Original Article:
Thomasville's NC Trailers Sales named top Small Business of the Year
By Jill Doss-Raines
12/24/2024
The Dispatch
THOMASVILLE — For NC Trailers owner Johnny Shelton, business is not about winning awards but about building a team culture among its employees and providing top customer service to its buyers.
But the awards come anyway for the Thomasville business started in 1996 by Shelton’s parents, Debbie and Lynn Shelton, which they sold to him when they retired in 2015. NC Trailers was just named one of four Small Businesses of the Year by Business North Carolina magazine from a field of 49 nominees, and it also was named Business of the Year by the Mount Airy Chamber of Commerce, which it joined in 2023 to network with businesses in Surry County and surrounding areas.
That’s not all. If you look on the shelves in Shelton’s office, they are full of plaques and trophies for being tops in multiple business categories, and if you Google the company’s name you’ll learn its the highest-rated trailer dealer in the Carolinas, having the most five-star reviews of any trailer dealer in North and South Carolina.
“We don’t do what we do for awards,” Shelton said. “It’s adjacent to what we do, but that is not our goal. The awards have come to us, thankfully, but why we do things the way we do is to thrive. By thrive, I mean we want to thrive with our employees first, then our customers and our community.”
Shelton said he watched his parents work hard to begin NC Trailers when he was 14. The Sheltons began with 13 trailers they parked in a former Murphy gas station parking lot in Wallburg. They shared the building with a bait and tackle shop.
From having only the three of them as employees, the Sheltons grew the company into a 22-person employer with sales, parts and service departments in a building on Boots Evans Road that faces Business 85. Additionally, Johnny Shelton opened a second store in Winston-Salem in November 2023 and purchased six additional acres for the business adjacent to its current Welcome site for expansion.
Shelton’s accounting firm — DMJPS in Raleigh — nominated NC Trailers for the honor. The three judges asked each of the 49 nominees for a portfolio of information. They judged the winners on creativity, community impact, persistence and other factors. This is the 29th year the business publication has selected Small Businesses of the Year.
Shelton received the award in a ceremony on Dec. 10 at the Chapel Hill Inn.
Although Shelton grew up in the business, often making 4 a.m. drives with his dad in the early days to go to Georgia to pick up more trailers to sell, his parents were set against him coming to work at the family business after he graduated from the University of North Carolina in Charlotte in 2005 with an engineering degree.
“They wanted me to go out and have my own experiences. They said I could come back in maybe five years if I still wanted to after I had done others things,” he said.
Shelton spread his wings, working with a contractor at the Duke Power Plant in Belews Creek, as an operations manager for a Greensboro company and in other jobs. Then the call came in 2011. His parents were considering retirement and asked if he was still interested in taking over the business. He was. In 2015, he purchased the business.
“I had worked in the shop assembling trailers. I have worked in maintenance. I’ve worked in sales. I did it all. I had a lot of experience in this. I had helped my dad build a trailer before they started this business. ... I was extremely invested in my job. This is where I got the most experience. I enjoyed working for other people, but I could not find the same level of investment as I did here.”
Shelton also believes in investing in his community. NC Trailers funds the N.C. Trailers Trade Scholarship at Davidson-Davie Community College. Three students a year receive a scholarship to study any trade at the local college.
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