officers’ message TIADA Has Your Back with the Support of INDEPAC
I
n a perfect world, I’d get three extra sets of keys with each car I purchased for resell. I’d pay $1,000 below wholesale book, finance it in-house on a two-year term and collect every payment as scheduled on the contract. My customers would enthusiastically greet me and my staff every time we crossed paths, and they would give me an unsolicited A+ review online as a way to say Thank You for all we do! Well, that’s a not so common occurrence in our industry. As dealers, we have a choice each and every day as to how we approach our path in business ownership, customer and employee relations. Each day comes with its own set of challenges and tests our perseverance in a multitude of imperfect world scenarios. I’ve recently pretended to take myself out of the driver seat of my business as the owner of my company and started referring to my company as my imaginary new boss. I’m simply not allowed to make a decision that could negatively affect my boss/business in any way, because I could become unemployed as a result of not adhering to the absolute best interest of my company’s expectations of me. This has created some fictional oversight
by Ryan
Winkelmann
BJ’s Autohaus (Houston) TIADA SECRETARY
I’ve needed from time to time when making tough decisions that come with heavier risk. This same level of discretion happens daily at TIADA, who is shielding your business from horrible legislation each and every year. As I’ve written in previous articles, a very small percentage of our membership has joined our efforts to defeat legislation that would have cost your dealership thousands of dollars each year. Most recently, legislators introduced the “Crusher Bill” that would have allowed auto dismantlers to accept vehicles without a title that are 12 years old or older, and haven’t been subject to a lien in the last 4 years. Essentially, as long as the vehicle wasn’t sold in the last 4 years, and it’s 12 years old or older then they could pay our customer the scrap metal value and crush it without having a title in hand. Even if you sold a vehicle 4 years ago, that doesn’t mean that the person driving the vehicle has paid off the vehicle. There are times that we are looking for, or at least have a secured interest in a vehicle we financed, way past 3–4 years after we sold it or recorded the actual lien.
The average age of a vehicle on the streets today is 11.5 years old, which is actually increasing as vehicles become more expensive. 4
T e x a s
D e a l e r
May 2021
