ISMAEL HERNANDEZ
TLG
“ I’ ve heard the owner say, never lose a customer over US $ 100. We don’ t get caught in policy. We don’ t get caught in all of the buzzwords,” Ismael says.
When a customer needs a truck,“ they may come in and buy a used truck to keep them moving and then turn around and trade it back to us. It’ s a very interesting industry”.
Ismael is quick to note that these are not cheap buys, though.“ They’ re not an inexpensive unit – we sell US $ 200,000 widgets. We work to sustain a profit in the parts and service section of the business. Servicing a customer or an area is truly the biggest marketing driver to sell more trucks.”
With all this, Ismael puts his finger on the company’ s core mission – a customer-first culture that builds“ customers for life”.
Bigger company, bigger target From when Ismael started back in 1996, things in tech have changed quite drastically.“ The major difference from where I started and today is probably the magnitude of a problem that you can have as a dealer group,” he says.
The frequency of such problems is another big issue, and they can quickly snowball into disasters if not taken care of quickly, or as Ismael puts it,“ a small problem at one store can be turned into US $ 2m in a month over the span of 36 stores.”
Unlike the more relaxed approach of the past, today, Ismael requires everyone at TLG to take cybersecurity training and have complex passwords that they change often enough via Multi-Factor Authentication.
ISMAEL HERNANDEZ
VICE PRESIDENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Ismael Hernandez leads TLG Peterbilt’ s technology directives and budgets for all US-based heavy duty truck retail operations. With 30 years in technology, Ismael has held positions as network engineer, applications analyst, software developer, ERP systems field technician, cyber security architect, data analyst. Before joining TLG Peterbilt and the retail automotive industry in 2002, Ismael spent three years as a mainframe programmer converting banking data for non-Y2K complaint systems. Prior to his work in the banking industry, Ismael began his career in technology migrating IBM System 36 systems onto IBM AS400 iSeries Servers. Ismael holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business from Missouri State University and holds multiple certifications for networking technology, hardware, and security. He has served as board committee member for local technical colleges as well as chaired multiple IT action groups in the heavy-duty trucking industry. He has also served as technical advisor for technology based HiCap High School student development program curriculum.
68 September 2026