Golf cart dealership is on a roll

A Struthers businessman switches from auto brakes to 'people movers.'
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
POLAND -- People locally know them as golf carts, but Rocco Melia prefers the term "people movers," and he believes they're the vehicle of the future.
He's so sure about it that he sold his longtime Struthers brake and muffler business and opened a new dealership, Ram Tuff Golf Cars & amp; Lawn Tractors at 6597 Center Road in Poland.
The business specializes in selling and leasing golf cars, a term adopted by the industry because of their multiple uses.
Melia, 56, said he started selling used golf cars a few years ago as a side business at his Ram Tuff Brake shop in Struthers. He was surprised at how quickly they went.
"I sold them to everybody but golf courses," he said.
The benefits
Priced as low as $5,000 for a basic new model, golf cars generally can't go faster than 18 miles per hour, he said, which makes them cheap to insure. They're designed to travel up and down hills with ease, and they're light enough to run on grass, dirt and other unpaved surfaces without causing damage.
Over the years he's sold them to car dealers for transporting customers across their parking lots, to factories and contractors for moving workers around large work sites, and to colleges for landscaping and maintenance chores.
He said homeowners who own several acres buy golf cars to save time on lawn chores, and he's in talks with a Pittsburgh-area country club that may rent 70 cars for a special event this summer.
Melia watched his golf car sale numbers growing steadily and decided to go into the business full-time.
Authorized dealer
He sold Ram Tuff Brake to son-in-law Mark Trolio, contacted E-Z-GO in Augusta, Ga., and began the nine-month process of qualifying as an authorized dealer for one of the top three golf car manufacturers in the world.
Melia's dealership is on a seven-acre site, formerly Poland Power Equipment, about a mile from the Pennsylvania border.
He invested more than $375,000 to buy and renovate the building, pave and fence the parking lot and car storage area, and landscape the property.
The dealership has about 200 golf cars in stock now, and Melia expects to have most of the acreage in use for storage as the business grows. He also bought two carrier trucks to transport the vehicles.
The dealership can adapt golf cars for specific uses. Workers added lights, sirens, a stretcher and other equipment to create an emergency vehicle for the Struthers High School football team, and he hopes to sell more local school districts on the idea.
Golf cars can also be ordered from the manufacturer with optional headlights, taillights, mag wheels and storage compartments or equipped with load beds and electric power dumps to serve as mini-trucks for farming and landscaping uses. Specially equipped golf cars range in price from $7,500 to as high as $30,000, he said.
Ram Tuff also sells Bob Cat brand lawn tractors and power lawn equipment. Bob Cat and E-Z-GO are both subsidiaries of the Georgia-based Textron Corp.
Longtime businessman
Melia has been in business since age 17 when he shared ownership of the Scienceville Body Shop in Youngstown with his father, Albert. Later he owned a craft and model store in Struthers, a car rental and repair business in Struthers and a retail slot machine business in Boardman.
He can't help wondering if his newest business venture will do as well as the E-Z-GO dealership in Faulkner, N.Y. that he's been working with to set up the company. Located in a far less populated area than Youngstown, he said, the New York dealer had sales of $65 million in 2002.
"We won't do that right off the bat," he said with a grin, "but down the road, seven acres might not be enough."
vinarsky@vindy.com