Josh Acree
Name: Josh Acree
Title: Branch Manager
Tenure: 10 Years
Tenure: 10 Years
That’s a lesson that Josh Acree, the Branch Manager for the Provo branch of Hose and Rubber Supply, learned at a very young age.
Acree was a senior in high school when he first started working with his father at Hose and Rubber Supply in Salt Lake City.
“I started part time in the warehouse, just receiving mostly - putting parts away,” Acree stated. “And then I worked summer through my college years, including one year that I sat out of college. And then I’ve been back with the company full time since 2013 and I’ve been here the last 10 years.”
Acree has, for all intents and purposes, grown up inside of Hose and Rubber Supply.
Acree served as the Warehouse Manager in Salt Lake City when he came to work for them full time in 2013. He did that for six years and then, in 2019, he assisted the company in exploring the world of government business. He navigated that world for the better part of four years and then, in October of 2022, he became the Branch Manager for the Provo, Utah branch.
Acree said a big component of the Branch Manager’s job is making sure that orders that come into the shop, whether from the field or from the counter, get processed in an efficient and timely manner; backing up Hose and Rubber’s mission statement, which is to identify and satisfy customer needs profitably.
But Acree believes that the biggest part of his job isn’t just to make sure that the customers are happy and taken care of; it’s to ensure the same for his employees.
“For me, personally, one of the biggest things that I try to focus on is to make it as easy as possible for all of the guys that work in the shop to do their jobs efficiently,” he said. “I view myself as someone whose responsibility is to remove as many obstacles standing in the way of them completing their functions as efficiently as possible.”
“Of course, I’m responsible for the overall profitability of the branch,” he shared. “So it’s looking at the P and L (profits and losses) and making sure that I’m aware of the expenses and things of that nature. Obviously for any company, a big part of profitability is the sales aspect of that. So, my job includes working with the field sales representatives as they identify the customer needs that we have out there in the field.”
Acree said that he enjoys many aspects of his job but, as most people attest, his favorite part of the job is the people that he works with.
“It’s definitely the people,” he shared. “I have a fantastic crew down here and I just love to watch and observe the daily interactions. I get to see the relationships that they have with customers and I get to hear a lot of the feedback that customers have - I love hearing about how satisfied they are if someone helps them solve a particular problem.”
That is what Hose and Rubber Supply is in the business of doing - solving problems. Anyone and everyone that works at Hose and Rubber knows that customer service is the number one priority, from day one.
“It’s really ingrained into every employee,” Acree stated. “It’s that customer service heart. Customer service is really something that we strive for, very consciously. We are here because customers have problems that need to be solved, and it’s our job to solve those problems in a way that is profitable for everybody, most especially for the customer themselves.”
Customer service is something that Acree learned very early on in his career with Hose and Rubber Supply. He learned many other things as well, several of which he learned from his father. These were things like attention to detail, process development, how to be a good manager, and the importance of work/life balance.
“When I first started, my dad was the accountant for Hose and Rubber in Salt Lake,” he shared. “Definitely my work ethic came from watching him, as well as my mom, growing up. I had the opportunity early on in my career to work directly under him. He oversaw the warehouse and that was great because I learned a lot from him. I’m definitely my father’s son.”
Acree said that he no longer works with his dad on a day-to-day basis, but he knows that his old man is just a phone call away.
“I love working for the same company as him,” Acree stated. “It gives family time and family reunions even more things to talk about. My wife tries to prevent us from talking too much business, which is good and healthy, but it’s fun to be able to relate at that depth on a work level. There’s a lot of understanding there.”
Josh Acree first started working for his father at Hose and Rubber Supply and he learned many lessons throughout his nearly 13 years with the company. Mostly, he saw how important the company was to his dad, and how important his dad was to the company. That’s what inspired him to continue to forge his own path, not walking in his dad’s shadow, but working right alongside of him.