JOE CHASTANG — CONTINUED ON PAGE 10 What is your educational background? After high school, I drove a parts truck during the day and took business classes at night at the University of Houston. However, I started selling when I was in my early 20s and did not graduate. Leaving school doesn’t mean you are out of school; it just means you are in a different kind of school. The biggest thing college teaches you is how to learn. Tell us about how you became a dealer. My dad came to Houston in the 1930s. He was an automotive salesman. Growing up, I would take a bus to the dealership to hang out, and I worked in the parts department for $1 an hour during the summer I was 15. When I wanted to start selling vehicles, my dad told me that the dealership only hired experienced salespeople. He told me I needed to get the training somewhere else. I found a job at a Chevy store. When I was 25, my first management job was as a sales manager for the Rush store on the Gulf Freeway with 15 salespeople and a pickup on a pole. Mr. Rush let us run with it, we hired good people, and we were fortunate. The dealership went from doing poorly to becoming the country’s No. 2 GMC retail store. Mr. Rush was a Peterbilt and GMC dealer, so the work was a mixture of commercial and retail. I sold lightduty pickups and commercial, heavyduty trucks. I started working for Volvo Heavy Truck in 1991. Volvo hired me to run the dealership in Houston. It was losing a lot of money and doing poorly. My brother was working there, too. I reported to the thenpresident of Volvo Trucks U.S., Karl Trogen, and I talked with him three times a week. We turned the store around quickly, but Volvo decided to sell all their stores about a year later. Karl Trogen said Volvo would help me if I wanted to buy one of them. We closed the deal in February 1994, and we repaid the Volvo loan within a year. Please tell us about your father, Claude Chastang. He taught me everything I know about selling, and he treated people well. When I first became a manager, I could be too hard on people, but my dad would say, “You need to be Getting to Know 2022 TADA Chair Joe Chastang TADA recently sat down with Joe Chastang, our 2022 chair, to learn more about him, his years in the Texas auto industry and his family. We enjoyed getting to know him and appreciate the time he gave us. Mary and Joe Chastang Joe Chastang 8
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