In-Sink: Ever Better

Sink

By Dean Sink, President
In December 2013, at our company Holiday party, we celebrated the end of another great Mickey year. We gave away several awards for years of service, safety, quality and production.

And then, collectively, we asked the obvious question: How do we follow that performance in 2014, our 110^th anniversary year? The answer was this: Let?s make 2014 OUR BEST YEAR EVER. This coming off one of our strongest 12-month spans in company history.

As if ?repeating? isn?t tough enough; it hasn?t been done in baseball in 14 years or in football in 10 years. Even the Big 3 in Miami couldn?t keep it going like LeBron had thought when he joined the Heat in 2010 and quickly promised ?Not 1, not 2, not 3, not 4, not 5 …? championships.

But we are Mickey ? and we don?t care what history says. We do things THE MICKEY WAY. So we tore down all of our departmental and business unit walls and came together as one big TEAM ? one for all and all for one. We said let?s do the best work we can every single day, and when we are done doing OUR jobs, let?s look around and see where else we can help our teammates. (In my opinion, LeBron?s problem was that he ran up against a team ? the San Antonio Spurs ? and a team will always beat a bunch of superstars.)

On the strength of that team spirit, we overcame every obstacle we faced ? including ice storms and heat waves ? and we built more truck bodies and trailers in 2014 then ever before. We set records for Recon and Parts sales. We?re just getting started in the oil & gas industry and already we?re building the best data trailers in the business. We did things to enhance our van and vending bodies every day. We reinvented our sideloaders to make them even more user-friendly and versatile. We developed breakthrough new products and features ? like the E-Lock, which you can read about in this issue of The Spirit. July was the best single production month in the 110-year history of the company. So here we are, already in Q4, and 2014 will, in fact, be our BEST YEAR EVER.

For me, the most rewarding part of this banner year was watching how such a diverse work force with unique individual skills and ideas came together as a single, unified team. We had contributions from our Baby Boomers, our Generation X and Y employees, and our Millennials. Our veterans learned from our new employees and our new employees inspired our veterans. We challenged each other to find new and better ways to do things. We kept raising the bar and leaping over it.

And again, the big question is out there: How do we top this next year? We?ll announce some team and company goals for 2015 as we get closer to the end of this year, but I can tell you now ? we are going to get even better. And while we have always said the Mickey objective is to get better, not necessarily bigger, in 2015 we are also going to get bigger. I guess if you keep getting better, you?re naturally going to get bigger.

We are going to buy or build in Houston, TX in 2015 to take our oil & gas business to a new level. Houston is the mecca of the oil & gas industry and if you are serious about that business, you need to be in Houston. We are serious about the oil & gas business; we will be in Houston.

In the last 2 years we hired 150 new employees. We brought in some excellent talent. We?re going to hire more talent next year. So for the time being, when we think about the future, we?re not thinking about numbers. We?re thinking about this: GETTING EVEN BETTER! That?s nothing new. That?s always been The Mickey Way.