January 15, 2025 • 41 mins
If you sell cars for over forty years like my good friend Roger Beard, you're going to have some stories. Roger's adventures include selling cars to exotic dancers, ball busters, drunks, and a couple who had to offer their cow as part of the deal.
In addition to those humorous tales, he answers questionns about vehicles such as
- Is there a best time to buy a car?
- Should you use your own financing or go with the dealership?
- Do you need to follow the car maker's manual on items like cabin filters,,radiator and transmission flushing?
- How valuable is an extended warranty?
This is part II of our interview with this veteran of the car industry.
https://okboomer.libsyn.com/site
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ANJjEbjvP0&list=PLkRx0bBfd2KyT7PSb2RVQcGhZyPCvTarp
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TTaudioworks/?modal=admin_todo_tour
Website: https://tommytones.webnode.com/
Email: ttaudioworks@gmail.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Let me give you the pizza gate story. This is
in Sterling. And this guy,
he was kind of a ball buster, but he hammered
back and forth and back. We ain't getting no place fast. He shook hands
and said, you know what? We'll take it. And. And I said, well,
what time you want to pick it up? I said, we'll pick it up tomorrow
(00:22):
at three. Great. We'll see you tomorrow. Three. I'll have it all ready to go.
Doesn't show, I call him. Well, we decided
to go with the other offer. He beat your deal by a hundred bucks.
So I hung up the phone and I looked across at the manager
and I said, you know what? I said, that son of a. Sold us out
(00:42):
for a hundred dollars. I said, I'm gonna get my hundred dollars
back. And he said, well, how are you gonna do that? Sat down
and I got the yellow pages out, and I called every
pizza store in Sterling and
had them deliver an extra large supreme
(01:02):
to this guy's house all at the same time. Oh,
my God. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Okay, Boomer. Okay, Boomer.
Okay, Boom. Okay, Boomer. Okay,
Boomer. That was Roger
Floyd beard with a bit of an excerpt from when a
(01:25):
story he told us about retribution on a car
sale that went wrong. Ah, Chase Boomer.
With friends like that, you don't need any enemies. True.
And he is a friend. And he was friendly enough to share
an hour and a half of his experiences over 40
years of selling vehicles in part one
(01:45):
and here in part two, he regales us with a number of stories
over that four decades of selling. In addition to providing us
with valuable information on how to approach buying a
vehicle, including today, we'll cover a number of things, including whether
or not you should get that extended warranty. All right, well,
let's hear it.
(02:12):
Extended warranties, are they worth it?
That's a tough one. I would tell you, depending upon
your buying habits, if you're a short
term owner. No, I wouldn't do it if you said,
look, I'm not buying a car for another 10 years. You may want to consider
(02:33):
it.
I know up in where you guys are in Illinois, they're, the price
is negotiable. In Florida, it is not.
It's a standardized price. You can't. It is what it is.
And we sold a lot of extended
warranties. And I can tell you people,
(02:56):
some people never used them, and some people were damn glad they had
them. Right, but you didn't give me a hard yes from the
get go because. It just Depends
on who, what type of buyer you are. If you said, I'm buying a new
car every four years and no, don't do it. If you said,
I'm not buying a car for 10 years, here's a good example.
(03:18):
We had a guy who was trading a truck in. His truck was probably
nine years old and he had bought,
believe it or not, a 10 year warranty on his truck.
Unlimited miles. Wow.
And it was only powertrain. So it was engine, transmission.
(03:40):
Ren and son of a engine
seized up and the warranty company came
out. They went through all the things and he had all the oil changes.
You know, he took care of it for all that time, but just
gave out. And he put a brand new engine,
200,000 miles on it. How about that? And we
(04:03):
ended up selling them another truck and trading them out of it because of that.
Because we could do that because we knew they were going to put an engine
there. Nice. All right. Yeah.
So it just depends. Yeah. On this Colorado that
I own, didn't plan on buying a new one,
but it was employee. It was employee
pricing month or something like that. Just kind of walked.
(04:26):
Just kind of walked into it because I was. I was determined on
buying a good used pickup. But the
price was right. And the guy wanted to sell me an extended warranty. He said,
no. I told Lee, my wife said, nah, I'm going to pass on that.
And he goes, you sure? Yeah. No. And we continue
doing all the paperwork. He said, look, I like you guys. I want
(04:47):
you to have the extended warranty. I got these what they call
dealership bucks. And he had like $1,500 worth of them.
They're at the end of the month. They're not going to do me any good.
In two days from now. He says, I can apply this to your warranty.
I'm like, I think I said no one more time.
I actually came up with another like $500. This will go towards
(05:10):
your extended warranty. Okay. I can't
say no to that. And it was. This is a
2019 truck. So it's just about to run out. I've used it
numerous times. And for the price of the warranty, it was a great buy for
me. So I was glad. Oh, yeah. For everything he did for it.
You can do that up there. You can't do that down there. I mean,
(05:32):
if the price is 2,500 bucks for the warranty, it's 2,500 bucks
for the warranty. Very nice. There's no negotiations
or extras. So that's Great that you had that.
Let's talk money a little bit further about financing. That's always
a perplexing thing for people who are
buying. Should they, should people finance with a dealership or should they try and get
(05:54):
financing on their own through a bank or some other institution?
Well, I would tell you it's like a house,
right? If you're going to go look for a house, you want to go get
your financing in order first.
I would say a car. To me, a car is no different.
You need to go to your credit union or whoever
(06:17):
and say, look, I'm looking to buy a car. It's going to be
about this much money. Get yourself pre approved.
Now, your bank's not going to offer you zero
percent, right? I don't care who they are.
They're not going to throw that at you. No, they're not in the business to.
They're in the business to make money. Right. And you have to remember
(06:39):
the lending arm of different dealerships,
new car franchises are in the
business to sell cars. So they
give you or offer you a 36 or a 48 or
whatever month loan at 0%.
That's really 0%. I mean,
(07:00):
you're not paying any interest. Okay.
So that's something you have to just find. And again, you can do a lot
of that online before you ever go in.
Good stuff, good preparation.
Don't be a sucker. Get your homework done. That doing the.
Yeah. Now you're know your stuff. There's no excuse now to not know
(07:20):
your stuff. When I started, nobody knew their stuff.
And it was like I
had guys I work with that said it was like shooting ducks in a pond.
And I, I understand that completely.
Nowadays it's not that way. So you have all
this information available to you. You need to go out and use it.
(07:41):
Well, you've hit that bell twice now. Being prepared
before you walk onto the lot, whether that's a phone call, whether that's
the idea about knowing what is available to yourself privately
as financing before you even hear a dealership's offer. Good stuff.
Good stuff. Know your options. It's the
second most expensive thing most people will
(08:04):
ever buy. Yeah, absolutely.
So how about another break room story, Rod? What do you got there from the
archives? Are you guys just sitting around swapping stories?
Let me give you the Pizzagate story.
This is in Sterling. And this guy,
he was kind of a ball buster, but he
(08:27):
wanted this. And he was playing us against two other stores.
And we had the car and nobody else had
the car. And we weren't going to give it to him. So he came in
and we hammered back and forth and back, and we ain't getting
no place fast. We didn't even have a trade. This is just on the value
of the car. It was a brand new car. And he
(08:49):
shook hands and said, you know what? We'll take
it. And him and his wife were both there. Swear to God, they both shook
my hand, we'll take it. And. And I said, well, what time you want to
pick it up? I said, we'll pick it up tomorrow at 3. No problem.
We'll pick up the kids from school. We're coming straight here. Great. We'll see you
tomorrow. 3. I'll have it all ready to go.
Doesn't show.
(09:12):
I call him. Finally get a hold of them.
Because obviously there's no cell phones. You gotta wait till they get home to get
a hold of them. Right. Well, we decided to go with the other
offer. He beat your deal by a hundred, bu.
So I hung up the phone and I
looked across at the manager and I said, you know what? I said, that son
(09:35):
of a. Sold us out for a hundred dollars.
I said, I'm gonna get my hundred dollars back. And he says,
well, how are you gonna do that? I said, watch this.
Sat down and I got the yellow pages out and
I called everybody. Pizza store in Sterling
(09:56):
and had them deliver. Because remember, there's no
caller id. They don't know who you are. Had them deliver
an extra large supreme to
this guy's house all at the same time.
Oh my God. Like six of them. You swatted
this guy. So I drove over to his house because he wasn't
(10:18):
far from the store. And I parked down the street and I waited.
And here they come, one after the other,
heading up to his door.
Pizza party at your house.
I went just to check it out.
19 extra larges. What a shame no
(10:39):
one came. Roger Pizzagate.
Oh, my God. Oh, man. Should have called him
up. Said, well, I knew you could afford that pizza. Cause you had 100 extra
dollars there to spend. Yeah, 100 extra dollars. So enjoy that.
Yeah, Pizza all day. And every day
there's cheese. Round the clock is getting me blocked. And I sure don't
(11:02):
care for irregularity.
Tell me, why'd you have to go and make me so constipated?
Cause right now I do anything to just get my bowels
evacuated. It's funny watching
the guys, the pizza guys looking at each other like, what are you doing here?
I don't know. What are you doing there should be like
(11:25):
10 cars in this driveway if we're having this kind of a party.
Absolutely. Oh, man. All right.
Is there a best time of year or month to look for a
vehicle? Do dealerships have quotas? Whether. Maybe the
management's saying, hey, look, we can go
down quite a bit today or this end of the month because we're trying
(11:47):
to meet our quotas or trying to make a. Yeah, there's.
There's no question that dealerships have quotas. No, no doubt.
And. And I would tell you this. When I moved to Florida, I went to
work at Canyon Dodge in Clearwater.
And it seemed like, I don't know what year it was,
91 or 92. Chrysler came in and
they wanted to interview. They wanted a. A question and answer
(12:10):
thing. And they said, we want an hour with sales managers,
an hour with service managers and hour with parts managers,
and then an hour with a dealer. With the dealer. And we
just want to ask you questions. And so. Okay, so I sat in this sales
thing and they said, one of the first questions they asked is,
why do you sell so many cars at the end of the month and not
(12:32):
the beginning of the month? And they're all looking at me. And I
go, well, there's two reasons that. One, we've trained the
American public to think that.
So hence decades of telling them, don't go out
to the end of the month. They don't. I said, but let me ask you
a question. Why do we not see any national car ads at the beginning
(12:53):
of the month and only at the end? Dead silence.
Couldn't answer me on that question. Interesting.
And now you see, not saying it's because of
that, but now you see car ads all month long.
Yeah. Interesting. So is there any truth to dealerships
(13:14):
wanting to clear their lot because they got new cars coming in that
they're willing to negotiate a little bit more?
Sometimes. Sometimes. It just depends.
It depends.
I would tell you if you went on a lot and you said, look,
I'm going to look for a specific pickup truck and I need a
(13:34):
half ton, blah, blah, blah, whatever model it is,
Dodge, Ford, Chevy, gmc,
didn't matter, and you saw four rows
of them, you probably got an upper
hand in negotiating on that. Okay, if you said,
I'm looking for a certain SUV and you didn't see
(13:56):
one a lot, and you went online, you didn't see any online,
and that's probably going to be tougher to get and be more expensive.
Understood. All right. Roger Boomer's got
this Chevy Colorado. He's Going to keep it for a. Few more years
because he does like to hang on for 10 or so. When he
goes to get rid of. This,
(14:18):
he might have a trade in to offer.
How should that be handled? Is that something that you don't want. To talk
about at all? And should you try to just settle. A price on the
vehicle you're perching. Off the loss and then start.
You can bring the trade in up. But again,
I'm going to go back to what I told you half an hour
(14:39):
ago. Do it online first and
you'll have an idea what they're thinking about. As long as you didn't lie
to them what the car looks like. Right. And then
we've had people tell us, hey, you know, my car is perfect, blah blah,
blah, blah. And I go to look at it and the errors off and
got dents in the fender and blah, blah, you know, I mean the headliners
(15:03):
falling down, that's not perfect. But if you tell it the
way it is, you'll have a pretty good idea. But no, you don't have to
hide it. But you do want to try and separate what
you're buying the car from, whether it's new, used and
what you're getting for yours. And then look at the difference.
Another dealership could say they were going to charge three grand
(15:25):
more for the car and give you three grand more for yours, but your difference
is the same. Right? Right. See what I'm saying?
You need to look at the difference and separate the two
things and know. What your bottom line or top line
is. In either case, if you're writing a check. What am I writing a check
for? There you go.
(15:46):
Anything else about someone who's got a car that they're
going to trade in? Be honest. Know what, you have a good idea of
what it's worth and keep those figures separate between what you're purchasing and
what you're trading in. Yeah.
Now just be honest with the store when you, when you do that.
And like if you're online and you, you send an
(16:07):
inquiry on a vehicle, send them
a couple pictures of your car, send them an exterior
interior shot, take a picture of your mileage
so they can see exactly how many miles you are. Take a picture of your
VIN number so they can get the VIN number, they can get you
a pretty accurate description as long as you haven't, you know, misled them and what
(16:29):
the condition it's in that can help you make a decision.
Yeah. Illinois is the same as,
as here. When you trade a car in, you Pay tax
on the difference. You don't pay tax on the top line.
You. When you, the car that you own, you've already paid sales
tax, so the state gives you a break when you trade it
(16:50):
in. So if you have a. A car that's worth $10,000
and you're buying a $20,000 car,
you only pay tax on 10. You don't pay tax on 20.
All right, put your service hat on. What about
recommended maintenance items? My vehicle is getting to the age
now where, if I look at my maintenance book, that comes with the vehicle,
(17:14):
you ought to have your cabin filter change here. You ought to have the radiator
flush. You ought to have flush or transmission fluid.
Are all those things critical?
I. I don't know how critical those things are.
The most critical thing you can do to your vehicle is
change the oil and rotate and balance the tires.
(17:36):
Those are probably the two most important things you can do
for your vehicle. Now if you have your vehicle
five years, you might want to consider.
And again, it depends, like the cabin filter thing.
I mean, it depends on if you're sensitive allergies.
(17:57):
I mean, that's what. Cabin filter, you can do that yourself.
It's behind your glove box. You just drop your glove box down the cabin
filters right there. Well, you buy one and put it in there. It's not that
hard to do. Especially after I watched the YouTube video.
It wasn't that bad. Yeah, yeah, it's not, it's not hard to
do. But I did manage to break the slow release button
(18:19):
on my. Now my, my glove department
or glove compartment door just opens like it normally does under that slow
release and go back. So I did,
I did screw it up a little bit, but I did get it fixed myself.
And it wasn't that dirty. It wasn't that dirty. But I don't,
I don't drive on a lot of gravel roads anymore, so.
(18:40):
No. You know, like when I would take in a car,
if I appraised a car that was 4 years old, 5 years at
3, 4, 5 years old when I took it in, if it was in good
shape, the only thing I'm doing is changing the oil.
I mean, if it needs brakes, I'll put brakes on it.
But I'm not doing all that maintenance stuff to it and
(19:01):
not saying down the road, that's not something you should do. But I just
don't think you should do it at the level and the increments that they tell
you to do it. That's all. Okay. And these aren't Dealership
recommendations. This is the print that came with the new vehicle.
Correct. Because they make money off
doing that, right? Makes sense. Okay, good to
(19:23):
know.
Hey, let's take this opportunity right here to hear from
our sponsors. Okay, brief message coming up.
Around P Town around P Town it's
got the news that you can use Around P
(19:45):
Town around p town.com it's got the scoop
with all the poop man's barbershop It's
a place I like to stop Whether it's to get
a fancy do or just buzz off my mop, mop, mop,
mop Ben's Barber Shop It's a place I
like a lot and you'd like it, too if you
(20:07):
did your due at Ben's Barber Shop.
That's Ben's Barber Shop in Morrison, Illinois.
Look him up on Facebook. Make an appointment. Tell him, Jimmy, I'm a
doofus. Sent you.
All right, let's dip back into the break room.
(20:29):
Story files. Rogue. I. I know there's one in there about a cow sale,
as I. I understand. Yeah,
I moved to Florida in 1989 and I went to work
in a Dodge store.
And I'm gonna drop
this story on you before I drop the cow story.
Okay? So I've been in town
(20:51):
about two months, and it's about,
I don't know, 4:00 in the afternoon. This woman pulls up out front
and I go out to say hi, and she
introduces herself and I shake her hand and she pulls out Saturday's ad.
And this is like a Monday. And she said, do you still have this
(21:12):
car? And I said, yeah, it's a Dodge Daytona. It's right behind you.
Pricey paint on the window. She said, I'm very interested. I said,
okay, well, let me get a key and I'll open it up and I'll show
you the car. It turns out she had told her car she
already had a check for the insurance company. She had her. She was just borrowing
the car she was in. And now it's like
(21:34):
5:00, right? And the dealership I worked at was on US 19,
which is the equivalent of 85,000 cars a day
go by the front of the place here in Pinellas County.
So she said to me, you know, it's a little busy out there,
and I'm a little fearful. Do you mind driving off a lot?
I said, no, I don't. No problem at all. So I drove off the lot.
(21:57):
And of course, all right, hand turns. But anyway,
I'm still doing all right. And then I pull over in the Publix parking lot,
which is a grocery store chain down there. And I
said to her, okay, we're gonna switch and I'll let you drive back. She said,
no, I'm still scared. Do you mind? I said, no, I don't mind.
So I drove all the way back to the store. Now, I will tell
(22:19):
you right now, the car was a basic.
I mean, the only option this car had was air conditioning.
It's a manual transmission, crank, windows,
base car. Yeah. So we get inside,
write the deal up. She has no trade. Do the whole thing.
(22:40):
She puts her check down, put her in finance. She comes
out later, it's about, oh,
7:30. I go. I hand her the keys.
I go, congratulations on your new car. And she hands them back to
me and says, now you can teach me how to drive a stick.
(23:00):
And I said, why would you do that?
And she said, it's the only way I was ever going to make myself do
it. Oh, no. So now it's like a quarter to eight,
and she doesn't know how to drive a stick, and I have to teach her.
You didn't sign up for this. And you're.
Oh, crap. So here we go. She's living in some
(23:21):
apartment complex down the street. She takes the car back.
I'm driving behind her. I let her drive. We're going around
and around this carpet. And they had
like, speed bumps, and she couldn't get over them with the stick. Right.
I mean, she just totally lost on that. Oh, my God.
It took me an hour and a half. Oh, my God, that's hilarious.
(23:44):
You had to work for that sale, buddy. Yeah, you're not a kid.
So I went. Let me follow it up, okay? They got bought
out by a. One of the conglomerates down here, which I've
never worked for. So I. I moved over to Tampa
and I worked at Bobbleson Dodge on North Florida Avenue, which is.
(24:04):
We call it Suitcase City. And it's
a really rough section of town, okay?
Prostitution, drugs,
guns, child molester. I mean, just,
you name it. It's in that area. They're not buying a whole lot
of cars. I don't think those people. Yeah, but we sold the out of them.
(24:25):
Do you know we could sell.
Let's just say we'll call them exotic dancers,
huh? If they had
50% down, they could buy a car.
She had to put down 50% of what?
Easy, Jimmy. This is a family show,
(24:47):
okay? So they would come in and go, well, I like that car.
And I said, well, that's 20 grand. You need 10 grand down. They said,
okay, what we got? She didn't bring back a whole bunch of
$1 bills, a bunch of wadded.
Up 20s and tens and fives. That kind of succeeded.
Bell, sit there and count all that out.
(25:08):
Were you wearing plastic gloves, I hope, Raj.
Yeah, this was before that. No, this was before plastic gloves
now. But it was.
It was. It was a crazy time. But this is where we took
in the cow. So we got this guy who
had totaled his truck, and he had gotten enough
(25:31):
money for the truck to just cover what he owed, so he had nothing,
and he needed another truck. And super
nice people could just barely
get the financing straightened away, and we're
about $500 away. And I.
I told the salesperson, I said, we got to find 500 bucks. I said,
(25:52):
do they have anything? A jet ski, a motorcycle,
boat? What do they have? He comes back, he goes, they got a cow.
I said, what the hell am I going to do with a cow?
Exactly. So I go down, I talk to the people,
and they had a picture of this cow. It was like a year old.
(26:14):
So I went up to the manager to the gm, and I said, okay,
we can sell these people a truck, but we got to take in a cow.
And he said, a cow? I said, yeah, here's a picture.
It's dangerous. Called this guy who's a friend of the story, the farmer,
and we showed him the cow and blah, blah, blah. He said, I'll pay 500
bucks for the cow. I said, all right. So I went down. I told the
(26:36):
guy, you got to go home and get the cow and bring it back.
So his wife stayed, he ran home, got the cow, brought it back,
put it out front, delivered them in the truck.
And then we called the other guy. He came and picked up the cow.
The cow was there for about roaming loose for about an hour and a half.
Oh, my God. Did it leave anything behind for you to shovel up?
(26:57):
Give me I a cow, Petty.
Give me I a cow.
I would tell you, in that dealership, we took in
a cow, we took in a diamond ring,
we took in land.
Awesome. We take in just about anything. Yeah.
(27:19):
All right. I like a barter economy.
I like it. Hey,
Roger, you spent over 40 years working in the car
industry and car sales specifically. If someone
was thinking about making a career
as you have, first of all, would you recommend it?
(27:40):
And two, if you would, how would you tell them to prepare for it?
Let's say it's some kid, maybe some high school kids, you know, they're thinking about
doing car sales. What would you recommend?
I would tell you that,
yes, it's a great career.
Obviously, it's been very good to me. But conversely,
(28:02):
I've also been very good to it.
And I know an awful lot of people
who made an awful lot of money and did a great job and
retired comfortably, and now they work their
ass off for a long number of time. But, you know,
if you're a young kid and, you know, maybe college isn't for you and
(28:24):
you're not sure that's what you want to do, but you have the gift to
gab and you can talk to people and you have the
ability to listen. That's really what it's all about.
When I interviewed salespeople, I said, the only thing you need to come to work
here is a pen and a brain. And amazingly,
most of the people came in without one or the other or both when
(28:47):
they applied. I would say that's really all you need.
Pin in the brain and we'll tell you how to do everything else. And if
you do that and you stick it out, in five years,
you're making six figures. Nice.
That's a nice turnaround. When you were hiring people, were you looking
for anything specific? A type of personality?
(29:08):
Again, they have to be open, they have to be able to talk to people.
I wasn't looking for know it alls. I wasn't looking
for people are afraid or didn't
want to talk or shy. You can't be that, you know,
and you have to have thick skin because you're going to be told no.
Yeah. A million, about a million times.
(29:32):
And an old guy told me once, he said, no means
just no, not yet. So you, you just got
to keep selling. Very nice. Yeah.
I'm thinking about personalities and yours,
as I remember you well from your younger days,
I could see why people would be,
(29:54):
well, attracted. It's not the word I'm looking for,
but they would feel comfortable with you because you
come across as sincere. I don't know that there was
a sarcastic bone in your body. And sincerity
would be something that I think that you would, if you were able to let
it show, that they would be able to. To sense and value
(30:16):
and, and would help towards moving towards a
sale because you'd be somebody that would be trustworthy. That's really
the, the major thing that you do in selling cars is
you have to get people to trust you. And once they trust
you, they're going to send you
people and you're going to walk Out. And you're going to be sitting there at
(30:37):
your desk, and somebody's going to say, hey, Roger, got people here, and you don't
even know who the hell they are. Oh. So and so said that this is
the only place we could go. Oh, okay. I'm Roger.
Let's go. And that happens over and over and
over again. That's got to make you feel good. Yeah. And it doesn't.
It. It's not overnight, and it's not right.
(30:58):
Even over a month or, you know, it's something you build.
And I told you at the beginning, you asked me about a guy that I
appreciated, Joe Reve, who worked for us for 19 years.
He had 500 people who
only bought from Joe. Wow.
And that's all he did was work those 500 people.
(31:21):
He rarely took anybody new because he didn't have time.
You know, you're good. When. What percentage of your sales are
repeat customers, what would you. What would you hope for?
That, you know, you've made your mark or that you're moving into
a good. A good area? If. What percentage of your
(31:41):
sales are repeat sales? When you.
If you're good and you greet somebody on the lot.
Right. So let's say average
salesperson in the United states talks to 10 people and
they sell 20%.
(32:01):
A good salesperson is going to sell 30 to 35%.
Nice of that. 30 to 35%.
If you can retain 50% of that,
all you're doing is building your business to a point that you.
You might not even be able to take care of it all down the road.
That's ideal. I can. Just being honest, you know,
(32:24):
I can remember my dad. He would go to McElhinney Motors in Clinton.
Yes, yes. And he would ask for a specific salesperson, just like
those people were asking for Joe. Yeah.
That's. That's where you want to be. That's what you go. And that's what I
tried to. When I. When I would talk to new people
and interview them, I would say, you know, your goal is
(32:46):
not to come in here, and you're not going to make 100 grand the first
year you're here. But if you build and listen
and take your time and pace yourself,
my goodness, you can make as much money as you
want and work as long as you want. What would
be an average career? How long would somebody. Obviously,
(33:06):
there's people like you that could spend 40 years
doing this, but typically, what would you expect? What would be an average
tenure of somebody selling cars 10, 20 years
before they Move on to something else.
I. I would tell you if. If a. If a car
(33:27):
salesperson got to 10,
he might not ever do anything different because
he's at an income level and a comfort
level that he would probably like to stay at.
So. So it's not unusual for guys putting in 20, 30 or
plus years. It's. It's less on.
(33:51):
It's not as usual nowadays as it was when I was doing
it. Okay, but it still happens.
Certainly still happens. Sure. All right,
I'm curious. Men versus women. What. What percentage of the sales
force is men versus women? When I started,
it was 100 men. And when
(34:13):
I retired two and a half years ago, probably 30%,
35 women. Okay. @ least in my experience.
So it's growing? Oh, it's growing massively. Yeah.
And. And I would say this.
Women are much more organized than men are.
Typically. They are. I'm just saying.
(34:35):
And as far as, like, setting herself up and
their business up and their follow up and their customers and all
this stuff, they are much more organized than men are.
All right. Hey, Rog, we've been at this for an
hour, almost an hour and a. Half, so any other
break room stories you want to share with us, big guy?
(34:58):
Yeah, I got one more. That's a hilarious one. Then I'll leave you with that
one. So in Tampa, I'm working at this store,
and I told you we sold questionable people,
and we sold this guy a truck,
and whenever we thought it was a questionable deal,
we wouldn't give him both sets of keys. We'd keep a
(35:19):
set just in case. So sure
as he lied on his credit app.
So they call us. Bank calls us a couple days later. So now
we're not catching that contract. The guy works there, but he doesn't make anywhere what
he said he did. Hmm. They're like.
So we try and reach out to him. We can't get a hold of him.
(35:41):
So me and the gm, we jump in a car and
we drive over to where this guy lives in apartment complex.
Can't see the truck anywhere. And his apartment's on
the ground floor above him. There's this old
woman sitting outside her apartment, and she
says, I'll bet you're looking for him.
(36:03):
And I said, who's him? She said, the guy in
the red truck said, yes, we are,
and told her the whole thing. She says, well, he comes
and goes. She said, but I don't always see him. She said, normally he's
at that bar down the street. And of course, he wasn't There.
Then I said, I'll tell you what we'll do. I'll bring you a 50
(36:25):
bill if you call us when you see him.
And she said, I'll do that. I said, all right. And I gave her my
card. About four days later, we get a phone call
from her about 6:00 at night. And she said,
he set the bar now. Okay, we go
fly it over there. I see the truck sitting in the parking lot of the
(36:45):
bar. I go up, I give the woman the 50 bucks. I go
out. Keith jumps in the truck because we have the other key. The back
of the pickup bed of the truck is just full of crap.
Just boxes and beer cans
and towels and blank. Whatever.
He takes off, I'm right behind him. We're going back to the store. We're sitting
(37:08):
at the first light and I'm. I look up and
the son of a sits up in the back of the truck.
He got drunk at the bar and. Passed out out in the bed
of the truck. He's in the bed of the truck. Hey, I'm talking.
I'm dialing the phone. I'm rapidly dialing the phone to kid. I go
(37:29):
pull over. The guy's the back of the truck now.
So he pulls over and I pull over behind him. We throw the
guy out of the truck, we throw all of his on the floor on the,
on the parking lot and we haul ass out of there.
My heart's going a thousand miles a minute. Hilarious.
Oh, so he never came back and tried to get his truck again? He just
(37:51):
let it go? No, no, he knew. He lied on his credit
app. Just new truck to
drive around for a week. He gave you a ride on his
credit history and you guys gave him a ride in the back of his truck.
Nice. Absolutely. I, I can
still see it to this day. This guy's sitting up. I thought it was a
(38:12):
corpse. I couldn't believe it. Oh, my God.
So he had blankets back there. You must have had one pulled over when you
guys were looking. Didn't ex. There was more junk in that bed
than you knew. I got an eight foot bed that
never has to be made. You know, if it weren't for trucks, we wouldn't have
tailgates. I met all my wives. And traffic
(38:34):
jams are just something women like about a pickup man.
Exactly. Oh, good stuff. Hey, Rog, thanks for the entertaining
stories and thank you for the good advice on how to
make a smart purchase of a vehicle, what to look for, and the insights
into sales that gives us a better Appreciation of what you've done and
(38:58):
what a consumer can expect when they call or
actually walk on to a lot valuable information. Not a
problem, brother. I appreciate it very much. Thank you, Rog. Thanks for being
on the show. You're a wealth of information. You take care of
yourself and enjoy the non snow you got down there
in Florida. I'm gonna enjoy the 78 degree temp
(39:20):
tomorrow. Thank you. I appreciate it very much. Rub it in.
All right. But good luck in your car
purchase endeavors there. Thanks. I'm gonna hang on to
that 71 Chevy van as long as I can, but it's
gotta go. Sometimes everything reaches its point.
Kind of like you and I and the length of this episode.
(39:43):
So that
was so much fun. I hope you enjoyed the car buying
tips and the hilarious stories that Roger shared with us.
Well, and all that did Palmer, you got any more friends we can
interview? Well, I don't. Yeah, I'm sure I do.
(40:06):
I'm sure there's somebody out there that wants to share with
us their life story. All you gotta do is contact me. I know
sometimes you can be reluctant to do so. It took a lot of
coaxing over a couple of years to get Roger to come on and share
his stories with us. Yeah, don't be shy. Come on,
it'll be a lot of fun. Well, it sure was fun
(40:28):
talking with Roger. Thank you for listening, Jimmy.
And I want to wish you the best that 2025
can bring. Ah, shut up.
And kids, don't forget to be checking in with around petetown.com.
it's got all the news that you can use. Stay hip,
(40:49):
stay classy with aroundpetown.com and
for you friends, fellas that want that hip and classy look, well,
then you're going to want to get your butt to Ben's Barbershop chair.
That's right, Ben's Barbershop. Look him up on
facebook.com. he's in Morrison. You make an appointment,
you're going to love it. If you enjoyed listening to all
(41:12):
Boomer here, he'd appreciate it if you'd subscribe to
his podcast. So you'd get notifications of when the next episode's
coming up. Maybe leave a rating on a review.
But yeah, go ahead and subscribe. That helps the podcast grow and
it makes the little fella feel so much better. And if you had any
feedback for him, you know, go ahead and contact them@ttaudioworksmail.com
(41:35):
Again, that's ttaudioworksmail.com
okay, I'll see you in the next episode.
Let me give you the pizza gate story. This is
in Sterling. And this guy,
he was kind of a ball buster, but he hammered
back and forth and back. We ain't getting no place fast. He shook hands
and said, you know what? We'll take it. And. And I said, well,
what time you want to pick it up? I said, we'll pick it up tomorrow
(00:22):
at three. Great. We'll see you tomorrow. Three. I'll have it all ready to go.
Doesn't show, I call him. Well, we decided
to go with the other offer. He beat your deal by a hundred bucks.
So I hung up the phone and I looked across at the manager
and I said, you know what? I said, that son of a. Sold us out
(00:42):
for a hundred dollars. I said, I'm gonna get my hundred dollars
back. And he said, well, how are you gonna do that? Sat down
and I got the yellow pages out, and I called every
pizza store in Sterling and
had them deliver an extra large supreme
(01:02):
to this guy's house all at the same time. Oh,
my God. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Okay, Boomer. Okay, Boomer.
Okay, Boom. Okay, Boomer. Okay,
Boomer. That was Roger
Floyd beard with a bit of an excerpt from when a
(01:25):
story he told us about retribution on a car
sale that went wrong. Ah, Chase Boomer.
With friends like that, you don't need any enemies. True.
And he is a friend. And he was friendly enough to share
an hour and a half of his experiences over 40
years of selling vehicles in part one
(01:45):
and here in part two, he regales us with a number of stories
over that four decades of selling. In addition to providing us
with valuable information on how to approach buying a
vehicle, including today, we'll cover a number of things, including whether
or not you should get that extended warranty. All right, well,
let's hear it.
(02:12):
Extended warranties, are they worth it?
That's a tough one. I would tell you, depending upon
your buying habits, if you're a short
term owner. No, I wouldn't do it if you said,
look, I'm not buying a car for another 10 years. You may want to consider
(02:33):
it.
I know up in where you guys are in Illinois, they're, the price
is negotiable. In Florida, it is not.
It's a standardized price. You can't. It is what it is.
And we sold a lot of extended
warranties. And I can tell you people,
(02:56):
some people never used them, and some people were damn glad they had
them. Right, but you didn't give me a hard yes from the
get go because. It just Depends
on who, what type of buyer you are. If you said, I'm buying a new
car every four years and no, don't do it. If you said,
I'm not buying a car for 10 years, here's a good example.
(03:18):
We had a guy who was trading a truck in. His truck was probably
nine years old and he had bought,
believe it or not, a 10 year warranty on his truck.
Unlimited miles. Wow.
And it was only powertrain. So it was engine, transmission.
(03:40):
Ren and son of a engine
seized up and the warranty company came
out. They went through all the things and he had all the oil changes.
You know, he took care of it for all that time, but just
gave out. And he put a brand new engine,
200,000 miles on it. How about that? And we
(04:03):
ended up selling them another truck and trading them out of it because of that.
Because we could do that because we knew they were going to put an engine
there. Nice. All right. Yeah.
So it just depends. Yeah. On this Colorado that
I own, didn't plan on buying a new one,
but it was employee. It was employee
pricing month or something like that. Just kind of walked.
(04:26):
Just kind of walked into it because I was. I was determined on
buying a good used pickup. But the
price was right. And the guy wanted to sell me an extended warranty. He said,
no. I told Lee, my wife said, nah, I'm going to pass on that.
And he goes, you sure? Yeah. No. And we continue
doing all the paperwork. He said, look, I like you guys. I want
(04:47):
you to have the extended warranty. I got these what they call
dealership bucks. And he had like $1,500 worth of them.
They're at the end of the month. They're not going to do me any good.
In two days from now. He says, I can apply this to your warranty.
I'm like, I think I said no one more time.
I actually came up with another like $500. This will go towards
(05:10):
your extended warranty. Okay. I can't
say no to that. And it was. This is a
2019 truck. So it's just about to run out. I've used it
numerous times. And for the price of the warranty, it was a great buy for
me. So I was glad. Oh, yeah. For everything he did for it.
You can do that up there. You can't do that down there. I mean,
(05:32):
if the price is 2,500 bucks for the warranty, it's 2,500 bucks
for the warranty. Very nice. There's no negotiations
or extras. So that's Great that you had that.
Let's talk money a little bit further about financing. That's always
a perplexing thing for people who are
buying. Should they, should people finance with a dealership or should they try and get
(05:54):
financing on their own through a bank or some other institution?
Well, I would tell you it's like a house,
right? If you're going to go look for a house, you want to go get
your financing in order first.
I would say a car. To me, a car is no different.
You need to go to your credit union or whoever
(06:17):
and say, look, I'm looking to buy a car. It's going to be
about this much money. Get yourself pre approved.
Now, your bank's not going to offer you zero
percent, right? I don't care who they are.
They're not going to throw that at you. No, they're not in the business to.
They're in the business to make money. Right. And you have to remember
(06:39):
the lending arm of different dealerships,
new car franchises are in the
business to sell cars. So they
give you or offer you a 36 or a 48 or
whatever month loan at 0%.
That's really 0%. I mean,
(07:00):
you're not paying any interest. Okay.
So that's something you have to just find. And again, you can do a lot
of that online before you ever go in.
Good stuff, good preparation.
Don't be a sucker. Get your homework done. That doing the.
Yeah. Now you're know your stuff. There's no excuse now to not know
(07:20):
your stuff. When I started, nobody knew their stuff.
And it was like I
had guys I work with that said it was like shooting ducks in a pond.
And I, I understand that completely.
Nowadays it's not that way. So you have all
this information available to you. You need to go out and use it.
(07:41):
Well, you've hit that bell twice now. Being prepared
before you walk onto the lot, whether that's a phone call, whether that's
the idea about knowing what is available to yourself privately
as financing before you even hear a dealership's offer. Good stuff.
Good stuff. Know your options. It's the
second most expensive thing most people will
(08:04):
ever buy. Yeah, absolutely.
So how about another break room story, Rod? What do you got there from the
archives? Are you guys just sitting around swapping stories?
Let me give you the Pizzagate story.
This is in Sterling. And this guy,
he was kind of a ball buster, but he
(08:27):
wanted this. And he was playing us against two other stores.
And we had the car and nobody else had
the car. And we weren't going to give it to him. So he came in
and we hammered back and forth and back, and we ain't getting
no place fast. We didn't even have a trade. This is just on the value
of the car. It was a brand new car. And he
(08:49):
shook hands and said, you know what? We'll take
it. And him and his wife were both there. Swear to God, they both shook
my hand, we'll take it. And. And I said, well, what time you want to
pick it up? I said, we'll pick it up tomorrow at 3. No problem.
We'll pick up the kids from school. We're coming straight here. Great. We'll see you
tomorrow. 3. I'll have it all ready to go.
Doesn't show.
(09:12):
I call him. Finally get a hold of them.
Because obviously there's no cell phones. You gotta wait till they get home to get
a hold of them. Right. Well, we decided to go with the other
offer. He beat your deal by a hundred, bu.
So I hung up the phone and I
looked across at the manager and I said, you know what? I said, that son
(09:35):
of a. Sold us out for a hundred dollars.
I said, I'm gonna get my hundred dollars back. And he says,
well, how are you gonna do that? I said, watch this.
Sat down and I got the yellow pages out and
I called everybody. Pizza store in Sterling
(09:56):
and had them deliver. Because remember, there's no
caller id. They don't know who you are. Had them deliver
an extra large supreme to
this guy's house all at the same time.
Oh my God. Like six of them. You swatted
this guy. So I drove over to his house because he wasn't
(10:18):
far from the store. And I parked down the street and I waited.
And here they come, one after the other,
heading up to his door.
Pizza party at your house.
I went just to check it out.
19 extra larges. What a shame no
(10:39):
one came. Roger Pizzagate.
Oh, my God. Oh, man. Should have called him
up. Said, well, I knew you could afford that pizza. Cause you had 100 extra
dollars there to spend. Yeah, 100 extra dollars. So enjoy that.
Yeah, Pizza all day. And every day
there's cheese. Round the clock is getting me blocked. And I sure don't
(11:02):
care for irregularity.
Tell me, why'd you have to go and make me so constipated?
Cause right now I do anything to just get my bowels
evacuated. It's funny watching
the guys, the pizza guys looking at each other like, what are you doing here?
I don't know. What are you doing there should be like
(11:25):
10 cars in this driveway if we're having this kind of a party.
Absolutely. Oh, man. All right.
Is there a best time of year or month to look for a
vehicle? Do dealerships have quotas? Whether. Maybe the
management's saying, hey, look, we can go
down quite a bit today or this end of the month because we're trying
(11:47):
to meet our quotas or trying to make a. Yeah, there's.
There's no question that dealerships have quotas. No, no doubt.
And. And I would tell you this. When I moved to Florida, I went to
work at Canyon Dodge in Clearwater.
And it seemed like, I don't know what year it was,
91 or 92. Chrysler came in and
they wanted to interview. They wanted a. A question and answer
(12:10):
thing. And they said, we want an hour with sales managers,
an hour with service managers and hour with parts managers,
and then an hour with a dealer. With the dealer. And we
just want to ask you questions. And so. Okay, so I sat in this sales
thing and they said, one of the first questions they asked is,
why do you sell so many cars at the end of the month and not
(12:32):
the beginning of the month? And they're all looking at me. And I
go, well, there's two reasons that. One, we've trained the
American public to think that.
So hence decades of telling them, don't go out
to the end of the month. They don't. I said, but let me ask you
a question. Why do we not see any national car ads at the beginning
(12:53):
of the month and only at the end? Dead silence.
Couldn't answer me on that question. Interesting.
And now you see, not saying it's because of
that, but now you see car ads all month long.
Yeah. Interesting. So is there any truth to dealerships
(13:14):
wanting to clear their lot because they got new cars coming in that
they're willing to negotiate a little bit more?
Sometimes. Sometimes. It just depends.
It depends.
I would tell you if you went on a lot and you said, look,
I'm going to look for a specific pickup truck and I need a
(13:34):
half ton, blah, blah, blah, whatever model it is,
Dodge, Ford, Chevy, gmc,
didn't matter, and you saw four rows
of them, you probably got an upper
hand in negotiating on that. Okay, if you said,
I'm looking for a certain SUV and you didn't see
(13:56):
one a lot, and you went online, you didn't see any online,
and that's probably going to be tougher to get and be more expensive.
Understood. All right. Roger Boomer's got
this Chevy Colorado. He's Going to keep it for a. Few more years
because he does like to hang on for 10 or so. When he
goes to get rid of. This,
(14:18):
he might have a trade in to offer.
How should that be handled? Is that something that you don't want. To talk
about at all? And should you try to just settle. A price on the
vehicle you're perching. Off the loss and then start.
You can bring the trade in up. But again,
I'm going to go back to what I told you half an hour
(14:39):
ago. Do it online first and
you'll have an idea what they're thinking about. As long as you didn't lie
to them what the car looks like. Right. And then
we've had people tell us, hey, you know, my car is perfect, blah blah,
blah, blah. And I go to look at it and the errors off and
got dents in the fender and blah, blah, you know, I mean the headliners
(15:03):
falling down, that's not perfect. But if you tell it the
way it is, you'll have a pretty good idea. But no, you don't have to
hide it. But you do want to try and separate what
you're buying the car from, whether it's new, used and
what you're getting for yours. And then look at the difference.
Another dealership could say they were going to charge three grand
(15:25):
more for the car and give you three grand more for yours, but your difference
is the same. Right? Right. See what I'm saying?
You need to look at the difference and separate the two
things and know. What your bottom line or top line
is. In either case, if you're writing a check. What am I writing a check
for? There you go.
(15:46):
Anything else about someone who's got a car that they're
going to trade in? Be honest. Know what, you have a good idea of
what it's worth and keep those figures separate between what you're purchasing and
what you're trading in. Yeah.
Now just be honest with the store when you, when you do that.
And like if you're online and you, you send an
(16:07):
inquiry on a vehicle, send them
a couple pictures of your car, send them an exterior
interior shot, take a picture of your mileage
so they can see exactly how many miles you are. Take a picture of your
VIN number so they can get the VIN number, they can get you
a pretty accurate description as long as you haven't, you know, misled them and what
(16:29):
the condition it's in that can help you make a decision.
Yeah. Illinois is the same as,
as here. When you trade a car in, you Pay tax
on the difference. You don't pay tax on the top line.
You. When you, the car that you own, you've already paid sales
tax, so the state gives you a break when you trade it
(16:50):
in. So if you have a. A car that's worth $10,000
and you're buying a $20,000 car,
you only pay tax on 10. You don't pay tax on 20.
All right, put your service hat on. What about
recommended maintenance items? My vehicle is getting to the age
now where, if I look at my maintenance book, that comes with the vehicle,
(17:14):
you ought to have your cabin filter change here. You ought to have the radiator
flush. You ought to have flush or transmission fluid.
Are all those things critical?
I. I don't know how critical those things are.
The most critical thing you can do to your vehicle is
change the oil and rotate and balance the tires.
(17:36):
Those are probably the two most important things you can do
for your vehicle. Now if you have your vehicle
five years, you might want to consider.
And again, it depends, like the cabin filter thing.
I mean, it depends on if you're sensitive allergies.
(17:57):
I mean, that's what. Cabin filter, you can do that yourself.
It's behind your glove box. You just drop your glove box down the cabin
filters right there. Well, you buy one and put it in there. It's not that
hard to do. Especially after I watched the YouTube video.
It wasn't that bad. Yeah, yeah, it's not, it's not hard to
do. But I did manage to break the slow release button
(18:19):
on my. Now my, my glove department
or glove compartment door just opens like it normally does under that slow
release and go back. So I did,
I did screw it up a little bit, but I did get it fixed myself.
And it wasn't that dirty. It wasn't that dirty. But I don't,
I don't drive on a lot of gravel roads anymore, so.
(18:40):
No. You know, like when I would take in a car,
if I appraised a car that was 4 years old, 5 years at
3, 4, 5 years old when I took it in, if it was in good
shape, the only thing I'm doing is changing the oil.
I mean, if it needs brakes, I'll put brakes on it.
But I'm not doing all that maintenance stuff to it and
(19:01):
not saying down the road, that's not something you should do. But I just
don't think you should do it at the level and the increments that they tell
you to do it. That's all. Okay. And these aren't Dealership
recommendations. This is the print that came with the new vehicle.
Correct. Because they make money off
doing that, right? Makes sense. Okay, good to
(19:23):
know.
Hey, let's take this opportunity right here to hear from
our sponsors. Okay, brief message coming up.
Around P Town around P Town it's
got the news that you can use Around P
(19:45):
Town around p town.com it's got the scoop
with all the poop man's barbershop It's
a place I like to stop Whether it's to get
a fancy do or just buzz off my mop, mop, mop,
mop Ben's Barber Shop It's a place I
like a lot and you'd like it, too if you
(20:07):
did your due at Ben's Barber Shop.
That's Ben's Barber Shop in Morrison, Illinois.
Look him up on Facebook. Make an appointment. Tell him, Jimmy, I'm a
doofus. Sent you.
All right, let's dip back into the break room.
(20:29):
Story files. Rogue. I. I know there's one in there about a cow sale,
as I. I understand. Yeah,
I moved to Florida in 1989 and I went to work
in a Dodge store.
And I'm gonna drop
this story on you before I drop the cow story.
Okay? So I've been in town
(20:51):
about two months, and it's about,
I don't know, 4:00 in the afternoon. This woman pulls up out front
and I go out to say hi, and she
introduces herself and I shake her hand and she pulls out Saturday's ad.
And this is like a Monday. And she said, do you still have this
(21:12):
car? And I said, yeah, it's a Dodge Daytona. It's right behind you.
Pricey paint on the window. She said, I'm very interested. I said,
okay, well, let me get a key and I'll open it up and I'll show
you the car. It turns out she had told her car she
already had a check for the insurance company. She had her. She was just borrowing
the car she was in. And now it's like
(21:34):
5:00, right? And the dealership I worked at was on US 19,
which is the equivalent of 85,000 cars a day
go by the front of the place here in Pinellas County.
So she said to me, you know, it's a little busy out there,
and I'm a little fearful. Do you mind driving off a lot?
I said, no, I don't. No problem at all. So I drove off the lot.
(21:57):
And of course, all right, hand turns. But anyway,
I'm still doing all right. And then I pull over in the Publix parking lot,
which is a grocery store chain down there. And I
said to her, okay, we're gonna switch and I'll let you drive back. She said,
no, I'm still scared. Do you mind? I said, no, I don't mind.
So I drove all the way back to the store. Now, I will tell
(22:19):
you right now, the car was a basic.
I mean, the only option this car had was air conditioning.
It's a manual transmission, crank, windows,
base car. Yeah. So we get inside,
write the deal up. She has no trade. Do the whole thing.
(22:40):
She puts her check down, put her in finance. She comes
out later, it's about, oh,
7:30. I go. I hand her the keys.
I go, congratulations on your new car. And she hands them back to
me and says, now you can teach me how to drive a stick.
(23:00):
And I said, why would you do that?
And she said, it's the only way I was ever going to make myself do
it. Oh, no. So now it's like a quarter to eight,
and she doesn't know how to drive a stick, and I have to teach her.
You didn't sign up for this. And you're.
Oh, crap. So here we go. She's living in some
(23:21):
apartment complex down the street. She takes the car back.
I'm driving behind her. I let her drive. We're going around
and around this carpet. And they had
like, speed bumps, and she couldn't get over them with the stick. Right.
I mean, she just totally lost on that. Oh, my God.
It took me an hour and a half. Oh, my God, that's hilarious.
(23:44):
You had to work for that sale, buddy. Yeah, you're not a kid.
So I went. Let me follow it up, okay? They got bought
out by a. One of the conglomerates down here, which I've
never worked for. So I. I moved over to Tampa
and I worked at Bobbleson Dodge on North Florida Avenue, which is.
(24:04):
We call it Suitcase City. And it's
a really rough section of town, okay?
Prostitution, drugs,
guns, child molester. I mean, just,
you name it. It's in that area. They're not buying a whole lot
of cars. I don't think those people. Yeah, but we sold the out of them.
(24:25):
Do you know we could sell.
Let's just say we'll call them exotic dancers,
huh? If they had
50% down, they could buy a car.
She had to put down 50% of what?
Easy, Jimmy. This is a family show,
(24:47):
okay? So they would come in and go, well, I like that car.
And I said, well, that's 20 grand. You need 10 grand down. They said,
okay, what we got? She didn't bring back a whole bunch of
$1 bills, a bunch of wadded.
Up 20s and tens and fives. That kind of succeeded.
Bell, sit there and count all that out.
(25:08):
Were you wearing plastic gloves, I hope, Raj.
Yeah, this was before that. No, this was before plastic gloves
now. But it was.
It was. It was a crazy time. But this is where we took
in the cow. So we got this guy who
had totaled his truck, and he had gotten enough
(25:31):
money for the truck to just cover what he owed, so he had nothing,
and he needed another truck. And super
nice people could just barely
get the financing straightened away, and we're
about $500 away. And I.
I told the salesperson, I said, we got to find 500 bucks. I said,
(25:52):
do they have anything? A jet ski, a motorcycle,
boat? What do they have? He comes back, he goes, they got a cow.
I said, what the hell am I going to do with a cow?
Exactly. So I go down, I talk to the people,
and they had a picture of this cow. It was like a year old.
(26:14):
So I went up to the manager to the gm, and I said, okay,
we can sell these people a truck, but we got to take in a cow.
And he said, a cow? I said, yeah, here's a picture.
It's dangerous. Called this guy who's a friend of the story, the farmer,
and we showed him the cow and blah, blah, blah. He said, I'll pay 500
bucks for the cow. I said, all right. So I went down. I told the
(26:36):
guy, you got to go home and get the cow and bring it back.
So his wife stayed, he ran home, got the cow, brought it back,
put it out front, delivered them in the truck.
And then we called the other guy. He came and picked up the cow.
The cow was there for about roaming loose for about an hour and a half.
Oh, my God. Did it leave anything behind for you to shovel up?
(26:57):
Give me I a cow, Petty.
Give me I a cow.
I would tell you, in that dealership, we took in
a cow, we took in a diamond ring,
we took in land.
Awesome. We take in just about anything. Yeah.
(27:19):
All right. I like a barter economy.
I like it. Hey,
Roger, you spent over 40 years working in the car
industry and car sales specifically. If someone
was thinking about making a career
as you have, first of all, would you recommend it?
(27:40):
And two, if you would, how would you tell them to prepare for it?
Let's say it's some kid, maybe some high school kids, you know, they're thinking about
doing car sales. What would you recommend?
I would tell you that,
yes, it's a great career.
Obviously, it's been very good to me. But conversely,
(28:02):
I've also been very good to it.
And I know an awful lot of people
who made an awful lot of money and did a great job and
retired comfortably, and now they work their
ass off for a long number of time. But, you know,
if you're a young kid and, you know, maybe college isn't for you and
(28:24):
you're not sure that's what you want to do, but you have the gift to
gab and you can talk to people and you have the
ability to listen. That's really what it's all about.
When I interviewed salespeople, I said, the only thing you need to come to work
here is a pen and a brain. And amazingly,
most of the people came in without one or the other or both when
(28:47):
they applied. I would say that's really all you need.
Pin in the brain and we'll tell you how to do everything else. And if
you do that and you stick it out, in five years,
you're making six figures. Nice.
That's a nice turnaround. When you were hiring people, were you looking
for anything specific? A type of personality?
(29:08):
Again, they have to be open, they have to be able to talk to people.
I wasn't looking for know it alls. I wasn't looking
for people are afraid or didn't
want to talk or shy. You can't be that, you know,
and you have to have thick skin because you're going to be told no.
Yeah. A million, about a million times.
(29:32):
And an old guy told me once, he said, no means
just no, not yet. So you, you just got
to keep selling. Very nice. Yeah.
I'm thinking about personalities and yours,
as I remember you well from your younger days,
I could see why people would be,
(29:54):
well, attracted. It's not the word I'm looking for,
but they would feel comfortable with you because you
come across as sincere. I don't know that there was
a sarcastic bone in your body. And sincerity
would be something that I think that you would, if you were able to let
it show, that they would be able to. To sense and value
(30:16):
and, and would help towards moving towards a
sale because you'd be somebody that would be trustworthy. That's really
the, the major thing that you do in selling cars is
you have to get people to trust you. And once they trust
you, they're going to send you
people and you're going to walk Out. And you're going to be sitting there at
(30:37):
your desk, and somebody's going to say, hey, Roger, got people here, and you don't
even know who the hell they are. Oh. So and so said that this is
the only place we could go. Oh, okay. I'm Roger.
Let's go. And that happens over and over and
over again. That's got to make you feel good. Yeah. And it doesn't.
It. It's not overnight, and it's not right.
(30:58):
Even over a month or, you know, it's something you build.
And I told you at the beginning, you asked me about a guy that I
appreciated, Joe Reve, who worked for us for 19 years.
He had 500 people who
only bought from Joe. Wow.
And that's all he did was work those 500 people.
(31:21):
He rarely took anybody new because he didn't have time.
You know, you're good. When. What percentage of your sales are
repeat customers, what would you. What would you hope for?
That, you know, you've made your mark or that you're moving into
a good. A good area? If. What percentage of your
(31:41):
sales are repeat sales? When you.
If you're good and you greet somebody on the lot.
Right. So let's say average
salesperson in the United states talks to 10 people and
they sell 20%.
(32:01):
A good salesperson is going to sell 30 to 35%.
Nice of that. 30 to 35%.
If you can retain 50% of that,
all you're doing is building your business to a point that you.
You might not even be able to take care of it all down the road.
That's ideal. I can. Just being honest, you know,
(32:24):
I can remember my dad. He would go to McElhinney Motors in Clinton.
Yes, yes. And he would ask for a specific salesperson, just like
those people were asking for Joe. Yeah.
That's. That's where you want to be. That's what you go. And that's what I
tried to. When I. When I would talk to new people
and interview them, I would say, you know, your goal is
(32:46):
not to come in here, and you're not going to make 100 grand the first
year you're here. But if you build and listen
and take your time and pace yourself,
my goodness, you can make as much money as you
want and work as long as you want. What would
be an average career? How long would somebody. Obviously,
(33:06):
there's people like you that could spend 40 years
doing this, but typically, what would you expect? What would be an average
tenure of somebody selling cars 10, 20 years
before they Move on to something else.
I. I would tell you if. If a. If a car
(33:27):
salesperson got to 10,
he might not ever do anything different because
he's at an income level and a comfort
level that he would probably like to stay at.
So. So it's not unusual for guys putting in 20, 30 or
plus years. It's. It's less on.
(33:51):
It's not as usual nowadays as it was when I was doing
it. Okay, but it still happens.
Certainly still happens. Sure. All right,
I'm curious. Men versus women. What. What percentage of the sales
force is men versus women? When I started,
it was 100 men. And when
(34:13):
I retired two and a half years ago, probably 30%,
35 women. Okay. @ least in my experience.
So it's growing? Oh, it's growing massively. Yeah.
And. And I would say this.
Women are much more organized than men are.
Typically. They are. I'm just saying.
(34:35):
And as far as, like, setting herself up and
their business up and their follow up and their customers and all
this stuff, they are much more organized than men are.
All right. Hey, Rog, we've been at this for an
hour, almost an hour and a. Half, so any other
break room stories you want to share with us, big guy?
(34:58):
Yeah, I got one more. That's a hilarious one. Then I'll leave you with that
one. So in Tampa, I'm working at this store,
and I told you we sold questionable people,
and we sold this guy a truck,
and whenever we thought it was a questionable deal,
we wouldn't give him both sets of keys. We'd keep a
(35:19):
set just in case. So sure
as he lied on his credit app.
So they call us. Bank calls us a couple days later. So now
we're not catching that contract. The guy works there, but he doesn't make anywhere what
he said he did. Hmm. They're like.
So we try and reach out to him. We can't get a hold of him.
(35:41):
So me and the gm, we jump in a car and
we drive over to where this guy lives in apartment complex.
Can't see the truck anywhere. And his apartment's on
the ground floor above him. There's this old
woman sitting outside her apartment, and she
says, I'll bet you're looking for him.
(36:03):
And I said, who's him? She said, the guy in
the red truck said, yes, we are,
and told her the whole thing. She says, well, he comes
and goes. She said, but I don't always see him. She said, normally he's
at that bar down the street. And of course, he wasn't There.
Then I said, I'll tell you what we'll do. I'll bring you a 50
(36:25):
bill if you call us when you see him.
And she said, I'll do that. I said, all right. And I gave her my
card. About four days later, we get a phone call
from her about 6:00 at night. And she said,
he set the bar now. Okay, we go
fly it over there. I see the truck sitting in the parking lot of the
(36:45):
bar. I go up, I give the woman the 50 bucks. I go
out. Keith jumps in the truck because we have the other key. The back
of the pickup bed of the truck is just full of crap.
Just boxes and beer cans
and towels and blank. Whatever.
He takes off, I'm right behind him. We're going back to the store. We're sitting
(37:08):
at the first light and I'm. I look up and
the son of a sits up in the back of the truck.
He got drunk at the bar and. Passed out out in the bed
of the truck. He's in the bed of the truck. Hey, I'm talking.
I'm dialing the phone. I'm rapidly dialing the phone to kid. I go
(37:29):
pull over. The guy's the back of the truck now.
So he pulls over and I pull over behind him. We throw the
guy out of the truck, we throw all of his on the floor on the,
on the parking lot and we haul ass out of there.
My heart's going a thousand miles a minute. Hilarious.
Oh, so he never came back and tried to get his truck again? He just
(37:51):
let it go? No, no, he knew. He lied on his credit
app. Just new truck to
drive around for a week. He gave you a ride on his
credit history and you guys gave him a ride in the back of his truck.
Nice. Absolutely. I, I can
still see it to this day. This guy's sitting up. I thought it was a
(38:12):
corpse. I couldn't believe it. Oh, my God.
So he had blankets back there. You must have had one pulled over when you
guys were looking. Didn't ex. There was more junk in that bed
than you knew. I got an eight foot bed that
never has to be made. You know, if it weren't for trucks, we wouldn't have
tailgates. I met all my wives. And traffic
(38:34):
jams are just something women like about a pickup man.
Exactly. Oh, good stuff. Hey, Rog, thanks for the entertaining
stories and thank you for the good advice on how to
make a smart purchase of a vehicle, what to look for, and the insights
into sales that gives us a better Appreciation of what you've done and
(38:58):
what a consumer can expect when they call or
actually walk on to a lot valuable information. Not a
problem, brother. I appreciate it very much. Thank you, Rog. Thanks for being
on the show. You're a wealth of information. You take care of
yourself and enjoy the non snow you got down there
in Florida. I'm gonna enjoy the 78 degree temp
(39:20):
tomorrow. Thank you. I appreciate it very much. Rub it in.
All right. But good luck in your car
purchase endeavors there. Thanks. I'm gonna hang on to
that 71 Chevy van as long as I can, but it's
gotta go. Sometimes everything reaches its point.
Kind of like you and I and the length of this episode.
(39:43):
So that
was so much fun. I hope you enjoyed the car buying
tips and the hilarious stories that Roger shared with us.
Well, and all that did Palmer, you got any more friends we can
interview? Well, I don't. Yeah, I'm sure I do.
(40:06):
I'm sure there's somebody out there that wants to share with
us their life story. All you gotta do is contact me. I know
sometimes you can be reluctant to do so. It took a lot of
coaxing over a couple of years to get Roger to come on and share
his stories with us. Yeah, don't be shy. Come on,
it'll be a lot of fun. Well, it sure was fun
(40:28):
talking with Roger. Thank you for listening, Jimmy.
And I want to wish you the best that 2025
can bring. Ah, shut up.
And kids, don't forget to be checking in with around petetown.com.
it's got all the news that you can use. Stay hip,
(40:49):
stay classy with aroundpetown.com and
for you friends, fellas that want that hip and classy look, well,
then you're going to want to get your butt to Ben's Barbershop chair.
That's right, Ben's Barbershop. Look him up on
facebook.com. he's in Morrison. You make an appointment,
you're going to love it. If you enjoyed listening to all
(41:12):
Boomer here, he'd appreciate it if you'd subscribe to
his podcast. So you'd get notifications of when the next episode's
coming up. Maybe leave a rating on a review.
But yeah, go ahead and subscribe. That helps the podcast grow and
it makes the little fella feel so much better. And if you had any
feedback for him, you know, go ahead and contact them@ttaudioworksmail.com
(41:35):
Again, that's ttaudioworksmail.com
okay, I'll see you in the next episode.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.