Tiemann Group: Tradition and Innovation Hand in Hand - Insights from Christoph Huber and Caspar Plump

VisionTransport: Mr. Huber, as Chairman of the Management Board of MAN Germany, you are well known to us. At the beginning of January, you moved to the Tiemann Group here in Bremen. What prompted you to take this rather unusual step?

Christoph Huber: Well, the role as such, meaning the responsibility for almost 6,000 employees in a company with a turnover of four and a half billion, I have indeed relinquished. But I have remained – and that was very important to me – within the MAN family.

Because the brand and the people who work there have grown very dear to me over the past eight years. And as a MAN partner, Tiemann is also part of the family. The company greatly impressed me during my time as MAN Sales Director as a very strong and customer-oriented company. It has represented MAN here in the north incredibly loyally for 90 years.

Additionally, I got to know Caspar Plump and his uncle very well during my time at MAN. So, I knew what I was getting into. Moreover, this supposedly much smaller company is a very large family enterprise, and it was precisely the familial character that attracted me. Here, I can act even more entrepreneurially than in my time as a corporate executive.

Another motive for me was returning to my homeland, the north. Since the Tiemann Group is represented at seventeen locations in the Elbe-Weser triangle, I can live in Hamburg again.

You both lead the company as Chief Operating Officers together with Dr. Dirk Plump, the managing partner. Is there a division of tasks within the company, who does what, who drives where?

Huber: We want to continue growing here. This naturally brings additional tasks with it. With the acquisition of the MAN branch in Lüneburg and our new construction in Rosengarten, we have grown to well over 500 employees in the Tiemann Group. This requires corresponding operational attention, which we share.

But we are a team and work closely together. We exchange ideas daily and discuss strategies together. Caspar Plump has developed many things successfully in recent years, and Dirk Plump can contribute his experience as a senior, who has shaped and accompanied this company over the last 40 years. He is an important support for us in the background and always there when we need him. But he also lets us act freely.

Caspar Plump: That’s the balance you need to find in such a company. On one side, the experience of the older generation and on the other, the young ones who want to make changes.

Huber: I have also been in commercial vehicle sales for 30 years. So, Caspar is the youngest in the team. But that is a good combination. We are essentially three generations, and it is good to be set up in this diversity.

Without diversity, it would be impossible for a company like Tiemann to operate nowadays?

Huber: We couldn’t grow any other way. Fortunately, more and more young women are coming to us for apprenticeships as mechanics – they are very motivated and also very respected by their colleagues.

Plump: We couldn't meet the demand with just male colleagues. Additionally, the tasks change from year to year. There is always something new and interesting. On one hand, we have the topic of e-mobility with all the new fields of activity. Moreover, we are doing more and more with computers and becoming increasingly digital.

Agricultural technology is at the forefront here, incredibly digital and five to ten years ahead of commercial vehicles. We now have multiple mechanics per location who used to work in the workshop and now sit at the computer and support customers remotely. This makes the profession incredibly interesting for women in the future.

You are particularly proud of the label family-run. What do you associate with it, how is it implemented or lived in the company?

Plump: We are an old, traditional company. Next year, the Tiemann Group will celebrate its 120th anniversary. We have been a partner of MAN for 90 years. This shows you how very important long-term supply relationships are to us.

This consistency gives all parties involved – customers, employees, partners – a great deal of security. This is particularly important in today’s time when there are so many changes. Additionally, a family business has a different, more personal contact with its customers than an investor-driven company or a large corporation.

Mr. Huber, you have moved from the conglomerate to the family business. How do you perceive the differences?

Huber: Here at Tiemann, we are bold, determined, and quick: short decision paths, quick actions, sometimes trying something out, testing an idea. It's fun and very different from a corporate structure. There are committees that need to be involved, decision loops, and approval loops. Otherwise, it doesn't work in a corporation.

Within the commercial vehicle business – are there specific focuses at Tiemann, or do you generally do everything?

Plump: Our various locations naturally have different focuses. For example, we have developed the Bremen location as a competency center for transporters. Another location is equipped as a competency center for e-mobility, although all locations must gradually be converted.

One of our overall focuses is certainly market cultivation. With a market share of 30 to 35 percent for new truck registrations in the region, we are above the average in Germany. This naturally requires a high level of customer satisfaction. For this, accessibility is important.

We are available around the clock and offer emergency services – these are things where we can differentiate ourselves. But because we manage our own MAN region here, we naturally have to be able to cover all services. This applies to both sales and service.

What services do you cover specifically for MAN as a service partner?

Huber: We sell everything, from trucks to transporters to buses. For this, we have specially trained salespeople who are then responsible for optimal customer care and market cultivation in their area. And of course, we have the entire service portfolio at our disposal. This ranges from financing to maintenance contracts to our service offerings.

Depending on the location, we offer different opening hours and different specializations in certain vehicle types. Our rental department, Tiemann Rent, also works closely with MAN TopUsed at the Hamburg location.

Even if it looks different at first glance – in the modern workshop, classic wrenching is long gone. Remote digital customer support is becoming increasingly important. | Picture: C. Harttmann

How important is a partner like Tiemann for a company like MAN?

Huber: A corporation cannot do everything itself. Especially with regional services on-site, it quickly reaches its limits. It's good to have partners on-site who can bring even more flexibility at the local level.

That's why MAN has 210 independent service partners who get up every day to keep things running. In Germany, probably even worldwide, the Tiemann Group is the largest of these partners. For 90 years, it has exclusively represented MAN in an entire region. With this loyalty, like other partners, it is a very important support, both as a brand ambassador and as a contact for customers.

So the key strength of the local partner is that it is more agile and faster?

Huber: Yes, I would say so. This doesn't mean to discredit the corporation. Quite the opposite. MAN has a wonderful and strong own organization with its own operations and salespeople who also act very flexibly and customer-oriented.

Our advantage at Tiemann is that every salesperson, when on-site with the customer, can pick up the phone and directly call Caspar or me. And we can then decide quickly and flexibly.

Plump: In a family business, the approval loops are simply faster. That's the reason we can exist at all. On the other hand, we don't have the scale effects of a large corporation. So we have to think more sustainably, be faster, and somehow do everything a bit better.

But we at Tiemann have a special status due to our history. We are very closely connected with MAN. We work in the same systems on a common platform. I am on the board of the MAN Advisory Board of Service Partners and Contract Brokers e.V., where we are making the MAN external organization future-proof. The integration goes very far here as well.

Christoph Huber (left) and Caspar Plump (right) in front of the company headquarters in Bremen with one of the few showrooms where a truck can also fit. | Image: C. Harttmann

One question that is increasingly coming to the forefront is CO2 emissions. Are you noticing this now at Tiemann as well? Are the expectations, the ideas of your customers changing?

Huber: All customers are interested in it. Everyone needs advice on electromobility. It is a topic in every sales conversation. We are also very proud that we secured one of the largest electric truck orders for MAN.

This has spread in our region and gives us a certain knowledge and consulting advantage. And this then leads to more conversations with other customers at various points. So, the topic of e-mobility is very present with our customers. Everyone wants to try it out in some way. But there are also many obstacles. Entrepreneurs are uncertain how to integrate the electric truck into their fleet. They wonder whether it is as productive and economical as a combustion engine.

And yes, electric works, but the charging infrastructure is difficult. Here, politics is called upon. They need to provide parking spaces with charging infrastructure and promote the acquisition of vehicles. Then we can also deliver more electric trucks.

Tiemann presents itself as a modern, innovative company. On your website, you talk about Tievolution. What is that all about, Mr. Plump?

Plump: Tievolution is the overarching term for our company-wide corporate strategy. In 2020 and 2021, we initiated it. The occasion was that we perceived a lot of changes in the market in the wake of the Corona pandemic.

We therefore asked ourselves where we stand and whether we are well positioned for the future. It quickly became clear to us that we will always need agriculture and that transport will always exist. But there are quite a few challenges for the future in both areas that we need to address.

One is, of course, sustainability. Greta was still very, very active at the time, and it was clear to us that this was not just a trend but something that would occupy us in the long term. We wanted to do justice to this for ethical reasons, but above all with an eye on cost developments. CO2 pricing was already an issue back then.

Another important topic is digitalization. I already hinted earlier that agricultural technology is at the forefront here. Digitalization in service is also relevant for all other commercial vehicles. On the one hand, it offers potential for internal process optimization. On the other hand, we want to provide customers with new tools to become even more profitable.

We therefore formed an internal project team that began with the analysis and definition of measures. We came up with over 100 projects to prepare us for the future. It's not about a small photovoltaic system, but about further developing ourselves in the interests of our customers and becoming even more powerful.

From these 100 projects, we then formed clusters to make the strategy more tangible externally. This resulted in the three pillars of sustainability, digitalization, and growth, which we subsequently named Tievolution. The term is a combination of Tiemann and Evolution. It is about the further development of the existing.