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Tuesday, December 21, 1999
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
DRIVING FORCE
Car dealer pushes for business opportunities for minorities
By John G. Edwards
Review-Journal
William Shack, the only and possibly the first black new car dealer in the Las Vegas area, has thrived in the auto business but believes the industry still has a long way to go before it has fully opened its doors to people of color.
He counts about 20,000 new car dealerships in the country. He believes that less than 500 are owned by blacks. That represents 2.5 percent, although blacks account for 13 percent of the total U.S. population.
"I don't think that's an equal percentage," Shack said.
"There is a ton of room for improvement," he said. "There is a ton of opportunities."
Shack grew up in a middle-class family, the son of a steel mill worker in the small town of Brighton, Ala. He graduated from high school there and completed one year at Clark College in Atlanta before getting married and joining the Air Force.
He worked as an air traffic controller for the Air Force. After the service, he moved to California and started looking for work. He did stints with the Douglas Aircraft company and the Postal Service before joining the Thrifty drug store chain, which later was acquired by Rite Aid Corp.
He worked as district manager with responsibility for seven drug stores in Los Angeles.
There, he met a man who became his mentor and changed his life. Gordon Wright, a black, owned Wright Ford Sales in Venice, Calif.
"He influenced me to pursue a career in the automobile business," Shack said. "He was a role model."
Shack enrolled in a dealer training program at Ford Motor Co.
"After that, I Iiquidated and managed troubled dealerships (for the automaker)," he said.
In 1976, he got an opportunity to buy a rural-area dealership in Yucca Valley, Calif., near Twentynine Palms and Palm Springs.
"There were no people of color at all in Yucca Valley," he said. "(Yet), we managed to be very, very successful there."
Since then, Shack has owned or held a partnership interest in a variety of new car dealerships in the Western United States. He has gradually traded up to bigger and better dealerships along the way.
He had Lincoln, Mercury, Ford, Nissan and Volkswagen dealerships in several Southern California cities; Kingman, Ariz.; and Castle Rock, Ariz.
In 1985, he and Timothy Woods formed a partnership that they believe was the nation's largest minority-owned dealership group. By the late 1980s, they owned and managed 10 dealerships in California, Arizona and Colorado.
They frequently hired blacks as managers and eventually sold their interests in the dealerships to the managers.
"Mr. Woods and I developed the company to give opportunities to others," Shack explained.
"The idea of Shack, Woods and Associates was to give the associates the same opportunity we had been given to become auto dealers. Some did well. Some continue to do well, and some failed, and we closed a couple."
Shack counts 25 men and women whom he helped become auto dealers.
In 1979, he became the first president of the Black Ford Lincoln Mercury Dealers Association. The association sought to improve business opportunities in Ford dealerships for minorities and blacks in particular. He negotiated the "Ford Blue Letter" that defines the objectives and relationship of Ford with minorities.
As a result, Ford now has more black-owned dealerships than General Motors, Chrysler and import dealers combined, he said.
He also was the founding president of the National Association of Minority Auto Dealers Association and has been vice chairman of the Rainbow-Push Coalition for 10 years.
"(For minority owners), the No. 1 hurdle is getting the money after you get the opportunity (to become a dealer)," he said.
He obtained his financing from Ford.
"It would have been almost impossible to get bank financing," he said.
Another problem was getting qualified workers to work at his dealerships.
"People are apprehensive," he said. "You don't go to work for a place you think is going to fail. ... It's difficult for a new business to attract qualified people, because it's human nature (for workers) to look for stability."
Shack has long since proven his ability to prosper as an independent businessman.
In October, he opened Shack-Findlay Honda in the auto mall in Henderson. He wanted Clifford Findlay for a partner, because Findlay already has a policy of providing opportunities for diverse ethnic groups at his other dealerships. Shack is the managing partner.
"I am the first African-American to become a new car dealer in the Las Vegas-Henderson area," he said.
"This is the largest Honda dealership in Nevada if not the largest in the country," he said.
It has a 60,000-square-foot building and occupies 6.5 acres. It employs 105 workers and expects to be fully staffed this summer with about 140.
Although Shack champions the cause of black businessmen, he strives to serve the entire community.
"You can't focus on any ethnic group," he said.
The key to his success is leadership and his love of the business.
"I truly love the automobile business," Shack said. "If you enjoy your work, it really ceases to be work."
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Printable version of this story
William Shack, managing partner of Shack-Findlay Honda in Henderson, believes the auto industry has a long way to go to offer equal opportunities to blacks. He believes blacks own less than 500 of some 20,000 new car dealerships in the country, or about 2.5 percent of the total dealerships.
Photo by Steve Andrascik.
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