Healdsburg heavy truck dealer expands to Santa Rosa

HEALDSBURG – Opperman & Son, an independent dealer of heavy-duty used trucks and new equipment trailers, is expanding its reach with a new sales lot in Santa Rosa.

The company leased a 1.3-acre former Sundowner trailer dealership lot fronting Highway 101 in south Santa Rosa. It opened Oct. 1.

“Companies north of Santa Rosa and in the wine industry know us,” General Manager Zach Baurer said. “We hope the Santa Rosa location will raise the awareness that we carry a full line of vehicles.”

Almost three-quarters of company sales are for tanker trucks and trailers in the Americas, according to Mr. Baurer. Two large markets are to the local wine business just before harvest and local contractors as the spring and summer building season approaches.

Officials with the 44-year-old, family-owned company said they want to diversify sales with medium-duty vehicles and light-equipment trailers. Growth of Internet marketplaces for used trucks in the past several years widened Opperman’s sales beyond Healdsburg.

Freeway visibility of an assortment of medium-duty trucks plus the trailers and a few heavy-duty fuel trucks is intended to expose more companies in the county to the types of vehicles Opperman can obtain and customize.

The 45-employee company has a repair shop, welding department and recently expanded parts store.

It’s a buyer’s market for big vehicles because of several colliding factors,

which are bad news and good news for used commercial truck dealers such as Opperman. The economic downturn

plus a steep rise in fuel prices early this year cut into transportation and logis-

tics budgets. The availability of credit and capital has been significantly challenged in the past couple of months, and faltering companies are trimming their fleets.

The average size of a truck fleet in foreclosure recently was 45 vehicles, compared with an average of 20 vehicles in previous years, market analyst David Broughton of Avondale Partners told a gathering of the Used Truck Association early this month.

Also, while the California Air Resources Board puts final touches on tough new standards for diesel engine emissions, many companies with on-road and off-road fleets are waiting until subsidies or grants are available for retrofitting or replacing less efficient engines. The result is that some trucks that are but a few years old may have to be sold outside the state or even the country in the next few years.

At the same time, the fluctuations in oil prices are opening up demand for tanker trucks in the Midwest oil fields and those of southern Africa, where trucks rather than pipelines remain the main way oil or fuel moves from source to refinery to railheads or ports for shipment.

Rapid construction in South America, Africa and the Middle East could also continue to be a hot market for Opperman’s trucks.

Opperman is aggressively looking to expand international sales.

For more information, call 707-433-4421 or visit www.opper

mansales.com.