NORTH HILLS, Calif. -

In an informational booklet on Galpin Motors’ website titled “Why Go Galpin,” front-and-center on one particular page is a quote from the late President Ronald Reagan.

The 40th president of the United States was describing the qualities he saw in Bert Boeckmann, the owner of what’s now a double-digit-franchise family of dealerships in southern California.

“When I think about what’s right in America, I will always think of men like Bert Boeckmann. May your good deeds be rewarded with continued success and good health,” reads the quote from Reagan.

But what’s perhaps just as impressive,  if not more, than praise from the president is what’s directly to the left of the quote. Listed there are the names of just some of the organizations that Galpin Motors supports on a regular basis.

There are more than 60 included, among them such causes as the American Cancer Society, March of Dimes, Boys & Girls Club and UNICEF. They’re listed alongside educational and religious/church/interfaith organizations as well as law enforcement and cultural groups, just to name a few.

It’s no surprise, then, to see the others-first mentality Boeckmann implores his team to take.

“When I talk to my employees, I talk to them about being a servant. I use to have people sometimes say to me, ‘I wouldn’t be a servant to anybody,’” Boeckmann said.

“I said, ‘That’s wonderful. Go to work for my competition.’ Because I think we have one reason to be here and that’s to serve our customer,” he continued. “Some people say, ‘No, I’m here to make money.’ I say to them, ‘If you’re here to make money, you may not make it long term. But if you’re here to serve the customer, you’ll get money with it. One follows the other.’”

Success has certainly followed Boeckmann the past 60 years he has spent at Galpin. He and his dealerships have picked up numerous industry awards over the decades, and are adding another one this week.

Boeckmann and Galpin Ford are being recognized today as the 2013 CPO Dealer of the Year presented by NCM Associates during the CPO | The Pre-Owned Dealer Forum.

At 4 p.m. (PT), NCM director of retail operations Paul Stowe will present the award to Galpin executive Al Joseph, who is accepting the award on behalf of Galpin Ford.

More on Boeckmann

Starting off as a salesman in 1953 at was then just Galpin Ford, Boeckmann would advance to the role of the dealership’s assistant manager in 1956 before becoming general manager in 1957.

Three years later, he was named vice president and put in motion his eventual buyout of the company, which was pushed further along in 1964 when Boeckmann became Galpin Motors’ majority stockholder and president.

Four years later, Boeckmann took on sole ownership of Galpin Motors.

These days, his wife and three sons work with him in the business, as do his two grandsons, a nephew and a niece. He and his family often get together a few mornings before the day begins to have breakfast and visit, just one of the many pluses of having family as an integral part of the business.

“I enjoy it, because you have the trust there. As we’ve grown, my sons take up more and more of the responsibility and handling the activities that take place daily,” he said.

The tentacles of the Galpin brand stretch everywhere from auto sports and customization to Aston Martin and Lotus, as well as more mainstream offerings like Mazda and Honda.

But for the longest time, it wasn’t about expansion.

“Galpin Ford was my interest when a lot of people, after they got a store, went on to the second, third or fourth,” he said. “Now, when I first started in the business, you could only have one, by the way … if you were a dealer, you only had one store and there were no public companies in the business at all.

“But as that changed over a period of time, a lot of dealers wanted to go out and get a number of stores. It was like a domino effect because they would borrow on one store to open another, and then the downturn came; and like dominoes, they all fell down one after the other. So, what I really set out to do was make the Ford store I had the best that I could. I did everything I could to make our store the place you want to buy.”

And that includes things like having a full-scale restaurant in the dealership —  yes, you can order lobster — from Day 1.

“Also, our whole focus was on the customer,” Boeckmann said. And thus, that’s where his point about being a servant first comes into play.

He went on to add: “So what we were able to do is grow our company very successfully from the very beginning — and we kept focusing on the Ford store.”

Galpin Ford has been the “anchor store” of the company, its information booklet says, and one of the automaker’s most successful, if not the most successful, stores globally. In fact, Galpin Ford is in its 24th straight year of being Ford’s No. 1 volume dealer in the world.

“I said that we were No. 1 in the United States, that’s the way I advertised,” Boeckmann said. “I got a call from the president of Ford … I thought, ‘Oh, wow, what’s he calling me about?’

“He said, ‘Bert, are you familiar with your advertising, where you’re No. 1 in the United States?’ Boeckmann added. “I thought, ‘What did I do wrong here that he’d be calling me?’

“He said, ‘I just wanted to let you know that you can advertise (that you’re) No. 1 in the world.”

Though Boeckmann and his team had focused on the Ford store, eventually, the automaker would ask them to take on Lincoln-Mercury, as well, before requesting they bring in other franchises from within the company’s portfolio at the time, including Jaguar, Volvo, Aston Martin and Mazda.

These days, Galpin’s franchises include Aston Martin, Ford, Honda, Jaguar, Lincoln, Lotus, Mazda, Subaru, Spyker Volkswagen and Volvo, plus several unique offerings like Galpin Auto Sports.

All told, Boeckmann has had significant success with the brands he has added over the years, earning high rankings among those dealer bodies, as well. (The Jaguar store, for instance, is also the No. 1 volume dealer in the world, Galpin indicated).

The success of all these brands for Galpin is where Boeckmann points to the relationship-building: “We just have a lot of fun with it, but it’s really because we have all our friends buying from us. I’m on fourth, going fifth generations with my customers.”

So, after multiple generations of customers and 60 years in the car business, what does Boeckmann find has changed the most and what has stayed the same in his eyes?

To answer this, he gives the example of his beach home in Malibu, Calif.

 “My front yard changes every hour, but the ocean is still the ocean. And that’s the way I feel about the car business. You have constant change, but the car business is still the car business. The first change I noted is when people wanted to spend less time buying a car,” Boeckmann said.

“When I sold cars early on, it would be a three or four, sometimes five-hour deal, to look at a car, drive a car, appraise the car, go through the deal and all the rest of it,” he continued. “Later, as the information became more available, that time was cut down, in many cases, because the customer came in either with more knowledge or was under pressure, because you have two working in a family; they want to hurry and get things done so they can get home.

“The second one was the Internet. When that came out, I thought, ‘Boy, that’s going to be a real hit for the dealers,’ because when people like dealers —  who are so aggressive —  go on and list pricing the way they do, there are those that always insist on undercutting to the point where what they’re offering is really not a legitimate deal,” Boeckmann said.

“And unless a customer is willing to take less on their trade than it may be worth, or buys insurance products or that type of thing, they really tend to try to not sell that customer the car that they’ve advertised at a given price. And I hate to see that. And it’s more prevalent today on the Internet than you’d like to see.”

In comparing the past and the present further, here’s an interesting tidbit about today’s auto market that ties back into the history of Galpin.

Experian Automotive reported late this summer that of all new vehicles financed in the second quarter of 2013, leases accounted for an all-time high of 27.64 percent, up from 24.4 percent in Q2 of 2012.

Roughly a month later, Manheim chief economist Tom Webb, citing data from J.D. Power and Associates, indicated that more than 3 million new-vehicle leases will be written by the end of 2013, thanks to a penetration rate well above 25 percent.

With those numbers in mind, Webb contends those levels can — and should — move even higher.

“The shift in the new-vehicle market has been increasing skewed toward higher-income households,” Webb said in October. “That is a trend which will continue. I believe these people like to trade on a short cycle and therefore leasing is the preferred product for them.

“As a matter of fact, I strongly believe there more people today in a very long retail contract that would have been better off in a lease than people who are in a lease and should have been in a retail contract,” he add

So, perhaps Boeckmann is a bit ahead of the curve: He got into leasing to individuals in 1960.

At that time, he said, other dealerships were not doing the same.

“The reason they weren’t doing much (leasing) for individuals was that if you were an individual, you could take a deduction for sales tax and license fees, and all that. So there wasn’t the same motive as there would be today,” he said.

“But I got on in 1960, and my banker, oddly, came to me and said, ‘Bert, have you ever looked at leasing for individuals?’”

Boeckmann and his banker went over the benefits of leasing and the rest is history.

“By the time I moved over here in 1966, we had 2,000 cars out on lease to individuals,” he said, referring to Galpin Ford’s location on Roscoe Blvd. in North Hills, Calif.

“At that time, you didn’t even use much closed-end leases. We just made sure ours were always structured well for the customer. So, we grew a healthy business. And the only time I really got out of leasing —  having my own leasing business —  was when Ford got competitive to the point where I had to recommend to my customer that we use a Ford lease, which we do today. And, of course, we’ve got thousands out on lease now — many thousands.”

What also likely has hit exponential numbers is the amount of people who have walked through the doors of Galpin dealerships. And it’s talking with these people and forming bonds that Boeckmann enjoys most about the business.

“I enjoy people. I’ve never met two people who are the same. It’s always amazed me that you can know someone for 10 or 15minutes and know more about them than, perhaps, their own family does,” he said.

“Because when you have a wonderful relationship with somebody and you’re talking back and forth, it’s amazing the things that people talk to you about. I always enjoyed, frankly, listening to what they had to say, and looking at how different people looked at things,” Boeckmann continued. “So, I love the relationship with the customer.

“You know, people say, ‘Well, you’re a real car guy.’ I say, ‘I’m not really a car guy … I think I’m a people guy.’”

Joe Overby can be reached at joverby@autoremarketing.com. Continue the conversation with Auto Remarketing on both LinkedIn and Twitter.