McKnight’s EWS – Finding the Right Partners to Grow Their Business

Mary Thoma’s grandfather started what would one day become McKnight’s Emergency Wrecker Service in 1927 with little more than a tractor and some garden mules. Her father grew the business with hard work and handshakes.

Since Thoma and her brother Tom McKnight returned home to work in the family towing business in the 1990s, they have grown Arkansas’ oldest heavy-duty wrecker service to include seven tow trucks and five tractor-trailers, working from their headquarters in West Fork to serve Northwest Arkansas and operate nationwide.

“We have a lot of wonderful people that work with us,” said Thoma, noting all the people that have contributed toward the family business’ success.

Soon after returning to West Fork, Thoma and McKnight were ready to expand the family business and needed to finance one of the company’s first big, modern wreckers. The bank they had been working with rejected their loan request, citing too much risk. That’s when Thoma connected with Don Tuller at The Bank of Fayetteville, now part of the Farmers and Merchants Bank family.

Tuller admitted they’d never done anything quite like what Thoma and her brother proposed, but he sat down, looked at the numbers and got back to them with a reasonable interest rate.

“That’s how the relationship started, with them taking a risk on us, and we have never looked back,” said Thoma. “We pulled all our business from the other bank and moved it to The Bank of Fayetteville.”

More than three decades later, Thoma says they’ve never looked back. That’s not to say their business hasn’t faced challenges. Thoma and her brother officially took over leadership of McKnight’s during the 2008 recession just as the large truck towing industry took a sharp decline. Fortunately, the growth of Northwest Arkansas spurred new opportunities, and the family was able to pivot their business to local hauling, using their established relationships to support that transition.

“The Lord has always taken care of us,” Thoma said.

Then there were the financial uncertainties of the pandemic in 2020 when The Bank of Fayetteville called McKnight’s on the very first day PPP loans became available.

“It was super complicated, but Tracy Nelson walked us through it. She was right by our side,” remembered Thoma. “They said ‘you’ve been with us a long time, and we want to give you guys the best treatment.’ It’s just been that way down the line. They were there whenever we needed them and it has been nice just to pick up the phone and talk to somebody.”

Looking back, Thoma see the same values of hard work, commitment and community that her father and grandfather built McKnight’s upon in her dealings with The Bank of Fayetteville. “My Grandad and and Dad’s number one focus was treating people like you want to be treated,” Thoma said. “I don’t want to work with someone who’s not going to work as hard as we do.”

Throughout everything, The Bank of Fayetteville has proven itself as the community partner that Thoma and her brother can trust, working with them along each step of their journey to do the hard work and grow together.