For all the doom and gloom that seems to exist these days in the trucking industry, one interesting, positive story arrived in my inbox this morning. It’s the story of Diamond Cos. Inc, a new and used truck dealer in Memphis. Diamond, according to the story from the
Memphis Business Journal, has just purchased a former Toyota dealership adjacent to its own business on Brooks Road in Memphis.
Now, Diamond is not a single-dealership operation, touting itself as the “largest single-owned International truck dealer organization with fifteen locations across four states,” but the fact that anyone is expanding is news these days.
According to the Journal story, the dealership will utilize five acres of space it has acquired to “stretch its legs,” the company’s president and CEO said in the story.
“It was a good opportunity because we have been cramped for some time, but we wanted to stay in the Brooks Road area,” Dick Sweebe told the Journal. In addition, Sweebe went on to say that Diamond plans a multi-million dollar renovation of the site, set to begin later this month.
For an industry that is suffering with forecasts of lower sales that keep getting lowered with each passing month, at least one dealership sees opportunity.
“This was an opportunity with a piece of property we could buy and, although the timing may have not been perfect from a standpoint of what the overall market is doing, we felt like we needed to buy it or that opportunity would pass and we would be forever landlocked,” Sweebe said.
That’s the kind of investment President Obama is hoping for.