“Whoever wins, just leave us alone to do business”

American automotive business owner inspires optimism

I spent the last five days in the United States and arrived back in Canada on the eve of Election Day.

I made it a point to have “election/economic conversations” with as many Americans as possible. I also made a specific effort to interview a successful businessman who owns a chain of eight automotive industry service suppliers and has operated since the early 1970s.  

Initially, he declined to be interviewed.

“The best media advice I ever got was from someone working on a charity project with me,” he told me. “It was, ‘When it comes to the media, ‘play dead.’ So, I don’t do interviews,” he explained jovially.

“Canadians want to hear from a real American small business owner,” I countered. “Not a corporate spin doctor.” I promised not to identify him or his business chain, but to quote him anonymously; on that basis, he agreed to talk to Taxi News. Taxi News was surprised and how succinctly he was able to summarize the current situation.

“Things are good right now,” he described. “Business is brisk. We are really busy, in all eight locations, eight different cities in Michigan.”

As for his hopes about today’s election, his comments were even shorter.

“Whoever wins, we just want them to leave us alone. Leave business alone: don’t write any new regulations. Just leave us alone to get business done, and we’ll all be fine.”

He has zero fear of any social unrest or disruption after today’s election: “Absolutely none. No fear whatsoever. No one is talking about that.”

His no-nonsense, optimistic attitude was a real breath of fresh air after the past several years in Canada. God bless America.

One alarming meander in our conversation was the competition he is feeling from private equity firms, which are perched like vultures over virtually every category of business which can be automated or has labour costs which can be reduced to nearly zero.

“I don’t know how that’s going to work,” he mused. “At the end of the day, you have to have people with money to buy things, or no one can do any business,” he points out. “People can get together and pool their money and buy up or build enterprises which are huge and hard to compete with; that’s legal, that’s fair. However, monopolies are still illegal, so we’ll see.”

Canadians fed a steady diet of doom-and-gloom by media about hapless Americans would be encouraged by my automotive business owner: he has been creating jobs, training staff, launching careers, opening new locations and investing in technology for half of a century. He has high hopes for his kids and his twelve grand kids.

I hope he is right again this time, about everything.

“They’ve gotta stop with the bullshit on EVs.”

Another great American observation I heard on this trip was from a large landscaper on electric vehicles.

“Electric vehicles, we’re fine with them where they fit,” he said. “But the bullshit – they’ve gottta stop with the bullshit on EVs.”

I roared laughing, and told him his comments aligned nearly perfectly with the entire Taxi industry and the opinion of Toyota’s CEO, who believes that EVs will only ever account for a maximum of 30 per cent of the market.

“They’ve gotta stop with the bullshit on EVs,” the landscaper reiterated with a sigh.