April 1, 2026
Midwest Wheel Companies is a 115-year-old, fifth-generation family-owned distributor of heavy-duty truck parts and accessories. With 35 territory managers covering nine states and selling everything from the front bumper of the truck to the rear bumper of the trailer, they've built their reputation on deep product expertise and trusted customer relationships.
For over a century, those relationships have been Midwest Wheel's competitive advantage. As the company looked to scale and bring on new talent, leadership saw an opportunity: what if they could capture that relationship knowledge and make it accessible to the entire team?
Midwest Wheel's territory managers are experts at building customer relationships, many have worked with the same accounts for decades. That institutional knowledge was invaluable, but it lived in each rep's head, in their personal notes, or in the conversations they had with their territory assistants.
"We've got quite a few guys that are very well tenured. It's not uncommon for us to have somebody who's retiring after being with us for 30, 40 years," shared Cody Olson, a Territory Assistant who supports three different regions.
As the team grew and territories evolved, leadership recognized an opportunity to amplify what their best reps were already doing by making customer insights and relationship history visible to everyone.
Midwest Wheel evaluated several CRM options, including Salesforce. But Steve, who would be responsible for the integration, saw a critical difference in Proton's approach.
"Proton was written with a distributor in mind," Steve explained. "Salesforce is written for a much larger, longer-scoped sales call. We typically sell everything from the front bumper of the truck to the rear bumper of the trailer—it's that constant conversation about different products. I think that's what a distributor-specific CRM does for you."
Today, Proton enhances Midwest Wheel's field sales process, especially on mobile.
"Our guys are iPhone oriented," Steve said. "The mobile app is where we focus for the field. They can do call prep, generate tasks, and see their month-to-date sales right at their fingertips."
Here's how it works in practice: territory managers assign specific tasks to territory assistants directly in Proton, including which ship-to location to visit and what to discuss.
Meanwhile, territory assistants prep in the parking lot before each visit, quickly reviewing important account metrics, recent purchases, and notes left by other team members.
By centralizing all of this information in Proton’s CRM, the team has created a shared layer of visibility that didn't exist before.
The Pronto AI feature inside Proton became an unexpected favorite. Reps pull up to an account and ask Pronto for a summary of what to discuss: sales trends, changes in buying patterns, products they should be stocking.
"I wasn't prepared for how useful Pronto was gonna be for our sales team," Steve admitted. "Pronto has been the biggest game changer for us. I believe we're one of the biggest users of it."
In the words of Sean Kinter, Sales Development Manager: "It's like having another person out in the field with you."
One standout use case: reps with fleet customers can ask Pronto to list the top products across all locations, ranked—then use that list to recommend stock for newly opened locations.
Midwest Wheel's results show the impact of giving reps better tools and visibility into their accounts.
Sean Kinter tracks Proton usage and performance closely. "This morning I went and took our top six users, bottom five, and found drastic differences in production," he shared. "Top users [sales numbers] are up anywhere from 8 to 25%."
With customer insights at their fingertips, reps can now prep in the parking lot. "30 seconds in the parking lot," Sean said. Cody agreed: "I can pull up to a customer's parking lot, pull up their account, and see everything I need."
That quick access means reps walk into every conversation prepared and can spend more time with customers instead of searching for information.
One of the most exciting outcomes: three of the top five Proton users are over 60 years old.
"Guys that I would think there's no freaking way they're gonna use this, they're all over it," Sean said. "I think the older guys appreciate having that at their fingertips. We used to carry around beepers and go to pay phones every day. Those were our tools."
When territory assistants transition into territory manager roles, they now have access to the full history of customer relationships, making it easier to hit the ground running.
"For new people, this is probably the single most effective tool." Cody explained. "You've got all the information available you need."
New hires are equally enthusiastic. "It's been totally simple," Sean said. "They're like, ‘holy cow, you mean I have it this simple?’ They're thrilled to have the information."
Cody shared a recent win: "I stopped into a light-duty stop that we don't go to frequently. They had historically been buying floor liners from us for three or four years. I had no idea they stopped buying from us until Proton showed a 100% loss in interior accessories."
He dug in, asked about it, and discovered the issue was pricing. "We were able to make an adjustment and recover that business."
Beyond day-to-day selling, Proton has streamlined how Midwest Wheel manages product changeovers. When they need to transition customers to new products, due to vendor changes or pricing, they build campaigns in Proton that show reps exactly which customers were buying the old product.
"Before, really what was going on is the salesmen went out and relabeled the customer shelf, and the customer just kept reordering the old product," Steve explained. "Now Proton helps us say, 'Okay, this changed, make sure we're talking about the new product.' It helps prompt them to get that done proactively."
As for the backend, Proton’s integration runs seamlessly. As a result, Steve explained, "Every day, the team gets a dashboard of their month-to-date sales, active and inactive customers, all right at the fingertips of their mobile app. It's been easy for me."
For Midwest Wheel, Proton solved a problem that had persisted for decades: capturing the relationships and insights that made their best reps successful, and making that knowledge available to everyone.
"For our team, Proton is a game changer," Steve said. "We even assigned Sean to make sure people are learning the tools and growing with the business, because this is gonna drive their success. We're absolutely focused on it and we see this as our future."
Sean, with 30+ years of experience on the road, put it simply: "It's one of the greatest sales tools that we've ever had at Midwest Wheel."
And Cody, representing the next generation of field reps, summed up what Proton means for the day-to-day:
"It's an effective tool to save you time. It just presents information in a way that is timely and effective. It doesn't add any time to your day. If anything, it saves you more."
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