Welcome to another edition of the Car Dealership Guy Podcast Recap—a rundown of key lessons from top operators, founders, and execs shaping the future of auto retail.
Today’s guest is Matt Stuckey, President of Stuckey Automotive.
Matt explains how real estate mandates, throughput targets, and workforce pipelines intersect, and why productivity (not volume) is the real competitive edge in today’s market.
Centralizing operations is the unlock for scaling dealerships efficiently.
When Matt Stuckey's group started running out of space, moving reconditioning and BDC off-site became the foundation of a scalable model.
"It's really just okay, how many sales stations do we need, how many cars we're going to sell, how many F&I offices, how many seats in the waiting room, how many bays."
Today, all accounting, marketing, payroll, and BDC for seven rooftops run from one centralized hub. And each store is purpose-built purely for retail by serving customers and servicing cars.
Salespeople's output sets the ceiling for everything else in the store.
Matt's sales team averages 25 units per person per month (double the industry norm) and has held that standard for a decade.
That just changes everything quite frankly. You know, obviously it changes the way we do our compensation plan. It changes how many staff people we need to sell, how many cars we want to sell, how many desk managers.”
And that’s because when throughput per person is that high, everything else in the store gets leaner. Fewer staff, less space, lower overhead, same volume.
Used cars are the real growth lever in markets where new car volume has a ceiling.
In smaller markets, new car sales are naturally limited. Rather than fighting over a fixed pie, the Stuckey group leaned hard into used, at one point selling three times as many used vehicles as new, grossing more off used than new overall.
"The used car market is 3-4x depending on the year the new car market, so why aren't we playing in that?"
Backing his earlier point, controlling reconditioning costs through a centralized facility made that volume both scalable and profitable.
One great buyer (with the right systems behind them) can purchase 200 to 300 used cars a month.
Rather than spreading buying responsibilities across stores, Stuckey consolidated used car purchasing under a single buyer who also oversees all trade appraisals and stays in constant contact with desk managers about where the market is moving.
"I purchase 200-300 used cars a month, something like that, with one guy."
Plus, simulated auctions and proxy bidding have made it possible to move at that volume without being on the auction floor every week.
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Delivery time is a process discipline, not just a customer experience metric.
Every Stuckey store targets delivering a car within an hour and 45 minutes of a customer committing to a purchase. When the standard starts slipping, stopwatches go on the desks.
"Every single day we deliver cars in less than an hour. So, from the time when the customer tells us they want to buy the car, they're out of there in less than an hour and 45 minutes is our target."
The only way to consistently hit it is having every step in the process prepped, coordinated, and ready before the customer sits down to sign.
Going paperless helps to eliminate a disfunctional workflow.
Stuckey's current process involves printing documents to complete a sale or service, then scanning and shredding them after. It's a cycle he's actively working to eliminate with a full DMS migration.
"Our process in sales and service is do all the stuff we do, printing a bunch of paper to deliver a car, to complete a service, and at the end then we scan it and shred it and throw it in the trash."
This is a cycle he's actively working to eliminate with a full DMS migration.
AI works best when it supports your people, not replaces them.
Rather than automating the BDC away, the Stuckey team is exploring how AI tools can make BDC staff more efficient by handling routine interactions, while leaving the nuanced parts of each deal to a person.
"If it's a symphony, you know, conducting the symphony and making all the stuff work—how you work that back to using the best technology and chatbot AI kind of things."
The goal, he says, is leverage, not headcount reduction, by using technology to increase what each person on the team can handle.
Overachieving market share is more achievable in smaller markets than in big metros.
In cities, brand market share tends to get distributed across multiple dealers. In a smaller market with one or two rooftops per brand, there's a real opportunity to run well above national averages.
"In the smaller towns like we are, you really have the opportunity to overachieve."
The Stuckey POV: Being the dominant player in a focused geography beats being average in a crowded one.
The technician shortage is a pipeline problem dealers can solve.
At Stuckey, students are brought on part-time in their senior year of high school, work through the summer, and often have a full-time position waiting when they graduate.
“The two tech centers in both of our markets…the main ones, actually have waiting lists right now.”
In fact, the stores now run eight Ford senior master technicians across two locations, with most of them having grown and certified internally.
Keeping real estate costs controlled is what makes expansion possible without outside capital.
As acquisition prices and construction costs keep rising, Stuckey has been deliberate about what he builds and what it has to return.
"I'm working real hard to keep these building projects within a number that I think I can swallow."
That discipline has allowed the group to grow to seven rooftops, with two more underway, without bringing in private equity or outside investors.
