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time high in 2008. 2009 was a year when everybody suf- fered. Again in 2010, we did a new all time high which, of course, makes me very proud of our product, organiza- tion, and market strategy. I have high expectation for this year. What do you count as the biggest challenge(s) to building, maintaining and growing a sales and service network in the U.S.? We have been very successful with our professional net- work. Scania will always strive to improve the develop- ment including marketing, sales, our service and products. We have worked extensively with this during the last three years, and it is very important not to get comfortable. On the contrary, we will continue to grow and I expect us to achieve several all times highs in the coming years. Please put in perspective for our readers the scope of Scania’s U.S. operations, in terms of: Offices, service facilities, installations (engine numbers or HP). Today, our marine network is covered by four major dis- tributors. Each distributor has a number of dealers to cover the majority of the cost line for North America. We have our main office in San Antonio, TX and our central warehouse in Indiana to be able to support the whole net- work. It is hard to know how many people are involved in the whole network, as our office mainly has direct con- tact with our main distributors and major OEM’s. In addition to this, we have the strength of the 34,000 employees at Scania and about 2,000 engineers at our R & D center In Sweden. When it comes to our new indus- trial network, we work with 13 major distributors and have a total of over 120 service points in North America. Our marine engines cover from 300 up to 850 Hp with the 2 engine versions, 12 liter inline 6 and the 16 liter V8. Specifically, what types of vessels/installations are you targeting in the U.S.? During the years 2007 and 2008, we realized that local references are a necessity in this market. Therefore our main focus was to get as many different applications as possible. We have been very successful with this goal and that has helped us to gain a well earned reputation as a reliable supplier to the marine market. Today, we are in the position to be able to sell to almost any marine appli- cation in this market, and that is also why we market our product in several different nautical publications to reach different user categories. How has the current economic situation affected your maritime business push in the U.S.? We continued working with sales and marketing through- out the financially hard times during 2009 as if nothing had happened. Even in an unstable market, we managed to reach a new all time high in 2010, and that is confir- mation that this decision was the best we could make. We INSIGHTS 10 MN May 2011 Photo: Scania M/V Trisha Kay operating in the Gulf of Mexico is a crew boat with a quadruple installation. The boat is 130 x 35 feet, and is repow- ered with four Scania DI 16 engines rated at 650 hp each.
