JEFF FIELDER Editor
GERING – Phil Holliday, of Gering, is a division partner with Hydrotex, a national manufacturer and distributor of high-performance lubricant and fuel improver solutions. An employee-owned company that’s based out of Dallas, Hydrotex helps customers develop sustainable solutions that are designed to improve system reliability, save energy, limit pollution, extend fixed asset life, reduce maintenance costs, and improve fuel efficiency. Hydrotex has been in business for 85 years. Holliday, a 2000 Gering High School graduate, has been a division partner for Hydrotex for three and a half years. He also serves as president of NTC Logistics, which is also part of the Holliday Family of Companies. Altogether, Holliday has been working for their family-owned businesses for 20 years.
Q: How did Hydrotex get started?
HOLLIDAY: “Initially, Hydrotex started for military purposes. Essential lube was our very first product, and that was designed specifically for the military and their decommissioned vehicles. When a vehicle or a plane or whatever was decommissioned, they would bring it into the shop and drain all of their fluids and then replace the internal fluids with essential lube. It didn’t allow corrosion or rust or water development. So, it sat in its natural state out in the field. Then if a vehicle needed to be re-commissioned, they would bring it in, drain the essential lube, and fill it back full of its original lubricants and fluids and then fire it up and away she went. The other thing the military used it for – specifically in Vietnam – was for the Army guys to put it on their collars. In Vietnam, they apparently had a very bad fly problem, so when they put this on their collars, the flies wanted absolutely nothing to do with that scent. So, it allowed the soldiers to go about their business without being bothered by the massive amount of flies they had.”
Q: How long has Hydrotex been in the Scottsbluff/Gering area?
HOLLIDAY: “In this valley, it goes back to at least the early 70s. Fred Eye was probably the original salesman that most people would know around here. Then after Fred, Mike Warren took over. Mike was a very big-hearted and fun-loving human being. He was great to be around. When Mike passed away, we took over in 2017.”
Q: How did you become interested in taking over Hydrotex in this area?
HOLLIDAY: “When Mike passed away, a couple individuals from the corporate office came up for the funeral. We at the Nebraska Transport Company (the company that existed before Holliday Family of Companies started two years ago) was Mike’s biggest local customer. When Mike passed away, corporate wanted to meet with us, just to ensure us that no matter what happened in the transition, we were still a major focus of theirs and that they wanted to continue to provide us with their valuable product. In those meetings, they asked us if there was anybody that we knew who would be a good fit to take over Hydrotex in this region. In talking with dad [Brent Holliday], we were at the point where we wanted to continue to diversify our business, understanding that LTL was a tough market to be in and that diversification of our business was beneficial for us. I mentioned that we should take over the territory, especially being Mike’s largest customer at the time. It was just a natural fit for what we wanted to do. We already had a great sales team here, so to be able to take on that brand, which was pretty well known in this area, was a great opportunity that we couldn’t pass up.”
Q: Was it an easy transition for you?
HOLLIDAY: “Yes, it was, especially because of the relationship we had built with Mike. Mike has a wonderful legacy because of the person he was. So, that made it exciting to carry on what he built here. I think the personal relationship we had with Mike helped quite a bit. We’ve raced with Mike quite a bit. Mike basically introduced me to racing, and we partnered with Mike in racing for about 10 years between sponsoring his team and getting us on the track. So, this was a very good way to carry on a friend’s legacy.”
Q: What was your vision for Hydrotex when you took over as division partner here?
HOLLIDAY: “Hydrotex has some very good business minds, and it’s a company that’s very eager to grow. That’s what my goal was – to continue to grow. We knew we could grow because of the quality of the Hydrotex products. Once you try a Hydrotex product, the chance of you going back to something else is very, very slim. You see quickly the benefits that it has for your equipment.”
Q: What is your territory?
HOLLIDAY: “My territory is from the Panhandle to about Lexington, and I also have about 75 percent of Wyoming as well as the Black Hills in South Dakota. It’s actually the largest territory in the country for any division partner.”
Q: How are you able to cover such a large territory?
HOLLIDAY: “We have some full-time people in sales, and then we also have what we call Hydrotex associates. So, altogether, there’s 14 of us in this territory.”
Q: How has your Hydrotex business been going since you took over three and a half years ago?
HOLLIDAY: “We’ve seen really good growth the last two years, which includes last year despite 2020 being the tough year is was because of COVID. We actually had one of our largest growth years percentage-wise since we took over.”
Q: What are your goals for this year?
HOLLIDAY: “This year we have very lofty goals. With the success we had last year, I’m very confident that will continue this year. Bringing [Nick Murphy, Hydrotex lubrication consultant] in has been very good for us. He’s very energetic, and he has a very natural ability to connect with customers. So, having him on board and in our warehouse is a tremendous thing for us. Several of our other employees are very energetic and engaged as well. One of my guys in Pine Bluffs, for example, really wants to grow his territory. He wants to get in to the wind farms that you see outside of Pine Bluffs and the mines in Montana as well.”
Q: What are your long-term goals for your division of Hydrotex?
HOLLIDAY: “One of our main goals is just to see continued growth by introducing our product to new people. We also want to introduce our product to people in a way that people haven’t been able to buy it before. We want to be very customer-friendly. We want to make it easy for our customers to buy our products. Also, there’s a couple industries that we really haven’t tapped before. Agriculture is obviously our main target in this area. However, food processing – just because it’s based off of agriculture – is a very large possibility for us. So, we really want to focus on moving our food grade product line further. We also want to help the individual fleets that you see. There’s a lot of guys who operate a single truck or two or three. We really want to help them succeed, too. We understand the cost of running trucks. So, if we can provide those people a product that’s going to lower their bottom line to run while also allowing their equipment to run more efficiently and longer, that’s what we want to do.”
Q: The number of businesses that Hydrotex products appeal to seems pretty far-reaching.
HOLLIDAY: “Oh, absolutely. Even your grandma’s Buick needs motor oil, and we have an oil that’s going to keep that running smoothly for a long, long time. We can also provide products for the biggest farm in western Nebraska – keeping their equipment in pristine condition while minimizing their down time.”
Q: What makes Hydrotex products so good?
HOLLIDAY: “It’s the quality of our products. There is nobody in the market that can touch our products. Our lead chemist is very dedicated to making sure that we not only have the best product on the market but also the safest and cleanest product. The additive package that we add into what we make is second to none. Any other oil out there on the market is going to come from crude. It’s going to come from the Earth. But our products are made by the highest grade medical doc out there. So it hasn’t been burned, and it hasn’t been refined. It is truly a medical-grade based product. Then we build from there. The chemistry behind Hydrotex is truly, truly amazing.”
Q: How long did your family’s company, Nebraska Transport Company, use Hydrotex?
HOLLIDAY: “We started using it around 2005. We used it in our trucks.”
Q: Before NTC started using Hydrotex, were you a little skeptical about using it, perhaps wondering how well it would actually work?
HOLLIDAY: “Mike had approached us several times before we started using it. We were very skeptical at first just because we weren’t very familiar with the brand and we were pretty happy with what we were using. So, we didn’t necessarily see a need to change. But Mike’s persistency was probably the biggest thing. Finally, he convinced us to try it on one of our trucks. We monitored it. We tested it. One of the things that Hydrotex offers is oil and fuel sampling. So, we were able to dive into the internal components of the vehicle and see what’s going on – what types of things are popping up that shouldn’t be there, or is there fuel or antifreeze or anything else in your fuel? We got a very good look inside. So, between the oil sampling and Mike showing us how the program works, we quickly saw that we were able to take an average truck and look at the oil change samplings – we changed oil about every 15,000 miles at that time. Based on how the Hydrotex oil looked, we were able to move oil changes to every 40,000 miles. Then as we continued to sample and add more vehicles on, we eventually took it from 15,000 miles for an oil change to 75,000 miles on our over the road trucks. We found that the life of the oil – with the additives of the oil and the protections of the oil – was so good that we could extend our trucks to 75,000-mile oil changes.”
Q: Were you blown away by that?
HOLLIDAY: “I was very blown away. It saved us millions of dollars. To take it from a 15,000-mile oil change to a 75,000-mile oil change was astonishing.”
Q: So why isn’t everybody using Hydrotex?
HOLLIDAY: “Comfort. Not everybody believes it, even when you do the oil samplings and even when you show them certain results. Some people just have that old-school mindset because their grandfather taught them that you change the oil in your car every 3,000 miles no matter what. Well, today’s technology is a lot different. When you’re putting technology in your lubricants, it makes a difference rather than just pulling it out of the Earth, refining it, and then dumping it into your vehicle. What we’ve found is that once people are finally willing to try the product, it becomes an easy sell. When you approach someone and say, ‘Hey, I want to take your oil changes from 15,000 miles to 75,000 miles or even 30,000, some people say, ‘How is that even possible?’ When people actually see the benefits – like the fuel mileage increase and the wear and tear dropping down – then at that point they’re like, ‘Wow, this really makes a difference.’”
Q: Talk about the wide array of products that Hydrotex offers.
HOLLIDAY: “We base a lot of our focus on diesel. Modern-day diesel is very dirty, crude, dry fuel. So, our fuel improvers clean it and lubricate the injectors and fuel pump. Also, once our improvers get in there, it kind of changes the chemical mixture so it will burn cleaner and more efficiently. We see one to five percent increase on fuel mileage. Also, the injector life on these bigger diesels is doubled if not tripled. There’s many other products that Hydrotex offers, too. It’s basically broken down into three broad areas – oil, fuel improvers, and grease. There’s many products available within each of those areas. For example, with oil, we have hydraulic fluid, engine oil, transmission fluid, gear oil. With the fuel improvers, they improve either diesel or gasoline. Then with the greases, there’s about 30 different greases to choose from.”
Q: What is Hydrotex’s top-selling product?
HOLLIDAY: “Our number one seller is Power Kleen. It is a fuel improver for diesel.”
Q: Talk about the showroom that you set up recently in the warehouse at Holliday Family of Companies’ business location in Gering.
HOLLIDAY: “We set up the showroom in January. We wanted to create a space where our customers could come in and get education about the products that we offer and the benefits to their operations. We also wanted to allow our customers to see and feel the products. When you feel our grease, you quickly see the difference of our grease compared to anything else on the market. In addition, we wanted to allow our customers to come in and purchase the quantities that they truly need. The corporate model is selling bulk. That works well for large operations, and that’s a great business model. However, there’s some operations that don’t need 36 tubes of grease at one time. They only need one, two or three. You might even have an individual who has a lawnmower and wants to stabilize their fuel over winter, so he needs to come in and buy just a pint of essential lube. So, we want to offer quantities that our customers need. We want to be customer-friendly with our products.”
Q: Any changes or additions coming up that you want to talk about?
HOLLIDAY: “We don’t have any changes coming up. We just want to continue to strengthen the brand of Hydrotex – make even more people aware of it. The one thing that I think has been on a lot of people’s mind with Hydrotex is it’s not for your everyday user. Well, we want your everyday car driver to know that Hydrotex is absolutely a product for you. And if you’re thinking about putting quality oil in to improve the longevity of your vehicle, we’re absolutely your answer. We really want to push the idea that we are truly here for everybody.”
Q: What are some of the companies in the Panhandle that use Hydrotex products?
HOLLIDAY: “The Shell station runs our power clean supreme, so it has some of the best diesel in town. Western Sugar and Kelly Bean use our grease. Also, the Scottsbluff police and fire departments and Valley Ambulance use our products – like oil, fuel improvers and grease.”
Q: So if an individual would like to use Hydrotex oil for their personal vehicle, how do they get the oil?
HOLLIDAY: “They could call us or even stop in here. We’d be happy to tell you exactly how we can transition your vehicle to Hydrotex. It’s pretty simple. People would really benefit from using Hydrotex for their oil changes because of instead of changing your oil every 3,000 to 5,000 miles for a general, everyday use car, you could change your oil once every 12,000 miles. On my personal vehicle, I’ll run it 12,000 to 15,000 miles before I change the oil because I’m using Hydrotex. That can save you a lot of money on oil changes over the time that you own the vehicle, and it will also save you time because you won’t have to schedule as many appointments to change your oil.”
Q: Talk about Hydrotex’s commitment to not only growing as a business but also to helping to improve the community.
HOLLIDAY: “That’s just what we do here at the Holliday Family of Companies. One of our biggest goals is to reinvest in our community. The community has been so fantastic to us over the 40-plus years that we’ve been in business. There’s two main things that we keep in mind with everything we do here. First and foremost is we try to bring glory to God as Holliday Family of Companies. The second thing we do is invest in our employees and the community. We understand that this is where we work, live and enjoy recreational activities. This is where our kids plays sports and participate in other activities. So, the more we can invest in our community and make this the best place we can make it to live, that’s truly what we want to do. Without our community, we don’t exist. So, it’s very important to us to give back.”
Q: How important has it been for Holliday Family of Companies to donate 10 percent of its profits to organizations in the community.
HOLLIDAY: “We call it tithing. Ten percent of our profits automatically go to tithing. We feel like if we can donate to different organizations and different things throughout the community, that’s what we want to do. We’re talking about groups like Pup Packs and Cat Packs, Festival of Hope, WyoBraska Gives, and Golden Halo Foundation. Those are the things we want to invest in. Those are groups that help people in our community. A lot of people think that because this is a small community, we don’t have the needs of a place like Denver or Seattle or LA. But because of our size, we have limited resources, so we may actually have a larger need here than some of those massive communities. So, if we can reach out and help provide food for hungry kids or help 100-plus non-profits by giving to WyoBraska Gives, that’s what we want to do.”
Q: How much is Hydrotex concerned about being eco friendly?
HOLLIDAY: “It’s a huge concern of ours. Our lead chemist has lost two immediate family members to cancer. It’s very personal to him. It’s heavy on his heart. So, everything we create is non-carcinogenic. It’s eco-friendly. That’s the benefit of not making your product base off of crude oil. That’s why we make our product base off of a high grade medical base doc. Everything we do is clean. We’re truly the cleanest product on the market.”
Q: Any sales or promotions going on now or coming up that you would like to talk about?
HOLLIDAY: “We have our product of the month sales, which offers customers 10 percent off those products.”
Q: Is there anything else you would like to add?
HOLLIDAY: “Again, it doesn’t matter if you have one car that you drive every day or a fleet of 500 pieces of equipment, we’re here for you.”
To learn more about Hydrotex products, you may contact the Gering office at 308-635-8162. Appointments may also be set up to learn about specific Hydrotex products in the showroom in Gering at 2860 Holliday Park Drive. You may also check out their website at hydrotexoil.com. Customers may order products online 24/7, and free shipping and delivery is available on all orders.
