Driving the economy

“If you’re not in the used car business, you’re not in the car business,” says Gary Moe, who has learned a thing or two over the years about selling cars in Alberta’s economy.

He’s been selling cars in Red Deer since 1976, when he moved to town from Calgary and started working at Kipp Scott Pontiac. A few years later, Moe opened his own used car lot and, today, he owns three dealerships (Mazda, Hyundai and Volkswagen) and a large used car lot in Red Deer.

“I was a fairly good used car operator and I just built it from there,” says Moe. “In the last ten years I’ve added some more stores, which was a good thing because Saturn went south. So I turned my Saturn store into a used car superstore, which is working really well for us.”

Moe estimates that as many as 40 per cent of the people who drive new and used vehicles off his lots work in and around the oil and gas sector. And when the oil patch is slow, so are his sales.

“If you don’t have the oil rolling, then you don’t have the secretaries and the accountants and the other people who assist in it buying Hyundais and buying everything else,” says Moe. “It affects everybody.”

The central Alberta businessman says operations like his also benefit from strong agriculture and manufacturing sectors; but overall, he says, “Alberta’s economy needs a healthy oil and gas sector.”

“It’s big time important,” he says. “You’d have to be an absolute knucklehead to think otherwise. You’d be done – without oil and gas – that’s for sure.”

Having done business in the province for more than three decades, Moe has been around long enough to see the energy sector rise and fall a few times.

“A lot of businesses have come to depend upon it,” he says. “There are a lot of things that are related to it. It’s not like we suddenly woke up and had oil and were rolling with it. It’s been something that has come and gone a few times,” says Moe.

“And if it doesn’t stay competitive, it’s not going to be there. Now is it?”

Moe has built a small auto empire based on hard work, enthusiasm and knowing how to be competitive.

“You have to have your brain in gear and learn how to take trades,” the veteran salesman says. “Because a lot of the competitiveness is putting enough money into the trade to make sure you get the deal, and still leave enough money to feed the kids the next week.”

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