C Speck is the Richest Auto Dealership in America

People say, do you know so-and-so in Sunnyside? I was like, no, they probably drove a Ford. If you drove a Chevrolet in Sunnyside, I knew your family.

Hello?

Hi, Stevie, it's Katie.

Yes.

How are ya?

Good.

Good. Hey, um, we're talking to Harry Visser today. Harry, you look handsome. Who would he have first bought his cars from, do you think? JR?

I don't know. I was just probably still in diapers.

So this truck is the first truck C-Spec ever sold. My great-grandfather is Clayton, and that's where we get the C with C-Spec Motors. He started in 1912.

I've dealt with your great-grandpa. I dealt with your grandpa a long time ago.

This is my grandpa right there.

Yeah.

My grandfather, J.R., James Rowland, was the next dealer. That's J.R. I'm right here. And then my dad, Jimmy.

And you.

Now me. Yep. A guy like Harry, you want to please, you know? You wanted him to be a customer for life. That's how we made it. Not only the farmers, but all the people that worked in the farms. Hey, how are you?

I was just coming. I didn't know you were gonna be here. Hey, Ellie, how are you? So you guys are literally here on day 1 of harvest.

How many cars do you think we've sold your family over the years?

40, maybe 50. And they've been great. My grandfather farmed in Wapato. My dad came down here to grow peaches and nectarines.

We go way back with the Douglas family, and they've been great customers. Our grandparents knew each other, and, you know, we were car dealers and farming and in small communities. I think that's how we all end up being friends, I guess, you know.

Well, you went to college together.

Yeah.

I'm trying to think if you ever gave me a ride home. I'd always catching rides home with somebody.

So I was born and raised here, and then I went to UW for college. The day that I was done with college, I literally got in my car and I drove home because I love the simplicity of where we live.

Altogether, we milk just over 2,000 cows, about 1,000 cows at each dairy. It goes every day, 24 hours a day.

The dairy today, I mean, I still have the taste of the dairy in my mouth. You know, that's the smell of Sunnyside, and we used to say that's the smell of money.

I am a 4th generation dairy farmer here. Went to college for a little while and finally decided, like, I don't know why I'm here because I want to be on the farm. My little guy Ross, he loves it. He'll just, he'll hang out with me for 12 hours a day. And my dad goes, you were the same way.

Yeah, you were like me too. Like—

When I was little, Specs moved a mile down the road. You don't have to go drive to Tri-Cities or Yakima when you're farming. My office is in that truck.

He needs that truck to work. I mean, that's, that's how he runs those dairies.

All these customers here to me are family. Try to take care of them. Very protective with them. All these farmers, because I mean we all need each other.

How I met all these people is I met them on my showroom, and I helped them in service when we were having problems with their cars. Hi guys. Hey Rick, how are you? Hey. So my dad was very in tune to his dealership. Hey, good, good to see you. How are you? I haven't seen you forever. Good to see you too.

Good to see you.

He'd be out washing the cars with the guys. He'd shovel the snow off the cars. Hi guys, what are you doing down here? It takes a whole team to, to build a store.

I've been trying to keep it clean every day.

It's okay, we'd rather you be busy than clean, right? Everyone here is a huge part of the team, and I think they need to feel like that. You guys doing okay though? You're busy. You guys all have cars. That's good. No, I'm super proud. I'm proud of my people. I mean, I wouldn't be doing this if I hadn't been around all these great people that have supported me and helped grow these businesses.

I started as a service advisor March 13th, '95.

Oh, you still have the card? The original?

Of course!

Oh my God, that is old. That's like vintage.

I know, nobody believes this. I've been doing this since January of 1979.

August 28th, 1988. She's been my right and my left hand. I definitely wouldn't be where I'm at without Jamie. So this is your space, wouldn't you say? Yeah.

Oh yeah. I mean, I couldn't imagine doing anything else.

We have our days.

Trust me, we have our days, but it's part of the actual job. That's all. That's all there is.

Bigger stores are easier to run, but the great thing about the smaller stores is the relationships and the town.

How are you?

You like your new job?

I love it. I couldn't be happier. Hi, people.

Oh, good to see you.

So this is 3 acres under the roof, this store. We actually have one of the largest Wrangler walks in the entire country too. We'll walk back and take a look at that. This is all Wrangler jeans. I'm wearing mine today, wearing my Wranglers today. There you go. Only at Ranch at Home can you find those jeans. You can't go to Walmart and find them that big, that's for sure.

During the rodeo, we all come here and outfit everybody to what we're going to wear for the week.

We have a lot of nuts and bolts. Fastener department is amazing. You don't find this anywhere else. The fishing department is phenomenal. That's Fisherman Dave right there. He's forgotten more about fishing than I'll ever know, that's for sure. Fisherman Dave. Largest walleye caught on a rod and reel in the state of Washington. That's a monster. We have the best atmosphere, right? I mean, it's just like you get a little bit of everything here at Rancid Home. You might look up and see a buffalo, a bear, wolf. You never know what you're gonna see.

How are you?

I'm a lot better now that you showed up. Dad started the store in 1974, and it's been, it's been a fun run. I grew up here pretty much coming to work with Dad and Bill and my grandpa.

Super fun to see the kids, you know, doing kind of what I did and then what my kids are doing.

Little boy in the middle, that's Georgie. I got 9 grandchildren, 9 great-grandchildren, and I got a dog. That dog is better known than I am around here. There you go. That's all you get. To be third generation, I think, is just, yeah, just carrying on the specialty uniqueness and community sense that Ranch and Home has.

Well, it's an absolute gift, you know, to be able to have your kids work with you and everything.

So—

And we love supporting your family and the rodeo.

I love this pickup, Allie. I love you guys, but I don't think I'm gonna buy anything else from you. I think I'm stuck in this one. No, just kidding. We love the Speck family. They take good care of us. This is a tough thing for customers to do, is buy a car. When they have somebody that they already know, that they trust, that will take care of them and everything else, that's their first call. How you doing, sir? Hey, I'm doing great. Good to see you. Thanks for coming in for business today. Yes, you bet. We appreciate it. How's the new Santa Fe? I love it. I grew up on a farm in Eugene, Oregon. Quite honestly, working for my dad was a little tough, and the car business was the easiest thing I'd ever done in my life. You just had to be nice to people and they bought cars from you. We hear it all the time about how much the treatment is different than other dealers. Speck is, you know, family-owned business, 1912. These vehicles that we run probably get 100,000 miles a year.

Is this one of them?

This is one. So that's why I'm up here all the time. Yeah. So anytime they need work on, I bring them up here. The secret sauce, what keeps people coming back, is not the commodity, which is the car, but it's the relationship. They all treat me really good. I feel part of the family.

Yeah, you are part of the family.

So yeah, it's, it's cool. You know, my dad said to me one time, he said, you're gonna go sell cars? Everybody hates car salesmen. He said, but if you're gonna do it, do the best job you can. Hi guys, is Sean here?

We went out to Sean Murillo's shop and I was just amazed. His Uncle Frank started with us a few years ago.

So our main business is like farmers and stuff like that. You experience this a lot that like when guys are down with their pickup, they come right to you and need stuff done real quick. Well, that's kind of our niche as well. One of their wheels breaks. Well, they're in the middle of harvest, so we're usually able to get stuff done possibly the same day, if not by the next day. Another side of the business is powder coating. This is our big oven right here. We can cook a lot of burritos in there. When a customer wants black wheels and we can't get them from the factory, we take their factory wheels off and we ship them here. He powder coats them, we send them back. Most of the time we're about 2 weeks out, but Uncle Frank time, everybody knows my Uncle Frank and they know to take care of them.

That's so nice. We call him Lead with Love Frank. I think that's the fun part, is having all these cool people I get to be with every day, and you know, they're my built-in friend group. I look forward to it. I like getting up in the morning. I think the most fun I've had in the last year is buying that Ford store, and I sat on that showroom for 90 days, cleaned it a little, gave it some love. You guys all look nice. How's it going, David? So now we're able to service Fords, and it, you know, we're already in Prosser, which we love.

Sports here in Prosser is always a big deal, you know, and they start these kids young. And you know, in these smaller towns, it's super important that we support the local youth. And this is pretty awesome. You know, Prosser just got a new high school not that long ago.

For this tournament today, we have 62 teams here, some as far away as Seattle, Wenatchee. So brought a lot of people into our small community, which is good for the businesses around town this week too. Yeah, we're super lucky because our kids are the ones that go out and ask for the sponsorships, and we always tell them like the worst thing somebody's going to say is no, but In our community, people rarely say no.

We appreciate everything you guys do.

Thank you. We appreciate you guys. We enjoy giving back to the community because, you know, you have to remember from where you've come and take care of your own.

22 years ago, my wife was told that she had breast cancer. She was told that it was a very aggressive breast cancer. They called me one day and told me that she had 6 months to live. I was at work at our Hyundai store. I walked outside. I screamed. It was terrible. She lived for a year and a half. She saw her grandchild born. So my oldest daughter, the one that works for this company since she was 16 years old, Ask the owner if we can support the cancer center. Katie Moore said, whatever you want, we'll do.

October is Katie Forney's month. Whatever she wants to do is what we do, and I think she's made a huge impact.

And the Cancer Awareness Month, every car that's sold, every piece of service that's sold, a portion of that goes to Thanks to CSPEC, we were able to purchase a software program that we use along with our mammography unit.

It gives us a chance to find cancers that we might not normally find. It'll be like a white dot in the breast tissue that the doctors will know is abnormal.

If my wife would have had the technology that they have today, She would have much better chance of survival.

People that just come in for a routine screening have no symptoms, and we do this and we're like, oh my gosh, like, we would have never saw it. You know, it's just really amazing.

I'm very grateful to the Moore family to support me and my family like they have.

I mean, most of us have grown up together and we've made a lot of mistakes and, you know, we've been broke together and that's Where are you learning?

When you have a great team taking care of the customers, it doesn't matter if the market's up or down, you're gonna be okay. They've been real good to my family, and it's cool that they now get to work with their kids.

The best gift that I've been given is having my kids come home and work for me. I just, I love it.

It's been really nice to come back home and work for my family. Like, it's been one of the better decisions I've made.

We wouldn't want to live anywhere else. I want to be a car dealer, I want to live here, and I'm proud of what we do and where we live.

You know, what a dream come true for your parents to see you two excel in the business that they've worked so hard for.

50 years later, I still get real excited when we see you come in. Those customers raised me up. I mean, they taught me a lot. They, you know, held my hands to the fire to be a better person, be a better car dealer. All right, Larry, thank you. You're very sweet.

That salesman though, I, I still got a bone to pick with him. Forgot to put them fog lights on there. I knew that was going to come up. Your next truck, we're going to put some fog lamps on it. I hope there is another one. And I'm not going to charge you for them.

You know, our customers and our employees are the most important people. So we definitely want to be part of this community. It's, it's where we live. It's the people we know.