Changing Times

[Alan]

Alan, starting on July 1st, parts and service at our dealership are no longer open. I didnt a lot of research and it comes out to about a $20,000 saving per month.

Closing all together???? Or just certain days?

 

[Mike]

Open monday, tuesday, wednesday, and friday 7am to 6pm. Open thursdays 7am to 7pm. Parts and Service only, sales has their own hours.

 

[Alan]

Open monday, tuesday, wednesday, and friday 7am to 6pm. Open thursdays 7am to 7pm. Parts and Service only, sales has their own hours.

So they cut the weekend then? The Chevy dealer that I buy most GM parts from has laid off a couple guys and scaled hours back a bit as well. A few Ford dealers up in this area have closed up all together.

 

[Mike]

Yep, weekends are done. Ford has a pretty good buyout program for their dealers. Of course, the dealer has to sell the property on their own.

 

[Alan]

We have definitely experienced a drop in business, people are simply not driving as much, and waiting as long as possible to fix things that should be fixed. And certain areas are really hard sells, such as shocks/struts. People view that as an item that they can deal with as long as they are not actually broken. We have trimmed our expenses as much as can be trimmed, so we just have to ride it out.

Saturdays are the biggest day for us consistently, but Sundays suck, 90% of the time. The owners insist on working Sunday, thinking they can do a little business and get some work in for the beginning of the week. But lately, those theories do not work.