The Perfect Storm

Ideas for blog posts come to me in weird ways. Yesterday, my wife and I were traveling the sixty miles to see our daughter, Laura, her husband, Tom, and our granddaughter Brooke. While driving east through the long valley road that separates our home in the Sacramento Delta from the town of Plymouth in the Sierra foothills, vibrant green from the winter rain and spotted with beautiful Live Oaks, I started thinking about the car business.

Sick, huh?

The day before, Saturday, my boss John and I were real busy. Sold three cars which for a little pot lot with only two employees is pretty good. At one time we were so busy John actually freaked out a little. I felt great. I can multi-task better than a mother with triplets. It got me thinking about other Saturdays over the years, those special days where all the cosmic forces seem to come together to create a car business version of the perfect storm.

It can start at any time. Hopefully there is the respectful calm before the storm so the salesmen can load up with caffeine and bullshit to prepare themselves for the day that lay ahead. Then it begins. Up after up after up. Everything is smooth at first. The salesmen line up to take their chances on The Others, some reasonable, some apparently from Hell. But on these special days it goes beyond that, a controlled chaos that begins suddenly and can last the afternoon and into the night.

The managers, ever vigilant at first, become busy shifting through the write-ups, separating the credit criminals from the credit worthy, the buyers from the crazy people. At some point the salesmen out on the line are all but forgotten. They are left own their own to do what they want. This is where the fun begins: a lot full of customers, no one looking over your shoulder, the up list all but forgotten, your chance to do some serious cherry picking.

As we drove toward the toward Plymouth with dark spring rain clouds above us, I wasn’t thinking about the actual act of finding the buyer in a sea of strokers, I was thinking about the feeling, a feeling hard to describe if you haven’t experienced it. It's the car business at its best, exciting and vital. In that moment you’d rather be there doing this than anything else. Your outside life, your joys and troubles, are all but forgotten as you use your experience and skills to find a buyer and make a living for you and your family.

Does this sound corny or even crazy? Maybe so. I don’t think that The Others could ever relate to this. You have to be a Car Man to understand. These crazy Saturdays don’t happen often—especially these days, but when they do it’s a wonderful thing. And when the day ends you are left in the company of your friends and allies, exhausted, exhilarated—and ready for more.


Talk to you later,


David