When I was a lot lizard, (car salesman) I dreamed of better days. I dreamed of having my own crew of lot lizards to boss around and go on demo rides for me to sell their customers cars as a closer, and I dreamed of being the desk guy who sat on his ass, used different colored makers and bossed everyone around. And then later, I dreamed of being one of those wholesalers who came around and hung out in the sales office and told tales from all the other dealerships they visited in their workday. They seemed to make a lot of money, dressed in blue jeans and t-shirts, and they would buy lunch for the “in” guys. I was an “in” guy. I sold a lot of cars, took a lot of trades and paid attention. The wholesalers knew who I was. And like a lot of guys in the car bizz, I thought to be a wholesaler was the dream job of all jobs.
Of course, from that angle, I couldn’t see the down parts, like being a car dealer with all the licenses, insurance, bonds, and so on and so on. Or like buying cars with money and hoping to turn it around quickly and make money and not have to wait for 2 weeks to get the car running right, shifting right, and painted. Oh. I found out.
I was that guy. I started wholesaling. The first order of business is to find a dealer who would sell me some cars. That means driving around to different new car dealerships, finding the used car manager or whoever does the wholesale, introducing myself, and handing out business cards. Generally being a salesman and doing salesman things.
Early on, I tripped into one of the Dodge dealers. It was a big store. They sold a lot of cars. The used car manager was a friend of a friend, so I kind of had a hook there. He sold me a couple of cars and they had profit in them. I sold them to a little used car lot and made a few hundred dollars. That was my start. From there it always goes downhill. The trick is to see the cliff and keep from going over the edge.
The next time I was in the Dodge store, my guy there said he had a Dodge Conquest that was a repo. He needed three bids on it and the winner could have it. I had never bought a car by bidding blind on it, but I knew the way the big guys did it. They would want to buy it for, say $600, so they would put down something over that to outsmart the other bidders, like maybe $605. I knew that part. And little else.
I looked at the car. It was wrecked, not bad, but it needed bodywork and paint. The tires were threads of barely discernable rubber, the interior was filled with McDonald wrappers and Coke cans, and it had a dead battery. I went searching for a jumper box I could use. I screwed around with that car for an hour. It was Sacramento hot, probably over a hundred, and after I got the car running I was soaking with sweat. It ran, the radio worked, the A/C worked. Since it had one flat tire I never found out if it went…either forward or backward. There weren’t many good points to that car, but it was a Conquest which was pretty hot merchandise, I thought.So now I was standing there looking at this car trying to decide how much to bid on it. It was new enough that it was in the Blue Book, (which was an actual book back then, in my pocket) so I booked it out. I don’t remember how much it booked for but it was probably in the six to seven grand range. But, in my limited body and paint estimating skills I figured it would cost five grand to fix it, then another grand for the monster tires that come on that car.
I was stymied. I didn’t want to disappoint my new friend with a really low bid, but I didn’t really want to buy this car, so I wrote the stock number down on my business card and wrote $ 307 on it. There I did it. I bid and I did it like the big boys do, and I knew someone would bid more than three-hundred and seven bucks for the car. I just knew it. I took my business card in. Of course, by then, my guy had gone home for the evening so I just left my business card on his desk with a note.
This was before cell phones. I had a message on my business phone the next morning to call my guy at the Dodge Store. In the message, he said things like congratulations and you won, and call me. Hmmmm. It was early, so the first thing to wander through my mind was, who was this message from and what did I win? Then it dawned on me. A wreck! This was about a wreck. And apparently, the wreck was all mine. All I had to do was go get it.
It was even hotter that day. It was 9AM and it was already in the upper nineties. I was going to have to change a tire, find a jump box and get the car out of there and take it to…damn, where was I gonna take it?. I called my guy, he told me to come get it. He was really cool about it too, and he said he didn’t have the title yet so I wouldn’t have to pay for it for a week or two. So there I was, a real wholesaler. I won a car in a bid, (which means I paid more than everybody else), I used my little fudge the bid trick like the big boys, and I was working the “float” (When you have some time to pay for the car, and back then you could float the bank too. It took two or three days to clear a check). I was doing all the wholesaler things at once, including having a broken wreck for a car with no clear idea how to sell it.
I drove down, got my keys, and went out to look at my purchase. It was in the same place, but now there were other cars all around it. I had to move at least four cars to get my car out. This was all at the very back of the boneyard out back probably a quarter mile from the actual dealership where all the other car keys presumably were and where the battery box was, and where I might get assistance with fixing a tire. It was nigh on a hundred degrees by then and still climbing by the minute.
I walked all the way back to the dealership and noticed a few salesmen. They were sitting in their suits, drinking coffee, telling jokes, and waiting for their up to come in and let them make a commission right there in the cool showroom. I thought one of them would probably change positions with me, you know, be the wholesaler. Sitting in the cool showroom seemed like a good way to spend the day to me.
I went to find keys. No one seemed to know anything about any of those cars out there and there hadn’t been any stock numbers that I could see on them. I was told they were probably in for service and go check in the shop. It took at least an hour to find keys for a couple of the cars, so I walked back out there pushing a jumper box with what keys I had to see if I could shoe-horn my car out…after I jacked it up and took off the big tire and put on the little donut thing… if it had air in it.
I was at least another two hours into this and it was now approaching a hundred and fifty degrees outside. I got cars moved around so I would be able to get the Conquest out after I fixed the tire thing. I was standing there looking at my dilemma and wondering about my choices in my young life. I needed a break. I went inside to find a soda and a cool place to sit. And I came up with another plan.
I used one of their phones called one of the “big boy” wholesalers I knew. I started out with, “Hey JT, wondering if you’d be interested in a Dodge Conquest that needs a little work, but is cheap?”
When he asked how much, I blurted out seven hundred bucks. I told him all the good parts about the car, primarily it booked for six grand plus, had fairly low miles but did need a little body work and some tires. He said he’d look at it if I could bring it over. He did it just like the big boys do. I didn’t want to fuck with it at all anymore. I kind of explained my dilemma to him and he agreed to drive down and look at it where it sat. I knew I had committed a huge wholesaler no-no. He now knew where I was buying cars. Well, he knew where I bought one wreck at least.
He came looked at the next morning when it was cool (he impressed me with the suggestion to do it before the high heat). I met him there. It was still free to get it out, nothing had been moved. He didn’t really spend a lot of time looking at it, but he turned and said, “I’ll give you five hundred if that works.”
I put on my big boy wholesaler pants and said, “No, I need seven hundred. ” He smiled and let me sweat for a little bit and then said he’d do it, though he knew I was making money off him. And he laughed a little.
I asked him if he wanted some help to get the car out. He said he’d have his tow truck guy come and get it and he left after he told me to let him know when the title came in and he’d pay me.
I won! I made some money and even though I’d spent hours there on that one damned Dodge, sweating, grunting, and moaning, I was elated. I made near four hundred bucks on a three hundred dollar car, sold it in two days and never moved it.
I saw JT at the auction the next week and we were talking. I asked him how the project car I’d sold him was going. He said he was done with all he was going to do to it and low and behold, here it came into the auction block. He didn’t fix anything, He put new air in the flat wore out tire, and he washed it off and emptied the trash and here it was, waiting for the bidding to begin. It started at a thousand bucks and took off like an F18 on a sortie. When it was done the car sold for four grand.
And that right there, is how the big boys do it.