Menu
Posted December 20, 2022

Ace Harrington, MTA Distributors Founder, Passes Away

Harrington co-founded MTA Distributors in 1980.


Ace Harrington 1956-2022

It is with a broken heart that we share the loss of David Ace Harrington, who passed away suddenly on Saturday, December 17, 2022 from heart failure.

Ace had been successfully treating lymphoma into remission over the last several months. However, he had difficulty recovering from his most recent chemotherapy treatment, which took a physical toll on his body.

Ace leaves behind a beautiful and enduring legacy. In 1980, he co-founded MTA Distributors with his business partner, Chuck Dunn. What began as an independent rental business and lawn & garden retail store evolved into one of the nation’s largest wholesale suppliers to the rental industry. Ace and Chuck had recognized a void in the marketplace to serve the independent rental industry, so they leveraged the power of purchasing volume to offer independent rental stores with competitive prices, readily stocked inventory, and technical support.

MTA was deeply grateful for its opportunity to become a distributor for Honda engines, which Ace and Chuck attribute to changing both their lives and the future of MTA. Every moment of Ace’s life was filled with passion, and for the rest of his life he was fiercely loyal to and ardently proud of his partnership with Honda. In fact, Ace constantly reminded us, “Honda is the heart of MTA.”

As the company grew over the decades and was able to add critically valuable partnerships with complimentary equipment manufacturers, Ace devoted this same passion, loyalty, and competitive spirits to serving great manufactures like EDCO, MBW, Bluebird, Bosch, JLG, Sencore, and hundreds more. He never stopped working to continuously improve our product and service offerings to MTA’s cherished customers, his chief focus.

Ace was a pioneer, a great businessman, and the finest salesman the world has ever seen. More importantly, however, Ace was the dearest friend to so many people, including countless deep relationships with teammates at MTA and all across the rental industry. He loved everyone around him with one of the biggest hearts God ever made. He was energetic yet focused, and competitive yet endlessly caring.

One week ago, the last Sunday of his life, Ace organized a group of young boys to hand out heavy coats, hats, gloves, and 50 sack lunches – all prepared with his own hands – to feed and clothe the homeless in downtown Nashville. Ace was constantly generous with his time, talents, and money.

Ace Harrington was a unique treasure of a human being. He worked hard, and he loved hard. He loved MTA Distributors, Honda, and the entire rental industry. He worked very hard to prepare MTA for life without him.

While this day has come much sooner than we wanted or expected, Team MTA begins this new chapter without him, and we cannot wait to make him proud as he smiles down from heaven to see his company continue to grow and thrive. Please know that MTA is more inspired and committed than ever to fulfill our company’s mission statement, “One Team delivering Legendary Customer Service.”

MTA’s deepest sympathies go out to Ace’s children: Tina (Brian), Daniel, and Lauren.

SPONSORED ADS