Maverick Spotlight: Dean Hatem - From Drag Strips to Heavy Iron

Meet Maverick Environmental Equipments Vice President of Service

If you’ve ever been around Dean Hatem, you know that his passion for horsepower doesn’t stop at the racetrack. Whether it’s the rumble of a finely tuned sports car or the roar of a Morbark horizontal grinder, Dean’s eyes light up the same way — with an engineer’s curiosity and a racer’s determination to push performance to the limit.

Dean’s mechanical journey began decades ago on drag strips and shop floors, where precision and endurance mattered just as much as speed. Those early years instilled in him the value of craftsmanship, attention to detail, and the thrill of turning raw machinery into something that performs flawlessly under pressure. That same drive fuels his leadership today as Vice President of Service at Maverick Environmental Equipment, where he leads one of the most respected and technically capable service operations in the entire environmental equipment industry.

Under Dean’s leadership, Maverick’s Bremen, Ohio service facility has evolved into the go-to repair and rebuild center for Morbark equipment — a reputation earned through relentless training, process discipline, and a shared commitment to “Give a Damn,” the Maverick way. His ability to cultivate talent and mentor technicians has transformed the Bremen Service Team into a cohesive unit that combines old-school know-how with modern day diagnostic and rebuild techniques.

Beyond their rebuild excellence, Maverick Environmental Equipment has built a reputation for responsiveness and technical depth across its troubleshooting and repair operations. When a customer’s grinder, chipper, or screening plant goes down, Maverick is only a phone call away. The company’s service philosophy is simple — get the operator back in production, fast. If it takes putting a crew on an airplane, Maverick does it.

Additionally, if we need to drive one of our trucks to the customer to get them squared away, we will do just that. We have serviced equipment as far west as Texas from our Bremen, Ohio location, as far south as Mississippi, as well as up and down the Eastern Seaboard. We have even sent a technician all the way to Hawaii. That level of dedication is hard to find these days and has made Maverick a trusted partner for those operations where downtime isn’t an option.

Dean often draws parallels between the art of maintaining performance machines and the discipline required in motorsports. “In racing, you can’t afford mistakes — precision and teamwork are everything,” he says. “That’s no different than keeping a customer’s grinder or chipper running. You take pride in what you build, you test it, you fine-tune it, and you make sure it delivers.”

From the drag strip to the shop floor, Dean Hatem’s career reflects a rare blend of hands-on expertise and leadership vision. His legacy at Maverick is not just in the engines rebuilt or the machines restored — it’s in the next generation of technicians he’s helping to shape, one wrench turn and one rebuild at a time.