From the December issue of UCD
Calvin Ruth gives a tour of the expansive metal building still under construction. He points out how the shop will be laid out, the gates on the outside before describing the setup for the office.
The new store outside of Coweta, Oklahoma, is a sign of how Ruth has grown his business in the past 12 years since getting his start on a small rented lot in Tulsa.
“I was paying $600 a month in rent and could only get 10 to 12 cars on there,” Ruth recalled.
His Scissortail Auto Sales now averages more than 30 sales per month and is looking to double that total with the new location.
“I’ve come a long way. But there’s always something to learn,” Ruth said.
After graduating college at East Central Oklahoma, Ruth entered the oil industry. He worked as a radiographic tech, performing X-rays on pipelines.
He then helped his father open a gas station where he also ran a detail shop. He then made the transition to the car industry.
“I took all the money I had and invested it in a BHPH store,” Ruth said. “I figured if I went broke, I’d go back to the pipeline.”
But the entrepreneurial spirit ran in his blood. His grandfather had owned a Ford dealership and several gas stations.
When he first started in BHPH, Ruth admits there was a learning curve. Luckily he had a few mentors who helped him with a dealer management system.
For the first five years, Ruth got by and then realized he needed to enhance his education to take his business to the next level and access some additional funding.
“I didn’t start learning a lot more until I got involved in the association to be honest with you. I then started borrowing money back in 2017. I need to learn more about underwriting and collections,” Ruth said.
He joined his first 20 Group in 2018.
He quickly realized the impact of improving his underwriting and paying attention to customer’s payment-to-income ratios.
“I was basically putting people in cars that would basically be begging for me to put them in a car with no credit reports,” Ruth said. “I had no idea whether they had five, six or seven repos in the last five to seven years…I was just putting a lot of people into cars which I shouldn’t have.”
Working with lenders and learning from his 20 Groups, he reduced his chargeoffs and began building his business.
“When I started borrowing money, it opened my eyes to this being a serious business,” Ruth said. “It’s not just my money and I want to be able to pay them back. I needed to learn more about underwriting.”
He’s grown to enjoy the business and helping customers into a needed vehicle.
“I do like helping people. It’s pretty rewarding,” Ruth said. “We are a gap that needs to be filled. There’s a lot of banks that won’t do what we do.”
The dealership has built a loyal following. Ruth said they don’t do any advertising outside of social media, relying on referrals and word-of-mouth. Scissortail also has several repeat customers, who have been part of the trade-up program.
“After they’ve paid two or three years, we try to get them into something else and keep them going,” Ruth said. “We also give an incentive to trade in. We take $1,000 off, if they pay for 30 months or more.”
He’s excited to open the new location and grow his business from the current lot and his additional service area that is a converted car wash.
“We need to have more accounts and expand to be more profitable,” Ruth said. “The place over there is two-and-half acres.”
Ruth hopes to open the new lot in early 2025, starting the next chapter for his business.
