Industry Experts
At Rite-Hite, we are lucky to have highly dedicated employees at every level in the company. We take pride in cultivating industry experts in order to make sure your loading dock and in-plant equipment can perform at its safest, securest, most productive, and most efficient way possible. Meet some of our team members!
Walt Swietlik, Director of Loading Dock Automation Solution
Walt Swietlik has more than 40 years of experience in the material handling industry, with more than 35 of those dedicated to the area of loading dock and door safety and improved productivity. For the past two decades, Walt has managed Rite-Hite’s popular “Customer Experience Program” and most recently has taken on the role of Director of Loading Dock Automation Solutions, where he works closely with a variety of customers to address the challenges associated with automation solutions for loading dock design, loading dock equipment, and controls applications. Walt’s experience has put him in close contact with many customers across many industries with loading dock safety and security challenges. As a result, he has become a noted expert on issues related to shipping and receiving and ensuring safe and efficient material flow across critical loading docks throughout customers supply chains. Walt has spoken at a variety of local, regional and national forums, including ProMat and MODEX.
Chad Dillavou, Vice President of Product Management and Engineering - Dock Levelers, Vehicle Restraints and Fleet Plows
Chad Dillavou is the Vice President of Product Management for Rite-Hite Products Corporation, focusing on loading dock levelers, vehicle restraints, and snow removal machines. He has more than 25 years of experience in the loading dock industry and represents Rite-Hite as a member of LODEM (Loading Dock Equipment Manufacturers). He brings his passion for creating experiences, providing opportunities and sharing stories that inspire others to live life passionately to his work, and focuses on bringing innovative safety and security solutions to the loading dock, so employees can go home to their families, each and every day.
John Ritter, Director of Business Development and Product Management – Doors and Machine Guarding
John Ritter is the Rite-Hite Doors and Machine Guarding Product Manager. For more than 18 years, John has worked with Rite-Hite in a variety of different roles including sales, management, and distribution. His proven leadership skills, professionalism and passion for taking care of the customer have been a strong contribution to the advancement of industrial safety equipment. Through his experience, he has become keenly familiar with the obstacles that affect day-to-day safety, efficiency, and productivity in manufacturing and material handling facilities around the world and has worked to advance machine guarding equipment in his most current role.
Jeff Johnston, Arbon Equipment Corporation, In-Plant Business Manager
Jeff Johnston, Business Manager for Arbon In-Plant Sales, has more than 20 years of experience in the material handling industry and has extensive experience in addressing safety, security and productivity concerns inside of commercial or industrial facilities. He holds a wealth of knowledge on how to improve business protocols to help our customers’ facilities run at their peak efficiencies.
Aaron Wiegel, Project Engineer - Engineered Solutions
Aaron Wiegel's 20 years of product development at Rite-Hite includes the launch of the Revolution Fan series in 2007 as well as several additional HVLS fans for industrial and commercial applications. His team recently launched the Revolution 25, 75, and 150 HVLS fan series featuring state of the art direct drive motor technology. Two of Aaron's strengths are his understanding of HVLS blade design and his experience locating fans to achieve maximum air flow and comfort. Aaron’s loading dock contributions include the Flex Neck auto dimming dock light, the TS 5000 trailer stand, and the CoolMan 2800 Trailer Fan. Barrier systems, such as railing, impactable curtains, and reciprocating gates, were redefined by RHESG's development of the Barrier Load and Speed Test (BLAST). Aaron played a critical role developing the test fixtures and protocols required to launch the BLAST strategy.
Matt Fleckenstein, Regional Sales Vice President
Having spent the past 20+ years specializing in temperature control, related to refrigerated warehousing and food/pharmaceutical grade manufacturing and distribution centers, Matt is a cold storage industry specialist at Rite-Hite. He is consistently recognized as a trusted resource to identify temperature control solutions to reduce operational costs while increasing product quality, productivity and employee safety. He specializes in protecting the complete cold chain and assisting companies with effective food defense strategies.
John Hargarten, Regional Sales Vice President
John Hargarten has been in the material handling business for 37 years and just over 32 of those years with Rite-Hite. John has been actively involved in Rite-Hite's distribution side of the business helping to develop sales and service efficiencies throughout his career. One of John's strengths and successes has been to build long term relationships with North American globally based companies in order to effectively help lower cost of goods sold by reducing their risk, energy consumption, and reduced maintenance burden while helping to increase their productivity. John has had tremendous experience in supporting the deployment of key solutions to several industries including Automotive, Pulp and Paper, Grocery Distribution, Heavy Manufacturing, Cold Storage, General Distribution and more. Each of these unique industries in the market carry specific needs which Rite-Hite has successfully developed compelling cost saving solutions for through key end user relationship building and understanding of what is important to each of these customers and industries, which is a skill set John has been successful in developing all of these years.