Meet the NATM Dealer Committee Members: A Conversation with Phil Rauch

NATM Dealer Affiliate Committee- Interview with Phil Rauch 

In July 2024, NATM staff members Andrea Boetticher and Izabella Chesney began a new series of interviews to learn more about the members of the 2024-2025 NATM Dealer Committee. We are excited to be continuing this exciting series of giving you an inside view of who represents our Dealer Affiliates. We got the opportunity to speak with Phil Rauch who is based in Missouri and owns Sancrest Trailer & Transportation.  

Tell us a little bit about you. What’s your story?  

I grew up 5th generation in Billings, Missouri on a dairy farm. I grew up basically working nonstop on a farm, thinking all I would ever do was be a dairy farmer. When I got out of high school I continued working on the farm and added in a part-time job working at a welding shop doing fabrication, where I put in about 40-50 hours a week. I’d wake up, milk the cows, work all day at the welding shop, then come home and milk the cows all weekend.  

Fast forward to 2004, I turned 21 and my uncle had a car dealership he needed some help with. I moved cars around for him for a few months, but I ended up buying my own truck there. From that, I started my trucking company, which is Sancast Specialized Transport, which is still active today. We’re running about 17 semis nationwide moving vehicles. That is how I ended up in trailer dealerships. In 2007, I teamed up with a company called Sun County Trailers out of Phoenix, Arizona. There were a little small startup company, just building a couple of trailers, but they had a design I liked for hauling some of the bigger stuff we had like limousines, buses, and service trucks. I had them custom build three trailers to get a bulk discount, they made me a dealer, and that was that. I worked with them and helped them develop more trailers and became their first dealer.  

That was just a side gig I had for a few years until fall of 2016. I reached out to my late friend Richard Lowry who owned Trailer Trendz. He mentored me a bit as I tried to build out that business. I teamed up with Load Trail and my rep there Ruben Wall to really get started. In 2017, I hired my first sales guy and went from having 17 trailers on the lot to today having 700-800 trailers across three stores. I am so grateful for both Ruben and Richard and would not have been able to do it without their help.   

That’s how we got started. But I have a phenomenal team of salesman, and we have had zero turnover on the sales team. All the members that work for me now are the same ones that have been there since the beginning, and I’ve hired along the way. And we just keep growing.  

We have gone beyond just trucking and trailer sales now, with a large self-storage facility, and now with a new product driven business called Tuff Wireless, we manufacture wireless controllers and supply many of the OEM trailer manufacturers.   

Service-Focused  

We sell services. On the trucking side, all we had to sell was a service, it was a service-based deal, you are not selling a product. When we moved into trailer sales, that was one thing I pushed hard was to sell our service, not just our product. We try to sell that overall customer experience. We try to be honest and treat everybody the same, whether they’re buying a $2,000 utility trailer or buying a $115,000 semi car hauler. This focus on providing excellent customer service has led to a lot of repeat customers. There’s nothing better than when somebody comes back to buy another trailer from us. 

But our next big focus for the business is to expand our parts and service departments. I think that if we’re going to take care of a customer, then we need to be able to provide them with everything on the backside as well, not just the sale. If a customer experiences an issue, I want to be able to resolve it for them at my shop.  

What motivates you? What do you find most rewarding about what you do? 

I am very grateful to be able to do what I do. In the past with our trucking, I just worked with a lot of large corporations, hauling prototype vehicles for big companies like Ford and Chrysler, but it wasn’t as rewarding because we couldn’t be as involved in the community. Part of having my own business is being able to give back to the community, and that is very important to me. We are involved with a lot of different nonprofit organizations, we work with a lot of charities, especially anything having to do with kids and with agriculture. We support and participate in events with the local 4H and the Future Farmers of America groups here in that area. We also teamed up with a local organization called the Hope Foundation that helped families that had pediatric emergencies. We donated trailers so they could take them to events, and we raised money for them for 3-4 years.  

But the most rewarding part of what I do is being able to see what we have built and out of all of that, it's really the fact that we have been able to create jobs for others in my community and knowing that my team

 likes coming to work every day and being here.  We have put together such a strong team of people who believe in our mission. 

I could not have done all of this without my wife Kindra. She is not only the mother to our 3 boys but also plays a large role in the business as well.  Along with the businesses we also run a good size cattle operation and participate in tractor pulls with Pro Pulling League. 

We are excited to see all the great things Phil Rauch will be doing on the committee! We are also looking forward to sharing more insights with our members and dealer affiliates on who is representing our dealer affiliates and assisting in growing the Dealer Affiliate Benefit Program. Keep an eye out for our next conversation with one of our Dealer Committee Members!