Who Our Members Are

PTDA’s members are the companies that distribute and manufacture industrial power transmission/motion control (PT/MC) components that keep the world running smoothly.
 

PTDA’s membership comprises the industry’s leading PT/MC companies, whose top executives participate in PTDA’s Industry Summit and meetings and serve in volunteer roles. PTDA represents PT/MC distribution firms that generate more than $16 billion in sales and span more than 2,700 locations. PTDA members also include manufacturers that supply the PT/MC industry. 
 

PTDA members include:

• Independent, regional and national distributors serving as single-source providers of products and value-added services
• Niche and broadline manufacturers of PT/MC products committed to selling through distribution
• Service providers that provide critical support, such as software, consulting and training, to PT/MC distributors and manufacturers
• Educational institutions offering courses in industrial distribution, power transmission, mechanical engineering or industrial maintenance

The information and charts below provide a breakdown of the PTDA membership demographics.

Members by Type

As of September 2017, PTDA’s membership included 164 distribution firms, 182 manufacturing companies and 18 associate firms.

Distributor Members by Country

PTDA’s distributor members operate mainly from the United States (80 percent) and Canada (16 percent) with the balance located in Argentina, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Employees & Branches

Distributor members employed a total of 37,477 individuals at 2,745 locations. Inside sales/customer service staff accounted for 19 percent of distributors’ total workforce on average, with outside/field salespeople accounting for an additional 13 percent.
 

Half of distributor members have one or two branch locations, 34 percent have three to 10 branches and 16 percent report having 11 or more branch locations.
 

Distributor Ownership

PTDA distributor members are predominately privately held companies with only three percent publicly traded. Of those privately held, 54 percent are family owned businesses. Eight percent of distributor members are minority/women owned businesses.

Products Sold

The bar chart presented below indicates the percentage of total members selling that particular product category (e.g., 80% of all distributor members and 19% of all manufacturer members sell adjustable speed drives). The largest category for distributor members is bearings followed by belt & chain drives. For manufacturers, the largest category represented is conveyors & material handling components followed by bearings.

On average, distributors report 76 percent of their sales are from MRO compared to 34 percent of sales from OEM.

Member Annual Sales

Nearly one-quarter of distributor members have annual PT/MC sales of less than $2 million, 47 percent have sales of less than $4 million and about 58 percent have sales of less than $6 million. Nine percent of distributor members report sales in excess of $50 million.

 

 

PT/MC Sales

Of those distributors reporting the sales of PT/MC product as a percentage of total sales, five percent report power transmission/motion control sales are less than 20 percent of total sales, 32 percent report PT/MC sales are 20-50 percent of total sales, and 62 percent report more than 50 percent of their sales are from PT/MC products.

On average, distributors report 65 percent of their sales are from MRO compared to 28 percent of sales from OEM.