MANSFIELD ─ You might have driven past Eagle Mark 4 on Ashland Road and seen the yard trucks lining up at the site, but you didn’t think twice.
Those trucks are widely used in Amazon or Tyson Foods distribution centers, with a significant increase in online shopping amid the COVID-19 pandemic. And Eagle Mark 4 is solely a yard truck dealership that also provides parts sale, rental and refurbishment services.
Mike Howell, the company’s service department head, said traditionally, a semi-truck driver has to get out of the cab, cranking dollies and disconnect a trailer from the vehicle. It might take 10 to 15 minutes to detach the trailer and connect with another one.
With a yard truck, Howell said, the same process only takes seconds.
“The driver never has to exit the vehicle, so he can make hundreds of trailers move in one day,” Howell said. “It is very important to a distribution center.”
After establishing the business in 1977, founder Charles Smith changed the company’s name into Eagle Mark 4 during Desert Storm, according to Howell.
Howell said Smith chose “eagle” because it is patriotic. The “Mark 4” came from the name of a vehicle that the founder was fond of at the time.
The 44-year-old company received a capital and resource boost after acquired by GNCO in 2016, operations manager Mike Tozzi said. GNCO is the parent company of several material handling dealerships operating in Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, California and Nevada.
Eagle Mark 4 started to grow tremendously after the acquisition.
Tozzi said the company’s rental fleet expanded from around 30 to 200 units in the past three years and are renting out all over the country. The dealership’s year-to-date revenue in 2021 has increased 23 percent when compared with 2020, according to the operations manager.
He said the business was fortunate to stay open amid the pandemic when online shopping drove a lot of distribution activity. The demand for yard trucks has brought Eagle Mark 4’s rental business up 116 percent.
“We typically see a seasonal rental that starts to happen towards the end of the year when a lot of people are purchasing online,” Tozzi said. “It’s been running so hot into the start of this year that we didn’t really see that dip that we usually have seen years prior.”
In 2019, Eagle Mark 4 moved its refurbishment division into the historic Bissman Building in downtown Mansfield. Tozzi said the business has been growing to a point where the company starts looking for additional space.
Customers bring old units near the end of life to the company, Tozzi said, the mechanics would evaluate the trucks, stripping them down completely and replace major components.
Tozzi said the program is very appealing to customers who own the trucks and don’t want to worry about the lead time for getting a new one.
“They spend 70 to 75 percent of what a new unit would cost,” Tozzi said. “They’re taking an asset they currently own and essentially getting a like-new unit that comes with the warranties.”
The customers also don’t have to worry about getting the most updated electronics required by the transportation department when refurbishing an old truck, according to Tozzi.
Howell said the oldest yard truck the company has ever worked on was manufactured in the 1970s.
In 2016, Eagle Mark 4 became a dealer of Kalmar Ottawa, a Kansas-based truck manufacturer. Marketing director Sarah Maness said Eagle Mark 4 recently won a Kalmar’s competition aiming to increase the awareness of autism.
The company has partnered with The Silver Lining Group in Mansfield and will host the Autism Awareness Benefit 2021 on July 9, according to Maness. The event takes place at the Deer Ridge Golf Club Banquet and Event Center from 2 to 6 p.m.
Maness said there would be a silent auction for multiple items, including the Cleveland Browns tickets and the Cleveland Cavaliers tickets. More information is available at the event’s website.
