I hit the wrong key and wiped out the blog I was working on. As a Latter Day Luddite I’m not smart enough to recover it. Instead you get another car story.
A multipart story involving a lazy cop, a stereo thief, a medical emergency, and a rare car.
One year I managed a two man pot lot off Washington Avenue in Thornton, CO just North of 88th Avenue. From the street there was a ten foot section of gravel then a sidewalk. There was one entrance and a 600 sq/ft office halfway to the rear of the lot.
I ran the lot and the owner roamed around buying cars. All car lots in Colorado are closed on Sunday and we closed at 6 pm. By pot lot, I mean older vehicles purchased for cash, no bank financing and no buy/here pay here.
A Thornton motorcycle cop motorcycle cop with his laser speed gun liked to sit on our NE corner next to an older gas station. While neither the owner nor myself liked it, we didn’t feel like getting into a pissing contest with the local PD.
I’m a proponent of frequently moving inventory around. Often when your lot is chaotic you will get customers coming in. Why, I can’t define but it happened so often I’m a believer. Other benefits are finding vehicles with dead batteries and giving the lot a new look.
Want to start in a sales hole? Have a vehicle you need to jump start in front of a prospective customer.
We had a very rare vehicle, a Mitsubishi Galant with a five speed manual transmission. Mitsubishi only imported a few thousand each year. That setup was wicked fast and so innocuous it didn’t attract attention.
One afternoon while I was moving cars around, the Mitsubishi was parked directly behind the motorcycle cop. All keys were on the hoods. A customer came in and I spent ten minutes with them. When I came back to the lot the Mitsubishi was gone. I ran up to the cop and he told me to call 911! Which I did and in another ten minutes three patrol cars were on the lot. The other Thornton officers were clearly embarrassed. We never got the Mitsubishi back and I paid the $500 insurance deductible.
The next day when I spied the motorcycle cop setting up, I told him in clear and forceful words to never set foot on our lot unless he was a customer. And, he never did.
The owner bought a small forklift. It was unpowered but had an electric motor to operate the lift. Why he bought it mystified me but, oh well, sell the damn thing. I would park a few vehicles on the gravel strip out front and that was where I would push that damned heavy anchor every morning. One day a driver in a Dodge Dakota had a seizure going southbound on Washington. I watched as his vehicle drifted across the street and slammed into the forklift pushing it into a convertible LeBaron (K car version). He was flopping around but held in place by his seatbelt. I called 911 then monitored his condition from outside the Dakota until the EMTs arrived. (of course, he had no insurance or driver license, just saying). Best case, the damned forklift was damaged beyond repair.
The owner bought a “customized” Chevy pickup. Lowered, 6 cyl short bed, painted bright yellow with a red velvet interior. It did have an elaborate stereo/speakers set up you could hear a block away. I had it parked on the side street of the lot that was visible from Washington. One evening I returned to the lot about an hour after closing and found the passenger door open and an individual standing beside the truck partially inside. When he heard me he pulled back but not fast enough and I closed the door trapping his right hand in the door and causing him some discomfort. His wallet was in his pocket so I removed it, removed his driver license and tossed his wallet into the street.
After informing him I now knew who he was, where he lived, and the consequences that would befall him if anything happened to our lot in the future I opened the door and he took off.
When I reconnected with Little Hitler aka Steve Lance, I left the pot lot. While it wasn’t it wasn’t going to make me rich, it was fun and the owner and I remained on good terms.
As always, YMMV
No comments:
Post a Comment