HINO Pietermaritzburg has come out top in the commercial vehicle category of the MSX (formerly Sewells-MSX) NADA Business of the Year awards for 2019.
This was the third year in a row that this dealership, which is a member of the Bidvest McCarthy Group, has been the category winner in this contest organised by the National Automobile Dealers’ Association (NADA).
The winner’s near neighbours, Hino Pinetown, was one of the other finalists in the commercial vehicle category, along with Unitrans Volkswagen Commercial.
Gary McCraw, Director of NADA, was full of praise for South African motor dealerships, saying: “No matter what challenges are thrown our way and how insurmountable they appear to be, one must take stock and find innovative ways to address issues head on.
“The current pandemic has meant that we have had to engineer a new and inventive way to celebrate our top performing businesses and it was done very well with [virtual meetings software] Zoom and a group of national rugby personalities making the presentations.”
Now in its 22nd year, the MSX NADA Business of the Year Awards have been staged to honour the performances of the managers and their teams at motor dealerships countrywide. It is the only independent validation of these dealerships’ profitability.
MSX International (MSX) measures the financial performance of more than 1 000 of the franchised motor dealers in South Africa on a monthly basis and annually ranks them in terms of the highest to the lowest return on average assets percentage. It then recognises the top performers across seven categories.
“We did nothing special in repeating our successes of 2017 and 2018 other than the ongoing use of Kaizen, which is Japanese for making continual improvements. We aimed to improve each aspect of our business over 2018 and this strategy paid off handsomely,” explained Pretesh Singh, the dealer principal at Bidvest McCarthy Hino Pietermaritzburg.
“We have also been the top ranked dealership among all the Hino dealers in the Bidvest McCarthy Group for the past four years,” added Singh.
“Regular communication between all the people in the dealership is a way of life and includes structured, weekly meetings involving the parts supervisor, service manager, administration supervisor, all three salespersons and the dealer principal. I am always open to suggestions of improvement from my team members.”
Hino Pietermaritzburg is an established Hino truck dealership, having originally been a Dan Perkins outlet. The current facility is located on a large piece of land, so on-site parking for servicing or new truck storage are not a problem
Pieter Klerck, Head of Hino SA, said the company was proud of the consistently high performances delivered by Singh and the team at Hino Pietermaritzburg. “This is not only an efficiently run business, but they also have very high standards of delivery in terms of the customer experience, with many long-standing fleet owners on their books who are provided with outstanding service.”
