Shawn Edmondson – Natchez Trace Electric Power Association
“You know it’s the Apocalypse when you’re trying to buy a new vehicle and you can’t get anyone at the car dealership to return your call,” jokes Shawn Edmondson, General Manager of Natchez Trace Electric Power Association in Houston, Mississippi.
When the local auto dealership Natchez Trace EPA had relied on for years to supply its truck fleet failed to return his calls, Edmondson had his first realization the COVID-19 pandemic had impacted the nation’s supply chain. On a regular cycle of replacing one fleet truck each spring and one each fall, Edmondson says that when it was time to replace a truck in the fall of 2020, he found himself getting the runaround.
“The dealership we usually work with was saying ‘yeah, we’ll get that going for you,’ and then just stopped taking our calls when we tried to follow up. We were kind of in panic mode because we called several dealerships close to us and nobody could give us any answers on when, or even if, anything would be available,” Edmondson says. It was, he notes, the first time in his 25-year career at Natchez Trace he had experienced something like that.
TVPPA, however, had a solution.
“I was attending our North Mississippi Public Power Association manager meetings in Tupelo where TVPPA announced they were working with one of the auto manufacturers to free up some manufacturing slots for the four-wheel-drive work trucks that we use in our industry. So, I put our name on the list.”
Soon, Edmondson says, TVPPA got back in touch with the name of a dealership in Nashville that had exactly the trucks he needed. “I got in touch and the dealership was so easy to work with thanks to the groundwork TVPPA had done. We handled everything over the phone and by email.”
Natchez Trace EPA bought three half-ton four-wheel-drive pickup trucks during a season of supply chain turmoil. “Three of our employees flew to Nashville to receive the trucks. The auto dealer sent someone to the airport to pick them up and bring them to the dealership. Our guys got the trucks and were on their way. They made it back to Houston by quitting time,” he adds.
Edmondson goes on to highlight how important access to a program like TVPPA’s vehicle purchasing program can be to small local power companies like Natchez Trace. “We’re small. We aren’t buying a lot of vehicles at one time,” he says adding that the utility has never utilized a fleet program before, although he points out, “TVPPA’s fleet discount can save LPCs a considerable amount of money on a truck; if you’re not using that, you’re leaving money on the table.”
Prior to the pandemic and the extraordinary disruption it created in the global supply chain, Natchez Trace EPA never had issues finding vehicles or other needed materials. During the pandemic, however, Edmondson says that he felt like he was trapped on an island, with no way off. Thankfully, he says, “TVPPA came through at a critical juncture, not only in our industry, but in our country. They helped us work around the supply chain issues that every industry seemed to be having at that moment.”
Noting that supply chain issues persist in many channels critical to this industry, Edmondson suggests that whatever the challenge, LPCs reach out to TVPPA. “If you’re having trouble filling needs through your standard practices, reach out to TVPPA. Even if they don’t have a particular program that addresses what you want, they have a ton of contacts they can put you in contact with. The TVPPA network is irreplaceable.”