Elkhart-based Dexter acquires Rockwell American

Rockwell American is based in Azle, Texas, and is a supplier of trailer axles, leaf springs, fenders and other trailer components serving multiple market segments across North America for more than 35 years. Rockwell has five manufacturing locations and operates 16 distribution branches across the United States.

Rockwell American will operate as a division of Dexter.

“We are extremely excited about the opportunity to bring the Rockwell American business under the Dexter/DexKo umbrella,” said Fred Bentley, DexKo Global CEO. “The acquisition of Rockwell complements and will be part of our Dexter business allowing DexKo to continue to accelerate our growth with great new people, products and segments. We continue to add strong brands to our portfolio and offer more quality products to our customers. Combining this with Dexter’s announcement extending our already industry leading warranty shows our commitment to real quality and engineering solutions for our customers. It really is an exciting time to be part of the DexKo organization.”

“This is a great opportunity to bring these two companies together and it will allow us to concentrate on partnering with our current and new customers,” said Adam Dexter, Dexter president and CEO.

“The team at Rockwell American is very excited by the opportunities afforded us through our new partnership with Dexter

Axle,” said Chris Dietemann, president of Rockwell American. “In the fast changing and increasingly competitive market we serve, it will give us access to Dexter’s world-class manufacturing expertise, enabling us to continuously improve product quality and to maintain our competitive position in the market.”

DexKo Global and Dexter are majority owned by a fund managed by The Sterling Group, an operationally-focused middle market private equity firm based in Houston, Texas with $2.4 billion of assets under management.

There are two Dexter Axle locations in Fremont and Albion. Rockwell American has a facility in Angola.