The Weston way
It’s all in the family at Weston Dealerships, where
employees say they are rountinely helped through life by the
Westons, including CEO Jay.
By Oakley Brooks
It’s sometimes hard to tell who gets the best deal at
the Weston family’s 31-year-old dealership in Gresham
— the customers or the 125 employees.
The customers? Well, there are 38,000 of them out there and
last year they bought $75 million worth of cars and service.
The Westons don’t advertise their Pontiac-Buick-GMC lines
anymore — word-of-mouth does the trick. The staff?
They’re a collection of ebullient folks who take home a
turkey at Thanksgiving, a fat bonus at Christmas and can often
recount a time when a Weston — current CEO Jay, brother
Jan or semi-retired dad Jim — bailed them out of
life’s little jams. Current employees average 16 years at
the company.
Chuck the management fads and the MBAs. Running a company like
a family still works, and works well.
“They believe that if they take care of people, people
will take care of them,” says Dan Schofield,
Weston’s service manager, who’s going on 24 years
with the family.
Schofield, 42, benefited from the Westons’ largesse. A
decade and a half ago when he and his wife adopted a child on
short notice, Jim called him into his office and handed him a
check for several thousand dollars. Kids are expensive, Jim
said. Later, looking to move from technician to management with
a new bachelor’s degree under his belt, he figured he
might have to change companies because Weston’s higher
positions were sown up. But Jay appeared at his graduation and
offered him a slot opening up because of a retirement.
“I can’t see working anywhere else,”
Schofield says.
The Westons’ style springs from a strong and visible
Christian faith.
“We operate from a moral compass,” says Jan, the
CFO. “We believe in right and wrong and God is the source
of that.”
The dealership closes on Sunday and church vans are often fixed
for free by the service department.
The family also strives to differentiate its work environment
from the stereotypical dealership. Smoking is discouraged, the
shop is immaculate (they spent $100,000 on new lighting last
year) and young technicians are sent to expenses-paid training
courses in Seattle and Irvine, Calif., early in their careers.
In an industry where mechanics tend to move every three to five
years, that’s a risky proposition. But the Westons figure
it’s a strong signal to techs that they want the new
hires to stay in the family.
Jay and Jan, both in their mid-40s, play humble leaders and
tend to keep the inner workings of the company tight to their
chest: no open-book, all-company meetings here. They say
they do it — as any upstanding father figures would
— to keep employees from worrying. “There’s
no sense putting an undue burden on someone if there’s
nothing they can do about it,” Jan says. Late last year,
after General Motors announced massive layoffs and chatter
about GM’s uncertain future spread around the dealership
floor, Jay called together the employees. He told them Weston
would be around for another 30 or 40 years.
Longtime workers recalled a similar situation in the late 1980s
when Weston’s lease was pulled out from under Jim on
short notice and the dealership had to move. Technician Brad
Huwe remembers when Jim, who had temporarily relocated the
service department to a dark warehouse, huddled the mechanics
and told them he’d take care of them if they stuck
around. Standing in the new 57-bay shop today, Huwe says
unequivocally: “He has.”
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