Toyota Industrial Equipment Manufacturing and Toyota Material Handling USA have announced plans to integrate into a single business unit by January 2020. The new company will be called Toyota Material Handling Inc. The announcement was made during a companywide meeting Jan. 9. The business will remain in Columbus, Ind., and report directly to Toyota Material Handling North America. Leading TMH will be president/CEO Jeff Rufener and senior vice president Tony Miller.
“Our goal is to have a stronger, more unified, corporate culture around our material handling business,” said Brett Wood, president and CEO of TMHNA. “As one company we will be more efficient and more responsive to our associates, suppliers, dealers and customers.”
Integrating TMHU and TIEM is the next step in a progression of events and actions that started in 2014 when TMHU completed a three-year relocation of its headquarters from California to Indiana.
“We successfully combined our service parts business in 2017, and as we considered other synergy opportunities, it became clear that a complete consolidation of the companies was our best next step,” said Rufener. “Integrating our teams will improve the flow of information to and from our customers, so we can deliver exactly what they need when they need it.”
The full integration will be complete by January 2020.
About the Author
Michael Roth
Editor
Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.