Editorial: Lessons Learned

By Light & Medium Truck

Lessons Learned

A recession can be a hard teacher, but the lessons learned may stay with you for a long time.

Our parents who lived through the Great Depression learned some lessons that stayed with them throughout their lives. We “boomers” saw it growing up. Be frugal. Don’t waste. Save your pennies.

Simple, common-sense practices, but that doesn’t mean our generation always followed them. Do you think the housing collapse, one of the primary drivers of this reces-sion, would have occurred if banks and mortgage lenders, “leaders” of our generation, had followed sound lending practices?

Some other bedrock beliefs our parents brought with them out of the Depression have been left in the wake of fast-moving social and cultural changes. Back then, the only acceptable private debt was a mortgage, and that eventually was paid off.

Who today has ever been to a mortgage burning party?

What have business people learned from this recession?

John Price, president of Alliance Truck & Equipment LLC, an equipment distributor/upfitter in Springfield, Va., said that after 30 years in business he thought he had all the on-the-job training the could absorb, but the recession pro-vided new learning opportunities.

“The reason was not that I had not paid attention to my teachers and learned my lessons,” Price said. “I had many good ones over the years.

“It was that the course to prepare me for this downturn was never offered to people in my generation of business.

It has never been this bad for so long.”

Price said he also found that he, his customers and his suppliers talked more. There was more cooperation, and working out arrangements kept them moving along.

“Salvation wasn’t coming from the government or big banks. It came from each other,” Price said.

Robert Fines, chief executive officer with manufacturing firm Truck Bodies & Equipment International Inc., Lake Crystal, Minn., the parent firm of several body companies, said he learned the importance of being honest with himself and his employees.

“You’ve got to deal with reality as it is, not as you want it to be. Deal with it, and deal with it swiftly. Everybody [was] affected by this. Everybody takes [layoffs and cutbacks] personally, as they should, but everybody needs to know the reasons. Communicate the reality.”

Jeffrey Messer, president of Messer Truck Equipment Co., Westbrook, Maine, said he learned that good times hide problems that have to be handled when times are hard. <

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