News/Regulations,Maintenance,Misc,Brakes/Wheel-End Products,Remanufacturing
Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week: It’s always great kicking off the new year by meeting with customers and colleagues, and talking about the ways we can all work together to grow both the collective aftermarket and individual businesses. Between the new product announcements, one-on-one conversations, seminars, and other discussions, HDAW is always a busy, informative, and valuable time.
So what did the Bendix team bring home from HDAW? Let’s talk takeaways:
The Rise of Reman
Remanufactured components continue to occupy a significant portion of the aftermarket landscape and can provide new opportunities for distributors to reach customers they haven’t reached before. There’s a story to be told of value and quality, and the importance of looking beyond the lowest price points.
One prominent example is Bendix’s own remanufactured air disc brake caliper: One of several displayed and discussed at HDAW, it reflects the solidification of air disc brakes in the marketplace and provides our customers a high-quality alternative in the expanding air disc market.
Original Equipment vs. Offshore
Reman calipers also bring into sharp focus some definite contrasts between offerings from established genuine OE suppliers and offshore providers.
In addition to the reman will-fitters, it seems there’s a continued influence from new offshore components that compete with genuine reman. More than ever, it’s important that distributors and end-users alike understand where their parts are coming from and how the supplier handles process and quality. Ultimately, consumers in our market need to ask questions to be sure they are getting the part they want – because “new” doesn’t always equal “better” than remanufactured.
The fleets at HDAW resoundingly agreed that for them, uptime is the most valuable asset, and that’s really what makes a fleet money. They can’t afford to risk unplanned maintenance, and the cost of one failed part more than offsets what they may save in a lower component price.
Change Is Coming – but Help Is on the Way
HDAW 2019 was all about the technology and innovation that is on its way. Products, vehicle systems, and how we communicate with each other … it’s all beginning to show signs of increasing evolution. Therefore, our distributor partners, as well as our fleets need more from us. They need support resources to be better positioned and available almost instantly. They need a way to communicate information that is consistent and reliable. They need training to keep them up on the latest and greatest technologies so they stay ahead of the game. This hits home for us at Bendix as we continue to drive projects that will support these needs – whether its support of the industry’s data standards efforts, enabling improvements in eCommerce, or continuing to deliver the industry’s best training platforms.
In the end, this industry is one where the key players buy from people. And the fact that we come together as a group every year, and make the investment to meet face-to-face to talk about opportunities ahead is evidence that the human element is still very important.
At Bendix, we’ll be unpacking everything from this year’s HDAW for a good while yet, working to refresh our own operations, and making updates to our aftermarket programs to give our distributors what they need to flourish on the road ahead.
Bendix Blog
Technical and industry insight from OUR experts.
