We recently announced the 2024 Tugboat Institute® Best Evergreen Companies® list, as well as our newest Evergreen Company of the Year® award. Today, we’d like to introduce you to Stotz Equipment, the second Evergreen Company of the Year. Stotz Equipment is led by Tugboat member Tom Rosztoczy and represents excellence across all of the Evergreen 7Ps® principles. They are a valued and admired member of our wonderful Evergreen® community. Understanding Stotz and what makes them so deserving of this award is a perfect way to better understand Tugboat Institute and the Evergreen movement. Let’s take a moment to get to know them better.

History of Stotz Equipment

The story of Stotz Equipment is one of true Evergreen leadership and stewardship, and a remarkable example of how allowing a company the time to grow, on its own fuel at a pace that allows it to maintain culture and stability, can lead to wonderful and powerful success.

Stotz was founded in 1947 by Tom’s maternal grandfather, although it existed under its original name, Arizona Machinery, for its first seven decades. Fred Elder’s story is a classic story of the American Dream come true. Fred’s father left America in 1904 and worked for years in Argentina as a salesperson for John Deere. Fred was born and raised there, only coming to the States for his college education. His bilingual skills led him to settle in Arizona, where he could use his Spanish, first working for John Deere like his father and eventually, in 1947, founding Arizona Machinery with two partners.

While Fred was slowly building his business in Arizona, halfway across the world, Ferenc Rosztoczy was born in 1932 in Szeged, Hungary. He grew up there, surviving World War II, and managing to earn a degree in chemistry before fleeing the chaos to come to the United States. He arrived in 1957, with not a penny to his name, and with no English at all. The chemistry whiz made his way to Berkeley, where he earned a PhD and met Diane Elder, Fred’s daughter. The marriage of the two brought together the two families that have stewarded Stotz from its humble beginnings to where it is today.

When Fred passed away, Ferenc moved his family to Arizona and took over. It was not until 2013, when Ferenc’s three sons, Tom, Rob, and Teddy had been in the family business for more than a decade, that the company rebranded as Stotz Equipment.

Although the company grew slowly at certain early stages of its existence, when Tom stepped into leadership in the late 1990s, Stotz began a significant period of growth that saw their team, their services, and their footprint expand significantly. They added locations through acquisition and organic expansion and now boast 24 locations in eight western States.

In addition to the wonderful, Evergreen story of Perseverance and grit, the story of Stotz’s evolution is also deeply seated in the other six principles that characterize this mindset. From the very earliest days of Arizona Machinery, the core values of the Elder and Rosztoczy families have remained the same: Quality, Integrity, Loyalty, Caring, and Community. They take exceptional care of their teams, they give back in meaningful ways to their communities, and they pride themselves on excellent customer service. In a business that is built on relationships, it is only by truly embodying these core values that a business can succeed and grow over time–and make the world a better place as they do.

Excellence Across All Evergreen 7Ps, Driven by People First

Today’s leader of Stotz, Tom Rosztoczy, is proud of their work across all seven of the Evergreen 7Ps principles, but when asked to pick one that he feels drives the powerful interplay of all of them, he says it has to be People First. Stotz’s Purpose is, “Creating a better life for our families, communities, and those connected to the land.” This Purpose, which clearly puts people at the center, drives all strategy and initiatives at the company, and truly exemplifies Stotz’s approach to business. Tom speaks of their work on this front with pride and singles out a few specific initiatives as powerful examples of their commitment to People First.

First, he highlighted their employee surveys, which he explains are done differently than at many other companies. Rather than simply survey, read, and put away the surveys, Stotz has developed a process for responding in a meaningful way to the feedback they get. In short, every leadership team member takes on three stores and hosts round tables at each one with the frontline employees. They focus on the questions where they scored the worst in that store and they ask the frontline workers, “How do we make it better?” Although a great many companies regularly survey their employees, few follow up with this level of detail and commitment. This practice speaks to a deep and authentic dedication to truly honoring and improving the employee experience at Stotz.

The second feature of their extraordinary People First work is their leadership development program. Again, many companies have leadership programs, but at Stotz, they take it to a new level, with over 40% of employees now having participated in the program. And they do not just focus on work; they also focus on topics aimed at helping their team members grow as people. As Tom put it, this is important because, “If you’re a more effective person, that’s obviously better for you. If it helps you be a better spouse, a better parent, a better sibling, all those things just make your life better.”

These are simply two examples of the many Evergreen practices that helped Stotz distinguish itself amongst an already extraordinary group of Evergreen companies.

The Evergreen Exponential

Although Tom is the first family leader of Stotz to be a member of Tugboat Institute, the company has clearly been driven by an Evergreen mindset from the start. According to Tom, however, his membership in Tugboat and the relationships and experiences he has gained access to, have helped him level up his already excellent company.

First, as a leader in his family business, where he has spent his entire career, his opportunities to learn from other like-minded leaders had been limited. Upon finding Tugboat, he shared, this all changed. “I found my tribe.”

Second, he credits the events he attends with his Tugboat peers with inspiring him, both personally and professionally. “Every event I go to, I bring something home that either makes Stotz better, or it makes me better.”

Third, Stotz is a Certified Evergreen® company, and Tom credits the certification process with helping them go from good to great. “We’ve gone through it twice now. We did much better the second time because of the feedback we got the first time.” The clarity they gained in areas where they could improve has been, he shared, an enormous lift.

And finally, he calls out the experience of attending Gathering of Teams as being pivotal in two ways. “One is that it does the same thing for my leadership team that the regular events do for me. They find people who think about business similarly to how we do that they don’t necessarily see in the regular world. They get inspired, they come back with ideas. The other benefit is for our next generation, many of whom have joined me at Gathering of Teams in recent years. In my mind, this has been the biggest win. The positive influence on our fourth generation has been profound.”

Congratulations to Tom and to the entire team at Stotz, for this well-earned recognition! Their story is an inspiring example of what Evergreen leadership can achieve.