The talk about great service from Bolt on old Bentz sleepers is all fine and good but has anyone actually seen an aftermarket sleeper built by Bolt? To be an aftermarket sleeper manufacturer, a company actually has to build them, does it not?
Understand that Bolt is not the successor organization to Bentz Transport Products, Inc. Bentz was liquidated, not by choice, not by plan, and not by an orderly transition to some other entity. Bentz was liquidated because the market for its products collapsed. The company ended up owing more money than it could pay and the bank forced them out of business. The people and assets of that now defunct company scattered in several directions.
Don Bentz had a connection to the company. So did Richard Bentz. Both are now associated not with a successor company but with different companies that have a hand in or want to have a hand in the aftermarket sleeper business.
It's great that expediters have found in Don Bentz and Bolt a service provider for the old Bentz sleepers, but no expediter on earth can buy new Bentz sleeper because the company that used to make them is liquidated. No one can buy a new Bolt sleeper either because none have been built. (At least none that I know of, open to correction here).
Jeff Jones was a leading dealer in Bentz sleepers when Bentz was in business. A true believer in the Bentz integrated sleeper concept, Jones personally purchased the molds when Bentz was liquidated. The molds, as they are informally called, are what gave Bentz sleepers their unique roof line and integrated connection to the truck cab.
I visited with Jones several weeks ago about his plans. He has an informal "handshake" agreement with Don Bentz to build a sleeper using these molds. but to date, nothing has been produced. At the time of our visit, Jones planned to roll one truck out in a few months to show.
It will be big news when that truck comes into being, but let's be clear. At present, there is no such thing as a Bolt sleeper, and until one is built, no one will know what kind of product it will be. The market remains soft and the customer money may simply not be there to support super sleepers like it did in days gone by.
With Bentz and now Double Eagle now officially out of business and others producing few sleepers if any at all, the economics of the aftermarket sleeper industry remain challenging at the very least.
There will be no surge of business shifting to the still-standing sleeper companies because market leaders Bentz and Double Eagle failed. Those companies failed because people stopped buying new aftermarket sleepers. There will be no new flow of customers going to competitors because when these companies closed, they had no new-business customers.
That is the market Jones, Don Bentz and competing companies face today. And that is why if we see any Jones/Bolt trucks built in future, if we see them built only a few at a time, if not one at a time.
The White Glove owner operators and fleet owners drive this market. I don't know any that are chomping at the bit to buy $250,000 trucks these days.
