UTA 2020 Virtual Convention – Featured Speakers

Chris Kuehl is a frequent commentator for local and national media, a conference speaker, author for various trade publications and is a founding partner of Armada Corporate Intelligence. Founded in 2000 Armada is a thank tank and strategy office. Armada provides economic forecasts, industry analysis, corporate intelligence and market assessment for clients in a variety of industries. Mr. Kuehl gives on average 150 presentations a year in the U.S. and internationally on economic issues.

Steve Tam, a VP for ACT Research leads the used truck market research and analysis efforts for this organization. ACT Research is a recognized leader in data, market analysis and forecasting for the commercial vehicle industry. ACT’s services are used by all major North American truck, trailer and drive-line manufacturers, industry suppliers’ banks and investment firms.

Chris Visser is a leading go-to source for commercial truck market intelligence. Chris became directly involved in the truck industry in 1998 when he took over management of the ATD/NADA Official Commercial Truck Guide. Over the past two decades, the Commercial Truck Guide has grown and evolved with the times to offer not just current values of used trucks, but also expanded market analysis and forward-looking residual values. In his career, Chris has experienced multiple used truck boom-and-bust cycles, and has a solid understanding of the fundamentals that drive the used truck market. Chris is a 22-year member of the UTA.

Josh Giles is Principle Analyst at Black Book where he co-manages the Automotive Analytics Department. He has spent time over the past 15 years evaluating, valuating, and residual forecasting, both cars and trucks for both the US and Canadian markets. 11 of those years were spent evaluating and valuating medium and heavy-duty units alongside UTA Board Advisor and 2019 Marvin F. Gordon Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Charles Cathey. Josh has been a member of the UTA since 2008 and is a member of the UTA Young Members Group.

Doug Shields has been directly involved in the commercial truck sales industry for over twenty years. During that time he has worked in new and used sales for Volvo, Mack, International and most recently, Peterbilt dealerships. Currently Doug is the National Director of Used Truck Operations.

Doug’s duties consist of consulting and advising for Rush’s truck sales, marketing and legal departments as well as learning and development. In addition he is the go to sales trainer for Rush Truck Centers and the results have been phenomenal. So effective is Doug’s training that Rush’s Insurance, Leasing Division and Service and Part department have sought him out.

Since COVID, Doug transformed his two day sales training intensive into a monthly, hour per day, virtual sales training using Microsoft Teams and PowerPoint as the medium.