Seymour woman serves as president of small company

By Jordan Richart

For The Tribune

Many can say they learned a lot of life lessons from a grandparent or two.

But Aimee Perry can say what many probably cannot: That her grandmother taught her how to operate and own a local business.

“I couldn’t have asked for a better situation or for a better person to learn from,” she said. “We were really close.”

And the business that the late Betty Woodard taught her granddaughter about is in a male-dominated industry.

Perry, 51, has operated Best Way Inc. in Seymour since 2014. She started working for the business alongside her grandmother in 1994 upon graduation from Purdue University.

Woodard and her husband, Glenn, who died in 1985, started the business in 1957.

The shop offers brakes, overhauls, trailer work and repairs, flooring and more.

“We pretty much do anything on a semi or trailer,” Perry said.

They’re also a Cummins certified dealer and can do warranty work and repairs on Cummins products.

The business got its start when employees started working on semis and leasing trucks and trailers. Betty would do all of the bookkeeping for the business.

“Eventually, they bought my grandma’s family farm and built the shop,” Perry said of the business at 1576 N. U.S. 31, Seymour.

Perry said she never really thought about working for the business her grandparents had operated all her life until she was nearing graduation from Purdue University with a business degree.

Both of her parents were educators, and no one in the family had taken a role at the business.

“I was just trying to figure out what I wanted to do,” she said. “It worked out that she needed somebody in the office. She wanted me to go somewhere else to see what I really wanted to do, but I ended up staying.”

There was a time when she and her husband, Tim, lived in Richmond, and Perry would drive down to Seymour and stay with her grandmother for a few nights and work at the company before heading back.

It was during those times she had the opportunity to not only spend quality time with her grandmother but also learn valuable lessons about how the business worked and how to continue making it operational.

“The main thing she taught me was that some months were tight, so you’d make sure you paid certain bills first, a smart cash flow kind of thing,” Perry said.

Perry also saw her grandmother treat her customers well. Woodard knew a lot of people, and many of her customers were farmers and local truck drivers. Now, many customers are come from off Interstate 65, and Perry doesn’t know them as well.

But she remembers the simplicity of how Woodard would handle a situation when one of her customers could not pay the amount in full.

“She’d work with them where they’d pay a little here and there until they paid it back,” she said. “She was always willing to help someone, and she just knew everybody.”

Her grandmother would give her small tasks at first, sometimes so small it would be a little frustrating to Perry, who thought she could be doing more.

“I always thought about how she could be showing me more, and eventually, she slowly showed me,” she said. “It was gradual, which was good because I started at the bottom all the way up to learning what to do each quarter.”

Working alongside her grandmother for 20 years was gift, Perry said.

“When she got to where she couldn’t come in every day, I knew how to do a lot of stuff,” she said. “We were always really close.”

Now as president of the company, Perry manages all operations and oversees all seven employees.

“I pretty much do anything and everything,” she said. “I don’t really work out in the shop, but I pretty much answer the phone, do invoices and all the administrative functions. I also have someone who helps part time in the office.”

Some employees have been at the company for 40 years.

“We’ve had a few people who were here about that long or longer retire recently, and we have a few that are coming up on retiring,” she said. “It will be hard to replace them, but I think they stay here this long because we’re so small that we’re almost like a family. Everyone knows what everyone is doing and what their family is doing. We have great people to work with every day.”

As far as being a female in a male-dominated industry, Perry said she realizes the significance, but it’s not something she really spends time thinking about. And no one at the company really does, either.

“I think there might be some guys in this industry who wouldn’t like to work for a woman, but we’re pretty laid-back, and no one at our business really thinks anything of it,” she said. “We never even talk about it, and it doesn’t come up.”

That might be a reason why Perry was surprised when she learned a friend had nominated her for The Tribune’s Women in Business section and it was decided to feature her.

“I was shocked,” she said. “She told me she thought it was cool that I am in this industry and should be proud of it.”