Dealers slump through slow sales
A rural car dealer said customers are too afraid to buy.
HARMAN, W.Va. (AP) — When times were good, Linda Teter kept 30 Chevrolet trucks on the narrow roadside show lots at Midway Motor Co. Today, fewer than 10 gleam under the autumn sun.
Next month, when snow comes to the Allegheny Mountains, there will be even fewer.
“You’re lucky to sell maybe five a month now,” she says, waiting at her desk for the phone to ring, the door to open. “The economy’s so upside-down, people have no money. They’re scared to buy.”
For 32 years, like her father and grandfather before her, Teter has managed the car and truck dealership the family started in 1929. Each year, she rode out the seasonally slow first quarter until the uptick that always came in March or April.
“Then in the last few years, it got up to May, and then June. It’s clean into the summer now,” she says. “And this year, it’s been the whole year.”
With an unrelenting credit crisis, breathtaking swings in the stock market and mounting consumer anxiety, Teter now wonders if winter will ever end; she trusts that her conservative instincts will keep her in business, but there’s no guarantee.
Last month, the biggest Chevy chain in the country — Georgia-based Bill Heard Enterprises Inc. — went bust and closed 13 dealerships in six states. High gas prices and the other problems that thousands of small dealers face every day were magnified by its size — too much inventory and overhead, too few people qualifying for loans or even trying.
“It’s the big ones, the small ones. We’re all in the same boat afloating,” Teter says.
“Even your retired people that have saved their money, they’re not buying new vehicles,” she says. “At one time, they used to come in every three years like clockwork and buy a new vehicle. But they’re getting the attitude now, ‘I’m scared to death. I’m not gonna buy. I’ll just keep my old one.’”
For Midway, that means fewer sales and more service.
In Harman, customers are harder to come by even when times are good.
The town of 200 is nestled in a valley in the Monongahela National Forest, near tourist attractionssuch as the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area and the scenic climbing cliffs of Seneca Rocks. The nearest city is 23 miles away (Elkins, population 7,000), but it has the kind of expansive, option-filled car lots that buyers have come to expect.
Many of the local mining jobs have vanished, and even timber-driven industries such as Bruce Hardwoods are cutting back.
GM’s rising prices only make Teter’s task harder. She struggled to sell expensive 2008 models, but the 2009 vehicles are even pricier. Then GM announced it would stop producing the Trailblazer, a smaller four-wheel-drive SUV popular with Teter’s female customers.
“They can’t buy a Tahoe,” she says, citing a price tag more than $40,000. “So what are we going to sell them?”
Every week, it seems, Teter finds herself further at odds with GM.
“They called me yesterday and wanted me to take nine Impalas. I’m not gonna take nine Impalas going into winter,” she complains. “They called me the week before and demanded [that she take] a $50,000 Suburban.”
She sold two of those last year, both to a funeral home that won’t be coming back for a third.
“Your normal-class people cannot buy them,” she says. “They’re too high.”