Several years ago, JR Toothman, owner of Toothman Ford, realized his store was struggling, and that fixing it would require rethinking the traditional dealership model.
For context: Toothman operates in a West Virginia town of roughly 3,000 people, in a county with an average household income of $39,000.
New-car affordability is limited, population growth is flat, and competition for inventory is relentless.
So instead of trying to outmaneuver those realities, he decided to build his business around them.
Here’s how it works: First, he encouraged his team to start buying vehicles directly from the street and the service lane, where margins were more controllable and volume could scale.
“Off the street is our preferred mode,” Toothman told Daily Dealer Live hosts Sam D’Arc and Uli de Martino. “We’ll buy anything and everything we can from that method and out of the service lane.”
Auctions, meanwhile, became less of a priority. Still part of the mix, but only to fill gaps.
In Toothman’s words: “We’re a little bit more reliant on the auction path than I would like to be,” adding that margin compression forced the store to rethink how vehicles were being sourced and selected.
That pressure, as he explained, prompted a shift away from broad, instinct-driven buying.
“Before, I was taking more of a shotgun approach,” he said. “Now, I’m very rifled in on the vehicles that we can buy and take chances at.”
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Digging deeper: To Toothman, reshaping the acquisition strategy was just the first piece to building a foundation that could support the rest of the business.
“By building your used car department, you automatically build your service department, and you build your finance department,” he said. “It’s basically the only department that can feed every other department almost instantaneously.”
And today, it’s doing exactly that.
Because as used volume increased, service capacity followed.
Toothman said the store’s fixed absorption was once “embarrassingly low,” prompting an investment of roughly $2.5 million in expanded service facilities, including a standalone recon building.
The dealership now employs six master-certified technicians to support the volume moving through the store.
And Toothman’s main location sells between 150 and 170 used vehicles a month, with a second Ford store adding another 100 used units.
Bottom line: For dealers wrestling with thin margins, inventory scarcity, and small-market economics, Toothman’s approach offers a strategy built not on ideal conditions, but on real ones.
“It’s not a great economy,” he said. “So we try to make lemonade out of lemons every day.”
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