Body builder: plowing through its rivals, Dunn's Godwin family welds success in customizing commercial trucks.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: PICTURE THIS - Godwin Group - Company overview

Pat Godwin Jr. congratulated himself. Winter was coming on, and he had 200 snowplows in inventory. "I figured I was in good shape, at least for the first half of the season." Then early lake-effect storms dumped 7 feet of snow on parts of western New York. "In less than 60 days, I had a 90-unit backlog of orders." So it goes for Dunn-based Godwin Manufacturing Co. Inc., which helps explain how an operation that started in his dad's garage sprawls over a million square feet in four states and became the nation's largest family-owned manufacturer of truck bodies.

In 1966, Godwin's father, now the company's chairman, quit his soft-drink sales route to open a welding shop behind his house. "Mom was pretty upset," says the president of what is now The Godwin Group. "My sister and I were in diapers, and he already had a fairly good-paying job." Someone asked him to make a flatbedtruck body for farm use. A local contractor happened to see it and asked him to build beds with sides to haul dirt and gravel. By 1979, one-man Godwin Welding Service had become Godwin Manufacturing, with 10 employees. It has grown steadily since, in part through buying and resuscitating financially distressed competitors. "It just slowly evolved, as much happenstance as anything."

The Godwin Group employs more than 300, not only in Dunn at Godwin Manufacturing and adjacent Champion Hoist and Equipment Co., but also at R/S-Godwin Truck Body Co. in Ivel, Ky., Galion-Godwin Truck Body Co. in Millersburg, Ohio, and its most recent acquisition, Williamsen-Godwin Truck Body Co. in Salt Lake City. In 2011, Godwin acquired Good Roads Inc. and moved it from Indiana to Dunn. Founded as a farm-equipment manufacturer in 1878, Good Roads patented the nation's first truck-mounted snowplows in 1913.

"At one point in the 1980s, one of our competitors came down and wanted to buy us," Godwin says. "We said no. But then, lo and behold, about 10 years later they were in trouble, and we ended up...