Retail Markets 9/27/2021 Compiled by Ed Fitzgerald
OHIO Scott Shook, owner, Shook Auto, New Philadelphia, Ohio “We’ve been in business 43 years. My father started it in August 1978. “Whether COVID sped up the move to online business, yes and no. Now, some of these non-independent dealers who sell a car through a vending machine, you can sell a car with 12,000 miles that way, but you can’t sell an $8,000 car that way. “Everyone’s expectations on a nice, clean car are different. Maybe they want a third-party to come inspect the car, and we recommend that. “We’ve had years where we keep up to 300 cars in inventory. That’s really unmanageable at this point. “Right now, we have 162 vehicles. We sell around 50 a month.
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“There’s always a demand for trucks, but with the gas prices creeping up there has been a demand for cars. Everybody wants to dump their big truck and get a Cobalt. “We buy some cars off the street, but right now I’m working with Value Auto Auction (Crooksville, Ohio) and Akron Auto Auction. We also recently bought at Manheim Pittsburgh. “We do some buy-here, pay-here with a certain credit group. We use GPS. We used to have the starterinterrupts but we’ve found all we need to know is where the car is. “The nice thing about the newer GPS is that they’re wireless and you can put them where they’re harder to find. “We usually take about 10 percent as a down payment. We do a maximum of 36 months financing.
“Our average reconditioning cost is $1,200 per vehicle, with most of it done in-house. We have three fulltime technicians. “Our average vehicle is probably 3 to 7 years old. We like to be under 80,000 miles; not to say we wouldn’t buy a bunch of trucks at 125,000 miles if they’re affordable. “The last car I sold was a 2009 Chevy Cobalt with 70,000 miles.”
SOUTH CAROLINA Michael Threadgill, coowner, Triple T Motors, Florence, S. Carolina “This is a family business. My dad and granddad started it and we’ve been in business 46 years total. I took charge last August, but I’ve worked here since I was about 10 years old. “We did not have to shut
down for COVID. Thanks to our governor, he kept everything open. We’ve also got a repair shop and a rental car franchise, so we were able to offer alternative transportation for nurses and doctors. “Our average inventory is about 30 cars and we probably sell 15 a month. We’re having trouble finding inventory and what you do find you have to pay so much to get it. “The majority of what we have in stock now is cars. We’ve probably got seven trucks and SUVs, and the rest are cars. “We’ve got three auctions within a 40-minute drive of us. We’ve got Manheim Darlington, right out our backdoor. We’ve got Grand Strand Auto Auction, which is in Conway. And a new one, Dealers Auto Auction, was just opened by (former NIADA president) David
Andrews in Columbia, about an hour away. “We are doing more business online, but you still want to touch, feel and look at the vehicles. “We do a little bit of buyhere, pay-here. We have a related finance company that we do it through. We’re probably 70 percent traditional retail, and 30 percent buy-here pay-here. “We use GPS on all our buy-here, pay-here cars and also our rental cars. “As far as reconditioning costs, some vehicles we don’t have to touch. “Other cars you might have to spend $1,800 to $2,000. We do everything in-house. We have a full-time mechanic and my brother does all of our detailing. “The last car I sold was that 2018 GMC 2500 series pickup, with 51,000 miles on it.”