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22 | I NSIGH T • J a n u a r y 2 0 15 w w w . i n s i g h t o n b u s i n e s s . c o m ONLINE: CLICK to hear Anika Conger-Capelle talk about how the company geared up for growth. Material Handling U.S.A. — leaving Conger off the hook for financial liability. Servicing and maintaining trucks accounts for about 45 percent of Conger's business; sales, about 20 percent; parts sales, another 20 percent; and rentals, 15 percent. e market for forklis didn't suffer as much as many other industries in the Great Recession, Anika explains. e food packaging industry, medical device industry and other consumables continued to thrive — and they all rely on fork trucks. Some industries, such as paper, slowed and unused equipment did not require servicing. But with very little debt and more emphasis than ever on Toyota lean principles, Conger was able to tighten its belt and carry on, with no layoffs or wage freezes. At the Green Bay headquarters, inefficiencies became evident. Conger was cramped. e company was renting space at a nearby warehouse to store trucks. Fork trucks were parked end-to-end in rows, and whenever they needed to retrieve a truck at the front end, it could waste an hour's time to move all the other trucks out of the way. What's more, the office space was sorely outdated. Winkka, who has worked at Conger for 39 years, recalls the gloomy dark paneling and the noise created as people click- clacked down the worn tile floors in the halls. e silver lining of the recession, of course, was that for financially stable companies it was a good time to build. "We were in a perfect position to be able to take the loans and expand," Anika says. "Interest rates were low, building materials were low, people were looking for work so their rates were low." e company hired Bayland Buildings, Green Bay, to add a 33,000-square-foot parts and service department, completed in 2011. DeLeers Construction, Inc., De Pere, renovated the interior of the existing 28,000-square-foot building. With that, Anika says, "We were poised and ready to go" for new clients. Conger brought in four new salespeople, who brought new energy. Anika, who since assuming the leadership role had deferred to the more senior managers on the team, was champing at the bit for more action. Sales had been humming at about 5 percent growth each year. And then, perhaps this is an understatement: Opportunities knocked. Boom time for the business S oon, they landed a contract to lease and service about 30 trucks for Waukesha-based Spancrete, a manufacturer of precast concrete products. ey began servicing fork trucks for Pacon, an Appleton-based paper products company; for a food packaging company in Wausau, plus another dozen or so small- to mid-sized clients. But the biggest prize? In 2012 Conger won a request for proposal to lease and service the entire fleet of fork trucks for Oshkosh Corp., about 130 trucks in every division of the company, including Pierce Manufacturing in Neenah, McNeilus concrete mixers in Minnesota and JLG liing and access equipment company in Pennsylvania. "Conger is our main forkli provider for the entire corporation globally," says Terrance Roloff, materials area manager for Oshkosh Corp. "eir level of service is much higher than I would have expected entering the relationship. It's much more of a partnership we have with them. Toyota is known for its Toyota Production Systems; TPS is the most lean and efficient manufacturing system in the world, so Coming full circle Gary Conger likes to wax nostalgic. He recalled his father, company founder Lloyd Conger, started with three Toyota forklifts, and in 1998, he set out to locate them. He kept the serial numbers handy and asked everyone to keep an eye out for them. His daughter, Anika, was at that time dating someone whose company, a metal fabricator, happened to have an old, well-worn Toyota forklift in use. One evening when the three of them were out to dinner together, the subject came up. "My boyfriend said, 'We have a really junky Toyota at work, maybe it's one of those.' And I said, 'Don't be talking about a Toyota truck that way, like it's junk!' "My dad gave him the three serial numbers he was looking for. … He came back and he said, 'Yeah, that's the truck.'" They bought it back, had it painted, buffed and restored to its original appearance. It's now on display in the company's conference room. Oh, and the fellow who brought the truck to their attention? That would be Derrick Capelle, who Anika Conger married in 1999. Three years ago Capelle began working as the grounds and maintenance supervisor at the company. The couple have a 12-year-old daughter, Anna. Heavy Lifting c o n t i n u e d