Think Shoveling Your Car is Bad? Try a Whole Car Dealership
If you have shoveled out your car not once, not twice, but three times now, you are probably sick of it. Can you imagine if you had to do it for a full parking lot?
That has been the reality for car dealerships struggling to stay open through the bombardment of this month’s snow.
“The sales people and me dig out all our cars,’’ said Bruce Whittier, general sales manager of Watertown Ford. “It takes a whole day. We push it off and have plow trucks and loaders. We move it all ourselves.’’
Adam Skolnick, the general manager of Toyota of Watertown, said he not only loses business on the day the storm hits, but suffers the day after.
“We go out as a group and dig out everything and clean them off,’’ Skolnick said. “Every storm is a day to get inventory back in order so we are back in business.’’
“The amount of snow we had this year is legendary,’’ Marshall Jespersen, the founder of International Cars, Ltd, which has five dealerships in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, said. “It’s the kind of weather you look at and say I would rather be at home.’’
According to dealers, consumers have been doing just that. The winter months are often a slow time of year, but Jespersen said this season has been particularly bad for sales.
“Lousy, they [sales] have just been terrible,’’ he said. “But it’s New England and sometimes it happens.’’
And yet another storm is expected to grace Boston with its presence come Presidents Day weekend – which is typically a huge weekend for car sales.
Jespersen said to make up for this, International Cars, Ltd’s five dealerships are extending their deals for not just this weekend, but for the rest of the month.
Other dealers are more optimistic that this weekend will be okay.
“We consider Presidents Day weekend Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday,’’ Whittier said. “Sounds like we are going to be cleaning Sunday, so that might be a wash that day, but have to just get ready for Monday.’’
But even if this weekend isn’t as successful as they would like, the dealers seem to think it will be fine once the weather calms down a bit.
“We believe there is a lot of pent up demand and just waiting for weather to comply,’’ Skolnick said. “The business is going to be there.’’
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