There is no one who wants the dodgy dealers out of the used car business more than Darren Atkins, the owner of Wholesale House in Coopers Plains – and he’s doing something about it in his position on MTA Queensland’s Automotive Remarketing Division. Here, Darren talks doing business during a pandemic, the beauty of specialisation, why location isn’t what it used to be and why Queensland is a dumping ground for written-off vehicles.

Words and pictures: Lindsay Saunders

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When was Wholesale House established?

DA: I started the business in 2003. Originally, after I left school, I was a meat worker for 10 years working all around Australia but in 1996, I got a job working for Mike Brennan Wholesale Cars in Moorooka. I was there for about eight years and ended up managing the yard. It was a high-volume yard, and we would sell 150 cars per month out of there with three salesmen. I decided to leave and after wholesaling cars for about a month, I sold my house and started off with about $100,000. 17 years later I’m still building it up. It has been a long road. We’ve been in this yard about two years, but the business has always been in this part of the world.

Given so much business is now online, is it still important for a yard to have frontage on a busy road?

DA: No. You could have your yard almost anywhere as long as its accessible. Our previous location was on Beaudesert Road and 80,000 cars go past there every day. We were doing 40 vehicles a month there and we’re doing 50 here on a bit of a back street. I did have some concerns when we moved here, but we’ve been smashing it. It’s all internet based.

What makes Wholesale House different to other yards?

DA: The stock. I never buy cars at auctions – they’re too dear – and get all my vehicles wholesale from a number of yards all over Queensland with which I’ve built up good relationships over the past 17 years or so. I get a lot of my cars from Toowoomba all the way up to Cairns – usually that is, before the pandemic – and my phone’s ringing all day with dealers offering traded vehicles.

If it’s the right vehicle, we get it in and put it through our workshop before it goes for sale. One of the big reasons we moved here is that there’s a great workshop and I’ve got two mechanics as part of the operation.

I’m pretty particular about how we present our cars. Because we sell so many over the phone, sight unseen, it’s vital the vehicles are spot on. Photos don’t show little scratches and the like, so it all needs to be right. People come a long way for a car, walk around it and go, ‘yep, it’s exactly as the photo’, then it’s a sale.

How many are on your staff?

DA: We have me, a manager, two admin staff and two mechanics. It’s a pretty small crew but we’re doing about 50 cars a month.
We also have a finance broker on site.

Do you specialise in particular vehicles?

DA: Yes, we only do four-wheel-drives, utes and vans. It’s a good market but it can be tricky – you’ve got to price them right.
Our customers really vary. For some it’s about lifestyle, for some it’s commercial, and some are tradies. I don’t sell the soft-roaders – the RAV4 would be about the closest to that kind of four-wheel-drive we do.

What prompted that decision?
DA: When I first started, I was just doing cheapies – $2000 to $3000 cars – as I didn’t have much capital. I’d have mums and dads coming to buy their children their first cars. They’d get an RACQ inspection done on say a $2000 automatic Corolla and the report wouldn’t be great – it’s a 20-year-old car after all – so we wouldn’t make the sale.

Then I started getting in a few commercials and it was a different market. The customers knew what they wanted and would be like, ‘Yeah mate, it drives good, I’ll take it’. You’re dealing with a more aware customer and it’s a lot easier.

It appears that the second-hand market has stayed strong during the current pandemic.

Has that been your experience and, if so, why?

DA: Totally. It has backed off a little now but earlier it was so busy. Pre-Covid, we’d have 50 cars for sale online, and 20 or more going through the workshop, and it would be like when we had 10 cars arriving, we’d have 10 going out as well.

But around July-August, there were only about 15 cars in the yard, we were moving them so fast. A truck would arrive, and customers would be saying, ‘I missed out on that one I came in to see, but what about that one? I’ll take it’ while pointing to a vehicle on the back of the truck. It was just crazy.

I’d say a lot of our customers then were using their superannuation money. If it was mum and dad, they could each get $10,000 each before July and another $10,000 each after July. So, they had $40,000 and cars of around $20,000 then were selling as soon as we had them.

Replacing them was so hard as all the yards and dealers were busy. Demand was so high, prices for wholesale were creeping up and I think the main reason it’s backed off now is just that – finding stock. I did my usual run around Brisbane to the dealers yesterday and there’s just no wholesale cars. Because they’re selling so fast, dealers aren’t wholesaling but are holding on to them and selling them themselves, especially as they have issues getting new cars on the lot because of delays from overseas due to the pandemic.

What do you think will happen over the coming months?

DA: I really don’t know, but I think once the delays of getting new cars in the country are over, they’ll be selling, and things will get a bit more normal. It’s not just cars, its caravans, its jet-skis – it’s just crazy. I think because people haven’t been able to travel overseas, or even interstate, they’re buying a Land Cruiser and a caravan and going to Cairns or Fraser or wherever instead.

How long have you been a member of MTA Queensland and why did you join?

 DA: About five years or so, and for the backing. It’s an important part of the industry.

I’ve had advice and assistance with a few issues over that time, and one of our mechanics, who is very experienced but has no paperwork, is doing his apprenticeship through the MTA Institute. And it’s nice to have the MTA Queensland sign hanging on the business, and we use it on our advertising too. It brings confidence to customers that they’re dealing with professionals.

You are more than just a member these days.

DA: I’m the secretary of the Automotive Remarketing Division and work with Chairman Peter Dever from Supamerc in Coopers Plains. And I love it, absolutely love it.
We’ve got a lot on our plate, a lot of issues we’re looking at and pushing for action on with the government. For example, we pushed for the reintroduction of the one-month statutory warranty. That was dropped in 2015 and for about four years there was no warranty on a car that had done over 160,000 km. We were still fixing cars that would’ve been covered by that anyway – most yards were – due to Federal legislation and other fair-trading laws. Getting that back – covering a month or 1000kms – means there’s a line in the sand now.

Another thing we’re tackling is the re-registering of written-off cars. There are about 12,000-13,000 cars every year that are registered in Queensland after they’ve been written off. A lot of them come from interstate. In Victoria there are only about 600 such registrations. In NSW, it’s zero. Why? Because our laws are lax. There are many cars on the road that shouldn’t be. It has made Queensland a dumping ground for these vehicles. And ‘backyarders’ are buying the written-off vehicles and fixing them up enough to get them registered.

The inspection process is pretty lax too, I think, plus so many people are getting ripped off. People are buying a car privately, they don’t get a PPSR (Personal Property Security Register) and when they go to sell it they find out its been written off so it’s worth about two-thirds of what it should be.

Second-hand car dealers have not always enjoyed a great reputation over the years. Is that warranted?

DA: Yes and no. That’s something Peter and I are fighting now too – getting the dodgy operators out. In south-east Queensland there are a lot of backyard operators who are just ripping people off. They’re buying cars at the auctions as a dealer, selling them privately, not offering any warranty, taking the cash, not paying GST, not paying wages, not paying for a yard, and if you have a problem with a car from them you’re going to get nowhere. We really want these guys out. We want to clean the industry up. There’s a lot of us who do the right thing and it’s definitely getting better.

Source: Motor Trader e-Magazine (November 2020)

11 November 2020