Big Fleet Owners Want Suppliers with Service That Stands Talle
Meatballs, deer and insects may sound like lunch gone awry, but they may also bring to mind the logos of some well-known construction equipment suppliers. For years, images of the red-hot Manitowoc meatball, the leaping John Deere and the determined Caterpillar have turned up on countless hard hats and purchase orders, burrowing into the minds of engineers, estimators and superintendents.
But corporate brands are less resilient than they appear and they are constantly changing with the times. One supplier may merge with another, and then its brand image is at the mercy of a new executive regime. Another company may license its trademark overseas, attempting to gain a global reputation. Sometimes, a once-prominent brand, long discontinued, gets lost in the fleeting memories of an older generation of workers. Just think of once-huge, now-extinct names like Allis-Chalmers, Clark Michigan, Hough and Euclid.