Empty dealership lots.

Seems like an opportune moment to chime in on west coast construction
employment opportunities. My advice, join the carpenters union or one for other trades. If you’re contemplating making a career out of construction and you don’t see yourself opening your own business, it’s a great pathway. After 8 years of carpentry in Texas & Colorado circumstances put me on the west coast. It quickly became apparent that the talent migrated to union employment. I then had a good run of 32 years full time union work. It’s not for everybody, but I earned over 6 figures from the late 90’s onword and now, get the monthly pension.

 

I don’t think you read too close what I wrote. I am a business owner and have over 27 years of experience in all phases of residential construction and union work doesn’t cover the type of residential remodeling. I’d be frightened to see the costs if it did. I’ve seen plenty of what it’s like to work union. If you’re good you stay employed full time, but a lot of the time the halls want to journeyman you out to collect dues then send green guys to jobs where you quickly get spotted as a newbie and get kicked off the job to go home and wait for the phone to ring while you still pay dues.

And sorry man, I get the beni’s are good, but I’m not down with the, “Hey man, slow down, you’re making us look bad,” because you try to do an honest days work. That’s not my speed nor is it the guys who I came up with, we want to get stuff done and feel an obligation ti our clients to be hardworking and professional.

 

I get it wreaked havoc on some people’s lives. My company shut down for 5 weeks and in that time I gutted my parent’s bathroom, relocated a bunch elec/plumbing to make it wheelchair accessible and built a wheelchair ramp so I could take care of my dad, who ironically was confined to a wheelchair the week after the shutdown.

I took no time off and we were completely compliant with all regulations. One of our clients is an ER doctor who worked with FEMA who told us in September 19 this shit is coming, so we were more prepared than most, but I busted my ass everyday, and I don’t buy into the, “It’s scary out there so I’ll just stay home and suckle from the govt teat.”

I also get the burnout stuff, but honest people want to work, and as long as you stay compliant the risks are mitigated. Everyone we work with is vaxxed/masked, if there’s a case we go get checked, but haven’t had to shut any sites down because we’ve been diligent about the safety stuff.

So in other words, don’t be a pussy who thinks it’s okay to sit at home and play Xbox while everyone else keeps things moving

 

My reply wasn’t directly to you, more of a comment on construction employment.
BTW, I had heard the same detrimental sayings about union operations - prior to acquiring any first hand information. I stayed with the same company all my years, was 100% loyal to them rather than the union. Got profit sharing & bonuses above & beyond wages. We did public and private projects and bid straight against non-union firms. With our ‘costs’ being higher, to be competitive there was only one path: do the work better, faster and with maximum cooperation or you won’t be in business long. There was zero “hey slow down” aspect to my/our work. When adding workers, we might go through a dozen guys to find 1-2 keepers. The union benefits were just added upsides to an already great company. Only went to the actual union hall a handful of times over all my years.

And your right, remodeling jobs… we did that type stuff on the side.

 

We visited several stealerships while shopping for a new TOYOTA Sienna with my friend and we only found one stelership with one or two customers other than us. The rest had a few 4R and Tundies, but no customers.

This makes me wonder how no one has addressed the big elephant in the room. How are automakers still financially afloat with no sales?
I know the rest of the world has had even more restrictions than US, and China is on the edge of collapse so who are they selling to in order to stay in business?

Moreover, I always thought that money is made in this industry by quantities of scale, and not a sale here & there.
I also know that GM & Ford got X$$ billions to make X number of respirators during the peak of the cerveza virus, so there’s that, but it can’t be enough.
I also wonder how the sales staff is making ends meet since they make bread by commission.
I don’t think anyone cares about sales guys, but their lives matter too! Or do they?

 

Meant no disrespect, I apologize, I sounded like a bitch there.

My experience came from guys who worked union and got that input about slowing down.

I also have a couple of close friends, one who worked for DOT and another a city municipality.

The state is obligated to collect 3 estimates and has to take the lowest bid. The inevitable result is selecting the least qualified or a the one with the intention to low-ball then change order the shit out of it and end up way over the highest bid, so that is what burned out my friend at the DOT

The other was an inspector on a project to facelift the city police station. He said by the time he was done, there were over 1000 change orders on a job that took 8 months over estimate.

It was there I came in for an interview (10 years back) because my friend knew I was a good hire. I came to their job shack and everyone was more than content to stop what they were doing to talk to me. Basically 10 pm’s and supers stopping what they’re doing to give me the downlow.

My friend told me it was super low pressure, basically the motto being it can wait til tomorrow.

I’m sure there are companies out there in union who kick ass, and yes it’s a good place to work if you get on with a good outfit, but same is true for good private companies.

I take care of my guys, and was taken care of before I transitioned to ownership.

Our work is pretty specialized- the specialty build aspects are often more complicated so it requires critical thinkers. We have to compete with unions, so if a guy wants to work union I can’t compete. It means we look for specific types of people. Most of our guys led a specific lifestyle- climbers, skiers, athletes, craftsmen, woodworkers, musicians- guys who like to be active and keep moving.

 

About 30 years ago I had a Union job in a warehouse, worked 3rd shift and had many hours to myself and could knock out quite a bit of work. One night about 5am some Union Boss showed up and pulled me aside and told me to slow down because l was making his job more difficult at bargaining contracts.

 

There’s no civility anymore, only anger and defensiveness. We are absolutely fucked as a society, and everyone’s answer seems to be arming themselves so they can gear up to kill other Americans, because that’s the easy solution and people are either too dumb or too big of pussies to take on the challenges of our times. I weep for the future.

 

Wow that is crazy!!! I am sure its not a widespread issue but must exist in small pockets, it was a strange experience for me and fortunately left that job not long after that.

 

Most dealerships are selling vehicles at or above MSRP and reduced their sales staff. Plus, they still make the same if not more profit from parts and service departments. The Salespeople that are still left, work directly with customers online or over the phone. I bought my last three vehicles online and only spent about an hour at the dealership filling out paperwork. My Tacoma was a little different as I had to order it from their inventory allotment.

 

I bought my past 8 vehicles via email and the phone. I would never ever negotiate a price in a dealership again, regardless of market conditions.

And frankly, I hope the current crisis kills the dealer model forever.

 

I agree. I don’t replace my vehicles enough to care about getting the deal of the century. All I care about is a fair price, good service and get me in and out in a timely manner. I got better things to do than sit in a dealership all day arguing over getting 1% off the asking price or playing the 4 score game.

 

Right, and when the wrong one shows up then what, I'll look at my vehicle purchase first, please.

 

I've been a member of the IBEW for the past 14 years, all with the same company (which has been bought and sold twice in that time). Prior to that I worked non-Union in the same industry for two different companies.

I've never been told to 'slow down' on a project; time is money and that was the case at all of the companies I've worked for. Work slow and you get shown the door.

Some of the new-hire's which we've gotten from the Hall have been hit or miss. We had a run of bad apprentices for a while but lately the quality seems to have improved. I work on very specialized electrical systems so whoever we hire, whether they come from the Hall or elsewhere it generally takes several months to get them up to speed. Plus the majority of us work alone in the field un-supervised and some people don't do well with that.

I'm looking-forward to a nice Union Pension when I retire.

 

I 100% agree. All the dealers are doing at this point is being a middleman between the factory inventory and customer. The salesperson is doing little that a web-based user interface couldn't do more transparently.

There is still a need to test drive vehicles and interact with tech-based option packages in person. But that could be accomplished with a couple of 'fleet' vehicles for various trims on premises, to be honest.

Which then starts to look like the Tesla model, as others have mentioned.

Of course, dealers love getting you on premises to (a) take advantage of the fact that customer purchasing psychology is strongly impacted by seeing/touching/driving a car and (b) they can screw around with the numbers better in the 'fog of war'. It's hard to imagine they will give that up willingly.

 

I have no idea what that means.

 

I did this as well, I’ve been waiting three months for the truck I put money down on but was moving in five days to a different state. Happened to look at a website just minutes after they posted the same truck I ordered and said it was in stock. I gave them the money over the phone and set everything up for me to come in the next day. I did negotiate the price, only Having the dealership remove their dealership exclusive mark up. They wanted to charge $900 for plastic on the door edges, plastic under the handles, plastic on the bed and nitrogen in the tires. It was a scheme for people that don’t know anything about cars. Oh and they would repair one rock chip for free in the first three months. I took the clear plastic off for them. Noticed that they put a minute scratch where they cut the clear plastic on the door so I made them throw in some touch up paint. I ended up in MSRP. Toyota corporation does not allow them to raise the MSRP once you put money down BTW it’s bad business practices.