Gateway to California: Fleet Services Joins the CTTP Family of Companies

How a 58-year-old family-owned heavy-duty parts and service business became a national distributor's California gateway — while preserving the people, relationships, and legacy that built it. Hart Marx Advisors represented Fleet Services in the transaction.

CTTP / Sope Creek Capital  

Fleet Services Inc.

For a national heavy-duty parts distributor, no geography matters more than Southern California. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach anchor the busiest container gateway in the United States, feeding an enormous ecosystem of intermodal chassis, drayage fleets, freight carriers, and the repair networks that keep them moving. Add the region's utility, municipal, construction, and transit fleets, and Southern California represents one of the deepest concentrations of heavy-duty parts and service demand in North America.

But it is also a market you cannot serve well from a distance. Fleets measure their suppliers in hours, not days — and emissions compliance, state inspection requirements, and the sheer density of the market reward distributors with local inventory, local counters, and local relationships built over decades. For Commercial Truck and Trailer Parts (CTTP), a national distributor headquartered in Texas, the question was never whether to be in Southern California. It was how.

The answer was a company that had spent nearly six decades becoming exactly what CTTP needed. Founded in 1966 by the Van Eck family, Fleet Services Inc. grew into Southern California's trusted source for heavy-duty parts and service, with four locations — Anaheim, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Ventura — covering the region's freight corridors. Carrying more than 400 brands as a member of the VIPAR Heavy Duty network, Fleet Services supplies repair shops and transportation, utility, municipal, and construction fleets across the region.

What sets Fleet Services apart is the breadth of what it does beyond the parts counter. The company operates full-service repair facilities with capabilities most distributors never touch: machine shop work, fire apparatus repair with on-site field service, DPF cleaning and emissions service, and certification as a California DGS facility for state fleet maintenance and a CARB-approved Clean Truck Check testing location. In a state where emissions compliance is a fleet's constant concern, those credentials are not add-ons — they are the reason customers come back.

Commercial Truck and Trailer Parts is a national distributor of aftermarket parts for the U.S. heavy-duty industry, formed in 2003 and reincorporated in 2019, carrying more than 350 brands including its Road Warrior private-label line. CTTP serves intermodal, freight and shipping, distribution, leasing, repair, and OEM customers — a base with deep needs in exactly the market Fleet Services calls home. Behind CTTP stands Sope Creek Capital, an family office that invests in transportation, distribution, and logistics companies.

For a family business weighing a sale, the buyer's structure matters. A family office investing patient capital in a family of companies — rather than a fund working against an exit clock — offered the Van Ecks something rare: growth resources and national scale without surrendering the identity that 58 years of service had built. Dick Van Eck continues to lead Fleet Services as CEO, and the company remains a member of the VIPAR Heavy Duty network.

A California footprint, instantly. The partnership gives CTTP a physical presence in Southern California for the first time — four established locations, local inventory, and relationships that would have taken a decade to build from scratch. Faster local deliveries and a larger customer base follow immediately.

New product lines across the counter. Fleet Services now offers CTTP's full Road Warrior parts line and intermodal chassis and container parts — categories that matter enormously in a port-driven market — while gaining CTTP's national sourcing strength and intermodal expertise.

Capabilities a distributor can't ship. Fleet Services brings CTTP what no parts-only distributor can: service bays, machine shop capabilities, fire apparatus expertise, and California emissions-compliance credentials. The combined company meets customers at the counter and under the truck.

A family business joining a family of companies. Both organizations describe the same culture — people, service, and growth. The Van Eck legacy continues under the same name and leadership, strengthened by a partner whose model is building companies, not flipping them.

Hart Marx Advisors represented Fleet Services in the transaction, guiding the family from preparation through confidential marketing, buyer qualification, negotiation, and closing. Finding the right home for a heavy-duty distribution and service business requires knowing the national distributors, the platform builders, and the investors active in the market — and understanding what each would value in a company like Fleet Services. As a member of the VIPAR Heavy Duty Resource Center with decades of relationships across the commercial vehicle aftermarket, Hart Marx knew exactly which buyers could deliver both the right value and the right future.

The Fleet Services transaction shows what a well-matched strategic sale looks like for a family-owned distributor: the buyer paid for geography, capabilities, and relationships it genuinely needed — not just a multiple of earnings — and the sellers secured scale, product lines, and a culture match that protects their name and their people. Owners of regional parts and service businesses are in demand as national platforms expand; the ones who do best are those whose advisors know which platforms are building, where the geographic gaps are, and how to run a confidential process that finds the buyer for whom your business is the missing piece.