How TRAXERO’s GPS cameras were a game changer for HDM Towing & Truck Center.

Listen to the conversation between our Director of Market Engagement, Shelli Hawkins and Owner of HDM Towing & Truck Center, Michelle Sukow, about Michelle’s positive experience with our GPS cameras and what prompted her to make the decision to invest in the technology for her towing business.

This clip can also be heard in Episode 10 of our TRAXERO On-The-Go podcast.

Shelli Hawkins:

You recently entered into the TRAXERO family. Talk a little bit about what was your first thing that you adopted in TRAXERO? The most recent installation, let me go wink wink, installation, right?

Michelle Sukow:

Yes. I just posted about that. We’re installing cameras with the BudgetGPS system into our trucks as we speak, and we’ve been using them on a couple trucks. So that is the first implementation that I have into the TRAXERO family. And I absolutely love it, not just for the GPS function of it, because we also use HAAS Alert, which is a huge lifesaving tool that we use. Yes. As soon as I saw that, immediately I knew I wanted to protect my guys every which way possible. I will do whatever I have to do to keep them safe on the road. So we did that. But I love the cameras in the trucks so that it can see anything that is going on in front of the trucks. If something happens in traffic, we have that visual proof of what had happened. It keeps my guys safe, it keeps my equipment safer. So we’re really excited about that.

Shelli Hawkins:

And I remember our conversation at Indiana because I love how you run the business, you’ve talked about it, but we talk about being profitable as a business. One thing that we really focus on here at TRAXERO is maximizing the profitability of the business. Just because you’re dispatching a gigantic amount of calls and you’re super busy all the time, does not equal profitability. That being said, how often are you analyzing the business for profitability and what does that look like for you, month, quarter, week?

Michelle Sukow:

Yeah, so I’ll let you in on a little secret that saved my sanity. In the beginning I looked at every day. I knew exactly how much I had to make every single day in order to break even. I still know that today, but I don’t look at it every day. I eventually learned to just focus on the weeks and let them balance each other out. And now I honestly only really look at them monthly. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m comfortable, I know where things are at, and I make my decisions monthly now instead of weekly. And it keeps things more calm. It’s not like this… Towing is a huge roller coaster. You’re going to have busy days, you’re going to have slow days. You’re going to have too many employees, you’re going to have not enough employees. You’re going to be in your right mind, you’re not going to be in your right mind. It’s definitely an up and down twist and turn industry to be in. But yet at the same token, we have control over certain things to lessen that. And for me, this was one of them. I go over it monthly and me and my GM go over the things every month and I make my decisions based on that. It helps everybody in the company as well, because I’m not freaking out every week.

Shelli Hawkins:

Yeah, I love that. That is, again, great advice for those folks out there. That being said, it took you a while to get to this point. When you first started the business and invested heavily into all the equipment that you needed, in that stage you certainly were managing the business differently than you are today. So I love where you are 23 years later and able to just really know and feel how the business is running and how it’s going. So that’s great.

Michelle Sukow:

Honestly, towing is a tough industry. There’s no way around it. It is definitely hard to be in, but it also is a great joy. It gives you the most satisfaction and you’re very proud of helping people every single day. Those three good things outweigh the one really hard thing of the towing industry. So I am super excited to be right where I am today. It was a lot of hard work. It’s still hard work, but I can control it because I’ve learned along the way what things to stress about, what things to let go and who do I have on my team and what type of equipment do I have and what kind of partnerships I have with the different vendors in this industry.

And I will say, when I was looking at these cameras, and one of my employees says to me, “But Michelle, you can get it here at the store just down the road for much cheaper.” And I’m like, “Okay, first of all, one, it’s not much cheaper. And two, they do not support our industry.” Whenever I do anything, I first go to the vendors that support our industry. So it was a no-brainer for me to go to TRAXERO and say, “Hey, I need cameras. I want to support you because you support us.” It was never a question. I didn’t go, “Oh, I need to go look at this person or check with this person.” You guys are a huge support to our industry. So first I want to say thank you for that, and then thank you so much for the great service and the great product, and I will be sharing that as much as I possibly can.