This year in March, Universal Polymer & Rubber attended both The Precast Show in Nashville, TN and the Mid America Truck Show in Louisville, KY. Both of these shows were great opportunities to network with potential clients and business partners, and to view the latest trends in the industry. Attendance was high for both shows with the crowd being a combination of end users and business-to-business suppliers.
The 45th annual Mid-America Trucking Show was a successful event with over 70,000 attendees and over 1,100 exhibitors. The show was competing against a major auto show occurring in Germany at the same time, and many large companies were protesting the show due to this conflict in dates. With these larger companies missing, the show was more spread out than usual with trailer spacers further apart than normal, causing more back and forth travel to be able to see everything. With a large number of truck drivers attending this show, there was also a large amount of foot traffic, which while beneficial in helping to promote to a larger amount of people, also did not lead to huge purchases and orders since truck drivers would be buying products on a smaller scale. All things considered this show was a great opportunity to see the latest innovations and the newest technology in the heavy-duty trucking industry.
The 2016 Precast Show was a great event hosted by the National Precast Concrete Association. With over 300 companies exhibiting, including Universal Polymer & Rubber, the leaders in the precast concrete industry were able to show off the latest innovations. Events included a crane operator certification update, a women in precast reception, and the Honky-Tonk Hoedown at the Wildhorse Saloon on Saturday night. Awards were also given out including the Pinnacle Award, Plant Certification Awards, Sustainability Awards and Creative Use of Precast Awards. Overall the show was a great opportunity for Universal Polymer to interact with many new potential business partners.
The next show we will be attending is WEFTEC 2016 from Sept. 24-28. For more information on the tradeshows and events we will be attending and exhibiting at next, be sure to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.