Toyota Material Handling’s Brett Wood climbs executive ranks at parent company

Lift truck vendor Toyota Material Handling today said that Brett Wood, the president & CEO of Toyota Material Handling North America (TMHNA), was recently appointed as senior executive officer of TMHNA’s parent company, Toyota Industries Corp. (TICO), becoming its only non-Japanese executive and the 12th highest-ranking executive in the global company.

Wood, a 31-year veteran of Toyota, will maintain his current responsibilities with TMHNA in addition to the new role. After beginning his material handling career at Toyota in 1989 as an entry-level engineer, Wood has held many leadership positions within the company. As president & CEO of TMHNA, he oversees two main group companies – Toyota Material Handling (TMH) in Columbus, Indiana, and The Raymond Corp. in Greene, New York.

Outside the company, Wood is the chairman of Material Handling Industry (MHI), serves on the executive committee of the Industrial Truck Association (ITA), and has been a member of the manufacturers board of advisors for the Material Handling Equipment Distributors Association (MHEDA).

“Brett’s appointment as a TICO executive properly reflects the significant contribution he has made to our company’s material handling equipment business,” TICO Chairman Ted Toyoda said in a release. “I look forward to Brett’s continued contribution to the global TICO Group in this new role.”

TICO was founded by Sakichi Toyoda in 1926 as a manufacturer of automatic looms and is the company from which Toyota Motor Corp. was founded by his son. Today, TICO is a $20.2 billion company headquartered in Kariya, Aichi, Japan, with more than 66,000 employees and 275 group companies worldwide. The company produces products for material handling, textile machinery, and car air-conditioning compressors, as well as advanced logistics and automotive engines and electronics. It also produces the RAV4 consumer automobile for Toyota Motor Corp.