It's considered one of the most controversial parts of the use car business. It's called a buy your pay your dealership and if you're not familiar with the term, you're in for a wild episode. My guest today is Tiger Oakley, the president of Oaks Motors, a five location buy your pay your dealer group based out of Indiana. We discussed what is a buy here pay your dealership, how he manages to a 40% loan default ratio, financing customers that traditional banks avoid, crazy customer horror stories and much more.
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What the heck is the buy here pay here dealership? I think just give us that simple context. You know, I think in its most simple presentation, it's access to, you know, transportation and financing. At grassroots level, that is not really served by any, what I would say, regional or national lender or really dealership group. Right? I mean, at the end of the day, somebody needs transportation, doesn't really know the ins and outs of how to make that work or maybe their life doesn't allow them to have a traditional credit profile, but they still need transportation. They still need to get to work. They still need to take their kids' places. They still need to take mom and dad to the hospital, those types of things, you know.
Alright. How did you get into this industry? I think even like starting earlier than that, like you wake up one day, like what brings you into buy here, pay here, use car industry. Go ahead. You know, it's the craziest story from a, you know, sometimes you go dumb luck, right? And you never know how things are going to turn out and life gives you an opportunity. And there it is. Well, my dad, my mom started the company and it's my brother and I now. And so, you know, my dad worked for a major fortune 100 company and was very successful. Was one of four vice presidents for them and ended up taking on a project that was not going to be successful, but he did the company thing and was terminated. And so he decided he wanted to search for something on his own and he had a neighbor that had started a business like this. And he researched it and he decided to commit to it.
And, you know, my brother and I went to college and we would come back and we got exposed to it through the summers, right? We were helping out with the business, the family business as we were kids, kids being young adults and had no intention of going into this industry. Lo and behold, you graduate from college, you know, really an accounting and a finance degree. And that's the year that Wall Street laid off 40,000 guys and doing the job that I wanted to do. And so there were really no jobs to be had. And I had this experience and knew I could sell cars and that's where it started.
When you said you knew you could sell cars, like how did you know that? By the way, I obviously, I write a way to think about my experience. Like I remember the first time, you know, I sold a car. I didn't think I could do it. I was actually pretty scared. I think I ended up being pretty good at it. But go ahead. What's your story?
My dad needed some help and home from school, right, for summer. And he's like, hey, you need to come to the dealership, do whatever we need you to do. And you know how it goes, right? One day, everything's great. The next day, hey, we don't have any salespeople here. There's customers on the lot. Go talk to them. And I'm like, well, what do I say? Right? We'll figure it out. Right? And really, it just becomes, you get to know the customer, what they're looking for, what's going on. You build some rapport and you try to solve the needs that fit the budget. And, you know, it became a pretty easy thing. And fortunately for me, I got to get exposed to a couple of guys that, you know, led the way and said, hey, this is how you can interact with a customer in a very directed way that makes it easy for them and easy for you to find a fit. And, you know, the next day, you know, I had two or three summers of very successful earnings selling cars, you know, making some extra money during school.
How much you make? Oh, gosh. So this is back in, I'm going to say this is early 80s, right? Well, I was three, three months and I made 15 grand. I was like, man, this is more money than I've ever seen in my life, you know. Yeah.
All right. So like let's get the technical definition of buy here, pay here out of the way for anyone that doesn't understand, but simply means that as a dealer, we work with third party lenders to put, you know, to get loans for our customers. In your case, as a buy here, pay your dealership, you are actually doing the loans that you're selling, you are lending the money to the customer yourself. And you do that for various reasons which we'll get into shortly. But one of the core reasons is that these customers cannot typically come to you because they cannot get financed elsewhere. That's correct. That is correct.
All right. So for anyone that doesn't understand that is the fundamental basis for what is known as buy here, pay here in the car business. Why is buy here pay here so controversial in our industry? Anytime you're dealing with a segment of the market that is perceived to be disadvantaged, I think that you have a lot of scrutiny both by the market and by legislation, right, rightly or wrongly. And then I think at the end of the day, you also have, you know, because because there is a group that you're serving that may be disadvantaged because they don't have access to what everybody else is calling traditional, that there is some real opportunity for bad actors to take advantage of folks, you know, so I think that just by being disadvantaged but still needing access and then because they're disadvantaged and there is oversight, part of that oversight is because, you know, there are some bad actors and they do some things that they shouldn't do.
Let's get that out of the way for a second. What does that mean? When you say bad actors that do things they shouldn't do? What does that actually mean? Well, I think that there are a number of, I would say, there are there's always challenges in legislation, right? But I think ultimately legislation is meant to and the oversight that it's meant to give is more from these are the rules which we should play because everybody thinks that that makes sense, hopefully, right? It's not always that way but that's really kind of what legislation is meant to do. Work within the frames of what makes sense and what is really deemed good business, right? And like anything, if you look at industry as a whole, not just our industry, there is always somebody that is trying to decide what rules they can skirt and trade opportunity for cost, right? And get a competitive advantage and I think it's the same kind of thing in our industry, right? I mean, a classic one would be a car is worth a lot more with lower mileage on. It, right? So if I go to the auction and I'm a bad actor and I buy a car with 200,000 miles and I roll it back to 50,000 miles because it looks good, well, what have I just done? You know, whoever's going to be buying that is going to be cheated and I'm going to get the benefit because I just did something that's illegal. I mean, that's a very deliberate type of fraud. Do you see that? Do you know of that still happening? I mean, I remember earlier or, you know, in the earlier days in the business, that was more rampant nowadays. I feel like maybe there's some less of that, but do you still see that kind of deliberate fraud in the market?
I don't think it's rampant, but I think this industry is fraught with, you know, it's easy. It's not necessarily easy to enter the buyer pay here space because it takes so much capital. But the auto industry, yeah, but the auto industry itself, I mean, you can get in and out at any level, right? I mean, you could sell one car if you want that you're in the auto industry, maybe not fully immersed. But if you sold a car, you're in the auto industry, right? That transaction nets some number and you can decide to curb cars. So, you know, there is this wide range of opportunity for a lot of different experiences and a lot of different presentations and a lot of different executions. Now, whether it's on a global scale that becomes relevant to anybody is a different story, but I would agree with you that, you know, the industry overall has become much better from that at a real high level, but it doesn't absolve people from that kind of stuff happening all the time.
Tell us more about your group, right? Like how many stores, what do you sell annually vehicles? Give us some overview.
告诉我们更多关于你们的团队,好吗?比如有多少家店,你们每年销售多少辆车?给我们一些概览信息。
So, we are five selling locations, three full service facilities that do reconditioning and customer service, four of our five locations are X new car dealerships that we have taken over. So, we have capacity to be able to sell the volume that we want and be able to recondition and service the customer base that we have. We have a corporate office that's separate and that corporate office also houses our separate finance company. So, it is 100% a separate entity, but they work just hand in hand, brother, sister relationship together because that's, you know, you need to be able to understand the dynamic of the customer holistically to be able to really move the needle in this industry in our belief. Some don't, but that's the way we believe it works.
We roughly sell, I say, 3,600 a year, have roughly 10,000 accounts that we serve as a regular basis and that becomes a flat cycle. 3,600 units. What's your average selling price? I would say anywhere 18, 19, 20 grand is our average sell price now. Post pandemic, before that it was a lot less, but prices are just crazy. Those numbers were like, my gut reaction when you just said that was like, wow, like I remember the buy here, pay here cars being like 5 to 7 grand and it's so funny. It's so funny how just like things have shifted so much. And so you mentioned 10,000 accounts you're serving, right? So that people that have financed through you that are paying to you. Got it.
And give us an over who are your customers? Like what's the profile of your customer credit financially? Like just tell us a little bit about them.
请告诉我们一下你们的客户是谁,比如客户的财务信用概况是怎样的?简单介绍一下他们的情况。
Well, I think from a profile standpoint, it's a really dynamic and fluid thing. And I would say that the biggest thing is what is the credit profile? How big is the credit profile? And I would tell you that we butt up and I think one of the things that we do is we provide a different value proposition other than just access to credit. That is attractive.
So we have what we call our certified program which gives them access to our ultimate protection plus program. And so instead of just being able to buy a car and just get financing, we look at globally. What are the things that cause our customer to maybe more often than not become, you know, unsuccessful? And not just so much from a standpoint of, you know, hey, you know, I had a life change, right? Like I got a divorce or let's say I lost a job or, you know, now I can't work because I'm disabled for some reason or something happens, right? We can't mitigate those things to a degree. We can help if there's opportunity there, but, you know, we can't we can't do anything about whether, you know, it's a it's a bitter divorce and something bad happens, right? Or if you lose your employment and are not going to be able to get similar gainful employment.
But at the end of the day, so all of our vehicles we sell with warranties, we give them access to rental fleet for warranty repairs. We try to help them on the service side with a buy one, get one oil change for the life of that warranty. We're going to give them roadside assistance during that period of time for the warranty as well. We're going to give them access to preferred customer pricing on repairs. So, you know, off the street, we're not going to do business with somebody. We're not trying to make our service department cover our fixed overhead. Really what we're trying to do is it's, you know, we subsidize our service department to help get our customers affordable repairs so they can keep their car running.
If they have a catastrophic repair, we give them access to repair loans. You know, we're going to give them the option to be able to not have collateral protection through the traditional full coverage insurance options and carry just our internal collateral protection at a much more affordable rate so that if they have an accident, their collateral is not lost. And then at the end of the day, we also offer all within the price of what they pay for a car, a balanced waiver. So if they have a full coverage or a collateral protection loss that takes out the balance, if there's a deficiency that's left, maybe two, three, four thousand dollars, which happens all the time, that kicks in and the customers clean and they can start fresh and don't have a balance that they have to deal with. So they have access to all of that in our program.
Let me answer this question. Like, I'm sure people are listening right now and they're wondering, if you, if your customer or, you know, some of your core customer cannot get approved by other lenders, how are you able to approve these customers and still offer all this stuff to them? Right? Everything you just mentioned to me, it almost sounds like a premium service. How are you able to do that then?
You know, so if you look at fundamentally how the market services, what I would say are industry, it really becomes a, you know, it's a commodity, right? I'm looking for the best cleanest low mileage vehicle and at the end of the day, I think post pandemic, it has changed a little bit and why prices are so high, but because supply is so short, but at the end of the day, it becomes a commodity because there is somebody else that has the same car or a similar car, right? And so what, what differentiates it? Really not much.
But how are you, how are you able to do all this profitably? That's the question. That's, that's the million dollar question, right? And at the end of the day, it's all around what you buy, how you sell it, what value you offer and how you underwrite the loan. And I think it's the industry struggles because they go, how do you underwrite somebody that doesn't have a credit profile that says they're going to do what they need to do? And so, so there are lots of tools in the industry. We have a tool that we like, but at the end of the day, no software is going to tell you whether a customer is going to pay or not, right? So, so you've got an underwriting platform that gives you kind of a baseline. And then, and then you have to look at the customer, their situation currently, and you really have to kind of get a take on this customer's character. And are they willing to do the things at least upfront that you're asking them to do? And if they're not, they need to buy somewhere else. But if they're trying to make things work, if they're trying to make their life better, then we've got an opportunity because here's where we can make a difference with this customer.
But how do you actually price that risk, right? I think that to me is like the million dollar question because I'm simply you have a customer, right? How are you able to price that risk? What do you go off of? What do you like work off of? And how do you do that?
Well, so for us, we have traditionally been and really are still in that same vein. We don't have a tiered pricing risk, right? So what we do is we say, all right, we know we have to have so much growth on a car, right? Because at the end of the day, you're taking a heavy discount for future losses. At least that's the way we do it. Some don't do that. And you have to be able to pay your overhead, right? To be able to go, okay, this makes sense from a standpoint. And then you have to be able to say, well, what your interest rate is going to be driving this much interest that you're going to collect. And that has to cover basically everything on a cash flow basis that you're laying out every month.
So if you, regardless of what size that you are, you can do that with any level of car, with any level of gross, with any level of interest based upon what your cost structure is. We have chosen as an organization and we've been in business for almost 40 years. And, you know, at the end of the day, it's a very dynamic and fluid thing. But we've always tended to, I would say, land on the, we're going to do more than less side of things. So, you know, we basically need to be able to collect and offer as much as we possibly can to make it financially work.
I don't know if I'm answering your question to a, you know, there is really, we're not a one size fits all, but our approach is more one size fits all from a standpoint of, you know, the car payment is roughly the car payment. You're going to get this service. This is what we're going to do. Here's how it's going to work and hopefully. Can you give us some of that nitty gritty? Like what is what is the car payment? If I come in right now, what is the car payment? You know, obviously I'm getting a lot that you just mentioned, which I think is unique in itself and we'll dig into that. But what is the car payment? Like what is the interest?
Our average car payment is going to and we don't do it monthly, but we do it based upon paydays, but our average is going to be 500 a month. And you know, you have to be able to have the ability, right? It's I think one of the knocks of our industry is also, you know, sometimes they feel like you're selling to customers that shouldn't be buying cars. Like they don't have any income. Well, we're not going to sell a car to a customer that doesn't have income, right? So if you don't have liquidity to be able to reasonably afford that 500 a month and be able to take care of the car, the things that need to be taken care of, which is like maintenance and insurance and the things that just go along with everyday car ownership, then it's probably not going to work. So that's our number. There's there's some less than that and there are some obviously more expensive than that, but that's really the sweet spot for.
I feel with some questions before this and I think that one common question I get or I think there's two schools of thought about interest rate. And I want to hear your opinion on this, right? One side says that you're charging exorbitant interest rates, right? You're taking advantage of people, etc. Another side says these are people that otherwise would not be able to get any car anywhere. They need transportation to maybe take the family, you know, to school or whatever may be. And you're simply pricing the risk at your it's a free market and you're pricing the risk accordingly.
Where do you where do you fall on that spectrum? Like how do you how do you respond to both of these schools of thought?
你在这个谱系上的位置在哪里?比如你如何回应这两种观点?
So I understand that school of thought and I can appreciate the argument and for us, we've always felt better about being under what I would call the usual law. So so we're not we don't play in the the max rate. That's that's not where we want to be. What's the max rate in your state for the most expensive loan amount? It's 21 percent. What state are you in again? In Indiana and other states are higher than that. Other states are lower than that, but that's that's Indiana's top usury rate. Now the smaller the balance, the higher the rate can go, but we don't we don't do that. We just come in at this is our standard offer and our standard rate is nineteen nine. That's that's what we offer.
So and what's what's the max rate on a lower balance? Oh, it could be 36 37 38. I'm not sure exactly how high it goes because we just don't. That's not something that we entertain. So I wouldn't want to speak out of turn, but I know it's much more absorbent than that depending on and the smaller balance. The smaller that the interest charge is going to be, even though the rate is really high.
I'm I'm curious. Is that something that you market or you publicly advertise because the first thing that comes to mind with me is almost like, Hey, if you're anyway is going to buy from a buy here, pay your dealership, you are going to potentially pay 50 percent less interest with me because of the internal cap that we put. It just it just seems to me like something that. You know, somewhat unique in your industry because I'm sure you can attest to this that not every buy here, pay your dealership does what you're speaking about here, right? Not everyone puts these caps. Some people will charge 36 37 38 percent. Absolutely.
We do and I think that Indiana is as most markets are Indiana is pretty competitive, but you know, we're not too far out of bounds in terms of it being a huge benefit, but it certainly. To your point, it is the benefit that we're not at 21. You know, we do disclose it, but in terms of how much bang do we get for that buck. It's it's not as significant as maybe what you would think.
And so when you say 99, is that the rate for every single customer? It is. It is. Now we do have if we're with our value proposition and this is something that we it's it's not tried and tested like the rest of our business. We have to do a lot of work with our programs, but because of the way that the post pandemic is working and the cost of of vehicles and the lack of real service and you know what you can find out there. We have found that a lot more what I'm going to say credit profile moving north. So, you know, typically we don't see a lot of customers north of 625 north of 650. We start to see a lot more of them. And a lot of it is driven by the value proposition and what type of inventory we have and how affordable the payment is. And so we've we've started to look at some some discounting on what I'm going to say is better credit profile customers. But it's not something that is so germane to the core of what we do the most of it is 99.
May I understand you're capturing some some additional customers. So, and it makes sense, especially given you know the you know the use car supply situation that you you'd likely attract some customers that wouldn't be your typical customer.
我可以理解你正在吸引一些额外的顾客。尤其是考虑到二手车供应状况,你很可能会吸引到一些非典型客户。
I think on that on on that topic of use car supply, where do you get your inventory? That's the magic question here. Where do you get your inventory? You know, everybody has that question and and I think it's there is no answer other than I mean we source from the entire country. Now you have to be able to have it make sense from a what do you pay for transportation and what the costs are and making that all work. But but finding inventory that fits the model and not not only from a quality standpoint, but from a pricing standpoint. There is no easy answer. But are we talking auctions? Are we talking? Yeah, it's on Craigslist. Yeah, absolutely.
No, it's I mean we are appetite and I think this is a lot of the competition that we have as well. Same thing in the market. I mean our appetite is we need we need 400 cars a month. So we can't go buy them one at a time. I mean you do you do buy one at a time right? But when you go, you have to look at 100 200 to be able to get your 20 or 30. You know, so if we don't go where there's a big pool like an auction, you know, whether it's physical or online, you have to be able to play in those pools and those spaces to be able to get the volume that you need.
So what's the specific sources would you say where you're making the most acquisitions? Like where would you say you're getting the most vehicles from? When you say sources auctions auctions online, you know, Craigslist ads Facebook marketplace. You know, we don't I would say the two platforms that we are primary on are online or in person auction auction. You know, what? Yeah, I mean, we tried to do some of that. You know, we'll buy your car. I think everybody tried that. It's just it's very difficult. It's very challenging. And we found that it just didn't work for us from a cost benefit standpoint.
So I want to dig in more into the customer side, right? When someone stops paying, what are you doing that situation? Well, the biggest thing that you try to do is you try to get contact, right? You know, which isn't always an easy thing in this business. It's not always easy. But at the end of the day, that's where it's at.
And I think that, you know, much like much like on the sales side, you have a differentiator. That's why we have, you know, a finance company that has a lot of customer service representatives that, you know, that's their job is to reach out, hopefully have a relationship with the customer where the customer can, you know, share and feel comfortable sharing. What's going on with them. And it's a challenging relationship from a standpoint of, you know, it's certainly not like a parent child relationship, but it's you love the one that you're with.
But at the end of the day, you can't give them everything. You know, our customers have demands on their dollars and we understand that. And we're one of those demands. But transportation is so important and there are no real what I'm going to say social platforms to be able to help customers make their car payments. They can get food. They can get electricity. They can get housing. They can get lots of different things, but really nothing on the transportation side. So we have to try to help them understand what their situation is, what they can do, what they can't do, what other forms of opportunities do they have to help them through this rough spot so that we can maintain a good relationship because at the end of the day, not paying your car payment is just not going to work for us.
You know, but communication is the key and we try to do everything that we possibly can to foster that communication. All of the programs that we talked about earlier, if they can help with whatever is going on, we try to make that a reality. And at the end of the day, if the customer either won't or can't communicate with you or they won't or can't pay, then you have no choice but to collect that car on a, on a repossession, which is part of the business.
Two questions there. Do you have an in-house repo team? Do you outsource that? We do outsource that and we have a company that we have a relationship with. It's one of the areas that we see as another one of those compliance problem areas, litigation or bad actors, whether they have insurance or not, that's important. But how you interact with that customer in that moment is really, really important. And so we have a long standing, very close relationship with a company that does it the way we would like to do it, understands that, you know, we need to be above board. It needs to be safe. It needs to be compliant. It just needs to be the right way so that we don't cause ourselves or them or anybody else.
Yeah, I can't say I'm surprised. I mean, I feel like also from a brand perspective to have that not be directly linked to your brand, something positive as well. It's not a positive or a highlight of the car ownership experience for anyone that has to go through that. So it doesn't surprise me.
What percent of customers would you say have their vehicle repossessed? And then if you could compare that to, let's say, pre-2020, would love to understand today what is that percentage, but how that's also evolving given stimulus checks, all the craziness we had. Now, consumer savings are depleting. So what are you seeing now?
You know, I would say that my real short comment and then we can get into detail is, you know, what it was pre-COVID, it's kind of balancing back to post COVID, but then there was a blip through, you know, that COVID area that, you know, people were getting a lot of stimulus, as you said, right? And it makes things a little easier. And then when it stops, it makes things a little worse. And then it takes a little while to get back to equilibrium. So I think things are starting to get back to equilibrium, but at the end of the day, it's, you know, I think that that 40% loss on, you know, how many make it to the end, 40% don't. And, you know, at the end of the day, we try to mitigate that as much as we can, but that's really what the number is. So you sell 10 cars, six make it till the end, four don't.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then with those four cars, you take them back, you can resell those cars. You're like, what is the rough? Maybe, of course, maybe. Let's preface that. I agreed. But what would you say is the rough utilization you could get out of one car, right? Like, can you resell, I think, five more times? Two more times on average, two more times, one time.
You know, I don't know that I have what I would call as a good average for you. We don't look at it that way. I think at the end of the day, we are exposed to a significant number of our losses. The car either disappears or the car is wrecked or the car is so abused that there's nothing left.
Now, certainly the shorter the leash from a standpoint of, let's say, the customer had the car two months and it was normal. And they just decided that, you know, hey, I needed a car for two months and I wasn't going to pay. Then, you know, maybe that car is okay and it can go back through reconditioning and make sure that it meets the mark and be reselled. But a lot of times, you know, you get a car back in two weeks and you're like, man, what happened to this car? You know, it's just not going to make the trip again and it just has to go. You know, for whatever reason, whether it's been hit on all four sides or an X decided to put sugar in the tank or, you know, drain the oil on no. Sugar in the tank? Oh man, you can. Yeah, there's all kinds of, you know, I mean, people are people, right? You've got to give us one or two stories. Come on. You got to do it.
You know, so I would tell you that probably the craziest story and this is probably, and this is a little fuzzy, but I'm going to get the highlights for you. Yeah, it's probably this is probably two or three years prior to, you know, COVID. But so we had a guy that was going through a bitter divorce and she ended up getting the vehicle and somehow miraculously the brake lines ended up being cut. And yeah, the truck ended up, you know, fortunately nobody was hurt, but we got drug into the dynamic because obviously, you know, whoever did the cutting didn't want to go to jail for, you know, attempted murder or whatever the charge was going to be. And so obviously it's the dealership's problem because they told me a car that was bad and blah, blah, blah, but now it was, I'm telling you it was, yeah, that was, that was the crazy one.
So you get us, you get a call and they tell you that, what do they tell you to say, Hey, my car's not working or the car is just not breaking. What's the story? We have a pretty robust like service process, right? I mean, so if you have an issue, we're going to be responses, you know, because we understand that people need transportation and most of the time they just want to put the key in and make sure it goes, right? They don't have time to, you know, fix it or wait or sometimes not even time for oil changes, right? But so, so we get a call and, you know, immediately there's blame. Hey, you guys did something to my truck and blah, blah, blah. And we had it actually towed in and we're looking at this thing and taking pictures and, you know, we're like, no, this is, this is an inside job. Somebody literally tried to make this go bad for somebody. And essentially the truck got basically part of evidence. You know, the police were involved and they got it. I mean, it was just, it was crazy, right? But at the end of the day, you know, it was a service situation turned into something bigger because the customer had something that was going on outside of us. And just we got pulled into the loop just because the nature of we sold it and we brought it into, you know, figure out what's going on and then lo and behold, this is what we find.
I'd have to imagine that happens pretty often. Maybe not with brake lines, but with other other ways. With other things. It's, you know, I mean, hey, life is life, right? But you see so many things with life and, you know, nothing surprises me anymore. Let me just say that. I can, I can only imagine.
Tell me about high level for a second on the business. Do you target a specific, you know, I are or, you know, do you have a certain profitability metric per car that you're targeting? And what is it?
I think at the end of the day, it's that's that's a very dynamic situation to. And, and I think the reason why it's dynamic is all the metrics that you used to have changed. And, and the reason why they have changed is because you have the cost of funds escalating so quickly, right? So unless, unless a company is debt free, you know, then it becomes not an issue. But the other issue becomes, you know, the car that you used to typically buy and what that investment was and what that risk that you were putting on the street has has more than doubled. And honestly, you've gone backwards in terms of quality. So you're taking more risks, not only with more money on the street, but you're taking more risks because the collateral that you're putting on the street is not as good. And it's not, it's not because you don't want to put a as good a quality of vehicle on the road. It's just, it's, it's all that's available. And so people still need transportation and need something they can afford. And so we've got to figure out how to make that work.
So I think that the best answer that I can give you is just that metric is in a state of flux and I don't know where it's going to land. But, but certainly you have to certainly have to be profitable, right?
The average used car dealer today is making about $3,500 from the back, right? So on the car plus F and I during the pandemic, I think that averages closer to $5,000. With more profit on the front on the actual car. So where are you in that ballpark range, right? The buyer, like that's used car, new car is sort of similar to that today. Right? Where's by here pay here on the spectrum? Are you making, you know, 4,500 a car? You making 2,500 a car?
So, so I would, I guess I would have to ask you a deeper question to really understand what, what is that question and the reason why, let me give you some information as to why I tell you that, right? Because your approach that you just, you just gave is, you know, I sold a car front and back. This is my number and I'm done. And you have the lending company as well?
So, so, so here's, so here's the, here's the difference, right? I sold a car and, and I got paid a down payment, which probably didn't even cover sales tax. I have to pay for my car. I have to pay my person to sell it. I have to pay for my building that sold it. I have to pay my insurance. I have to pay my lights. I have to pay my taxes. I have to pay all these things. Then I sell it to a sister company that has no cash and they're trying to collect some money. And so I don't get paid until the customer pays us and not just pays us one payment. But I don't know until that transaction ends. How much did I get paid for that one transaction? And then I have to roll up all of the transactions together and go, this is what I made. And it might be three, four years later and I have to take in all of those three, four years worth of cost to go, did it make sense, right? And so it's hard for me to go. What exact question are you answering, right?
I totally totally agree. You're right. So, right, the context here is you are also the lender, right? You're not just a dealer that is maybe selling the Sloan right away to a third party lender. You're booking your profit. You're done. And so, like, how do you manage the business or like, what is that? What is the profitability metric that you track? Is it lifetime value of a customer over four, five years? Like, is it an IRR? Like, what do you guys track over the length of a consumer sale and loan?
Sure. Well, you know, I think that's the real challenging thing of this industry is you, I mean, you get different looks at it, right? I mean, so when you're driving down the road, you see that you're driving 35 miles an hour and then sometimes you're driving 70 miles an hour. And then sometimes you're five miles an hour, right? But you're still going to the same place, but you're going different speeds. You don't know how long it's going to take you to get there because you don't know how much traffic it's going to be or, you know, what's going to happen along the way. And that's kind of, that's kind of this, right?
And so to get back to your point, there is real no, you know, this is where you're good. There's, there's, what I'm going to call is the white lines, right? And, and you look at, obviously, what kind of gross are you putting on for what kind of cost that you have? That's one metric.
Then, then you have to be looking at, okay, how much interest am I collecting on the portfolio to be able to cover my expenses? Then you have to be looking at, okay, what is the reserve for bad debt and how fast is that bad debt being materialized? So you're having to look at static pools of all of these loan tools that you put on month by month by month, year by year by year, and you have to be able to look at all of those things.
And at the end of the day, you know, you have to be able to collect enough cash to be able to pay all of your expenses, service your debt, and to be able to provide enough new money to fund those deals unless you have a credit source that just is going to give you access to unlimited funds to continue to grow this thing until it blows up. And most of the time, you don't want that, right?
The source of funds, is it all in house retained earnings from your business, or do you also raise funds and debt from other sources? So we have a warehouse line and a significant number is retained earnings or related shareholder debt.
So the capital that you do raise, where do you typically raise that from, like what sources? It would be banks. It would be more, you know, there are a handful of banks that are interested in our space historically, and some are coming, some are going, you know, and that's just part of the industry. But certainly the challenges that are in the industry have some banks concerned, others see it as opportunities like everything, right? Some dealers see it as a concern, some dealers see it as an opportunity. It just depends on what you see.
You know, you mentioned we spoke about a lifetime value of a customer and just, you know, having the car sales, the lending business, and everything intertwined. So drive time, right? Drive time, the big auto retailer is famously known for having launched the use card dealerships in order to put paper on the road, right? They were a bank. They wanted to put loans on the road and their widget, right? Their foray into that was let's sell cars. That'll be our source. Do you view your business similarly? Like, is your core competency being a bank, a lender? Or is it not that way? You know, you're actually a dealer and a lender on the side. Like, how do you view yourself? What is your identity?
That's a great question and that's an interesting question. And I would have, I probably would have said prior to COVID, it would be more as a lender. But I think that the challenges with the sales and the service, what are you selling? How are you servicing? What's that look like to support? It really is. I mean, I've never, it's always been a three-legged stool, right? I mean, stools don't stand if they don't have three legs, right? But it's even more that now.
So we are, I mean, I can't imagine, I can't imagine us not having our hands on the service side. I can't imagine not having our hands on the sales side. And I can't imagine us not having our hands on the financing and the underwriting the collection side. So it's less of a, we see ourselves as a lender and we just create notes on the sales side. It really is much more of a list. All one ecosystem. Absolutely. And communication and teamwork and, I mean, being able to understand left-hand, right-hand and really be like on it is super important.
Yeah, you know what? Let me, that question as well as I'm thinking in the used car business, many times use car dealers from, you know, from my experience and the ones I'm aware of. And many times they actually run services across center. Service, you know, it doesn't turn a profit. It's really just meant there to serve, you know, the variable operations, the sales. Obviously, that's completely opposite in the new car business where services, you know, the breadwinner. But that led me to thinking that, you know, are you putting these cars on the road where just like, let me break even, I'll accrue the interest in the lending company that is way more important for me. Or is there like some sort of a balance which, you know, you've answered. So I think that's helpful.
One thing that you didn't tell me, but I saw on Google, and I want to actually point out because I think it's commendable, is I saw that you donated recently, $94,000 to seven charities in Indianapolis. So again, go back to stigma. I feel like the average person that hears buy here, pay here just doesn't think about $100,000 donation to, you know, philanthropic giving and stuff like that. Have you always been into philanthropy as a group? Is this something new for you? Like, can you just give us some background why you chose to do this?
So we actually, so that was just last year's donation. And so for the last, the last 10 years, it's not quite a million dollars for the last 10 years, but it's real close. It's like 950 grand or something like that that we've donated.
Our history is, you know, I mean, the company was founded and helping normal folks and, you know, nothing, nothing high society, nothing fancy. I mean, this is a grassroots customer. It's a grassroots family. And, you know, we, this is, people are just trying to make it work.
And, you know, I mentioned before that we just don't see that there is access for anybody to get assistance on the car front, right? Car payment, cars, it's just not there. And, and so, you know, what is available is food pantries and shelter and life skills and addiction recovery. And the list goes on and on run, right? I mean, that people have access to to make their lives better.
And so this is a for profit. And, and we are not a charity, but, but we do recognize the role that those charities play in our customers lives that are having difficulties because I would tell you 80% of our customers are just like you and me. We go to work. Everything is great. I just don't have that traditional access to, to normal credit, or I've decided that I've grown and I do, but I really appreciate what this company that I've grown up with does for me.
And I like that and I'm going to keep doing it, right? So, so, you know, those folks that have issues that are either our customer or anybody else in society, we have an appreciation and understanding that we have a lot of people that are going to be able to do that. And understanding that sometimes life is hard. And, and so we as an organization commit to, you know, helping the way we can. And, and obviously we have to be successful to be able to do that.
And, and we have been successful. And, and this is by no means, you know, a sad song, but, you know, I mean, things are different this year. And, and, you know, our team, we had to cut our charitable giving by 80%. We're still giving, but, you know, we have to make sure that we're taking care of business, that we're taking care of our customers, that we're doing the things that we need to do to take care of our team, that we can afford all of these programs that we offer our customer.
And there's a dynamic out there, right? And so we just have to be more mindful about how we spend the decisions that we're doing. And the decisions that we make, the things that we do so that we can provide consistent benefit and value for our market and for our customer and for our team members today tomorrow, next week, next year.
And, you know, but it is, it is the big part of what we do on the charity side. And I hope that we get back to that.
而且,你知道的,但是这是我们在慈善方面所做的重要部分。我希望我们能回归到那个阶段。
When you say things are different this year, like, what is that insight into the market? Like, what's changed for you? Is it lower profitability, lower sales, both? What's different?
All of it. So, so I think that, you know, we used to be able to serve a much broader range of customer, but with the cost of inventory, you just can't take as much risk, right? And, and so there's a part of the market that gets left unserved. That hopefully at some point in time, we can continue to serve that market, but underwriting has to be better, right?
We have to have higher income requirements. We have to have less, maybe of a circumstantial situation. We have to have, you know, stronger character interviews in the underwriting process, right? So there's customers that maybe could have bought from us in the past that can't now.
Because, you know, you're wild to think about, right? That like you are, you know, the place for them for a quarter quarter second chance. And even you have to turn away some people. That's, that's a real indication on just the state of affordability.
It's not so much it and make, I want to be clear. It's not as much a turn away and us say we can't help you, but the way that we can help you is probably prohibited to the customers. Alternatives, right? So, so we're going to be able to take risk and, and we have no problem taking risk because that's what we do. But to get the risk to be at an acceptable level, let's say instead of $500 that we needed on this transaction as a down payment and everything seems okay. Maybe, maybe that number is now three or $4,000 so that we can tip the scales to say, okay, do you have an opportunity to be successful in the way that we see it? And our risk is mitigated more because you're outside what we see is what the new norm is for what our transaction looks like.
Well, I think you're doing overall. It seems like you're very running a very tight chip and you're pretty well rounded because I looked at all your reviews, which I was surprised to see everything above four star and all of your stores, responses from management. Like it's clear that you're, you're on top of the customer service game here. And, you know, it's very, very respectable because I've seen, I've seen some examples that are not, not as great in the industry. So you think you're doing a pretty good job.
Yeah, thank you. Tiger, thank you so much for coming on. It's great.
是的,谢谢。老虎,非常感谢你能来。太棒了。
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