Engelage Named Great Dane President
This story appears in the Sept. 23 print edition of Transport Topics.
Great Dane Trailers announced that President and CEO Bill Crown has decided to step away from the day-to-day duties of company president, handing that role to Dean Engelage.
Engelage, currently Great Dane’s executive vice president of sales and strategic planning, will take over the president’s position Oct. 1.
Crown will remain CEO.
Great Dane said Engelage’s appointment is part of a “managed executive transition” coordinated by Crown and the rest of Great Dane’s executive management.
“It’s an outstanding company to be a part of, and I’m excited about working with everybody to take it to another level of leadership and, hopefully, have a nice, long run at it,” Engelage told Transport Topics.
Engelage said he’ll lead the day-to-day management of the company while Crown turns his attention to “his other full-time job” as CEO, focusing more on company strategy.
“I’ll be relying on him as a good sounding board as well as in our work on some of the more significant strategic issues,” Engelage said.
“Leading the Great Dane organization has been a rewarding experience,” Crown said in the Sept. 12 announcement. “The Great Dane team has built a great business, and we are well-positioned to go forward from a position of strength. I look forward to working closely with Dean and am confident he will continue to lead the organization to new heights,” he continued.
Engelage, who joined Great Dane in 2011, said his appointment as president does not signal a major change in direction for the company.
“I’ve been an integral part of Great Dane in the leadership role that I’ve had for the last couple years, so there’s no major shift,” he said. “I’ve been a part of setting this path since the beginning.”
Engelage did, however, say that he’ll bring some new initiatives as company president, but he declined to share details.
Great Dane — based in Chicago with additional corporate offices in Savannah, Ga. — builds dry van, refrigerated and flatbed trailers.
Crown became Great Dane’s president after the retirement of Phillip Pines in 2010 and has been company CEO since 1997, when the Pines and Crown families of Chicago acquired Great Dane and merged the company with Pines Trailer Corp. After that acquisition, Great Dane became a subsidiary of CC Industries, an affiliate of Henry Crown & Co.
During Crown’s tenure as president, Great Dane opened a new factory in Statesboro, Ga., for its Everest refrigerated trailers, rebranded its product lines and integrated Johnson Refrigerated Truck Bodies, which Great Dane acquired in 2010, into the company’s retail network.
Engelage, in his current role as executive vice president, has led Great Dane’s sales and aftermarket initiatives — including business development, marketing and information technology — for the past 21/2 years. He also oversees Great Dane subsidiary Johnson Refrigerated Truck Bodies.
“I’ve come to really love the trailer industry,” he said. “I can’t go down the road anymore without looking at trailers, be it ours or our competitors.”
Engelage said the business has become “much more competitive” in the past couple of years. “The competition’s better and we just need to continue to get better,” he said.
He said trailer buyers are focused on the total cost of ownership and are willing to pay a little bit more for a trailer that will deliver greater efficiency and lower warranty costs. Before joining Great Dane, Engelage spent 16 years with parent company CC Industries.
