A Talk with Jay Smith from Schaeffler

The team at Alpine is always looking to share our unique experiences and relationships with the people and companies that supply us with high quality bearings. Not only are we proud of the working relationships we have built with industry experts, but of the friendships that have formed along the way.

company History

We reached out to Jay Smith, a District Manager with Schaeffler, to chat about his experience with Alpine and beyond. Schaeffler is a leading global supplier to the industrial and automotive sectors driving groundbreaking inventions and developments in the fields of motion and mobility for over 75 years. Jay credits the company’s success to the fact that the Schaeffler family still owns it and the impressive size of the company. INA and FAG are among Schaeffler’s companies. Jay says that “the industrial side of the business involved with Alpine is technology-driven, and because we are both highly technical, we work really well together”

Jay is located in Bangor, Maine where he manages a group of sales professionals and has been directly handling business with Alpine for nearly 12 years. He originally got involved working with bearings when his father was a purchasing manager at a paper mill. A bearing distributor met Jay and hired him to manage his own father’s accounts.

Now, with over 22 years with Schaeffler Jay enjoys the facing new challenges every day while building and maintaining relationships along the way. He says that “no matter what you have done in the past, there is always something new. Everything we use in our day-to-day lives relies on bearings to run, so the new challenges and opportunities are endless.”

Alpine, Schaeffler, and Jay

Jay works the most with JC Calvagna and Jim Levin, but has developed several professional and personal relationships with the Alpine team over the years. He often looks to him for engineering expertise when it comes to supplying machine tools and precision products, but their relationship goes much deeper. Jay often finds himself catching up with the team over the phone and even makes frequent trips to the Alpine headquarters in Boston. “The amount of technical knowledge they have in that group is unsurpassed and on top of that, they’re fun to be around. It really is a joy.”

All of Jay’s hard work enables him to spend time with his family at the camp he and his wife purchased back in December. They made a commitment to pass it down to their kids one day so future generations would always have a place to gather as a family.