Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 24, 1993 TAG: 9301260155
SECTION: ECONOMY PAGE: EC-25 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN GIBBONS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
'92 GREAT FOR SATURN WORKER
Things have been hopping at Saturn of Roanoke Valley - what with all the new cars that have been driven off the dealer's lot.In fact, a couple of times last year, there was so much demand that the dealership couldn't keep cars in stock. But that's not Carol Butt's end of the business. His job is to get the cars into customers' hands looking and running great.
Butt, 50, of Lafayette, is one of the three service technicians, along with Wayne Collins and Keith Snyder, who get all those cars rolling off Saturn's lot in Salem - as well as helping earn the nameplate's award as the best domestic car line, according to the J.D. Power's Initial Quality Survey in 1992.
A strike at a Morristown, Ohio, General Motors Corp. parts plant last year "slowed us down a little bit, but now everything has done picked back up," Butt said.
"We stay busy all the time," he says. "In PDI [pre-delivery inspection], we get them ready for delivery and put the parts on them that come with them and clean them up and put them out on the lot for delivery."
But being busy has been well worth it. "We're getting right much overtime," he said.
It's also helped change his economic outlook . "You see, I worked at two other dealerships before I came here, and this one here, there's just a lot more to do."
He says, with a little chuckle, that 1992 "was a lot better than the year before last! A lot better . . . Get more money here. See, the more cars that sold and everything, the more service we get, the better things will be for all of us."
He likes Saturn for other reasons besides money, too. "Saturn's just getting started and I really like it a lot." He has been twice to training sessions at Saturn's assembly plant at Spring Hill, Tenn.
The camaraderie also is important to Butt. "Everybody up here is just like a family, just get along good."
Butt has a daughter, Angela, 28, and two grandsons, Jed, 9, and Andy, 4. "I'm real proud of them. We do a lot of hunting and fishing together. My daughter, she's married, they live up in Shawsville," on a big farm.
Personally in 1993, Butt is looking forward to a good vacation. "Been thinking about going to Hawaii, but I'm not sure how it's going to work out yet."
And as for the dealership, he says, "I believe everything is going to work out pretty good up here in `93 - and maybe I can go on that vacation!"