ERIN – Keith’s Trailer Sales in Erin was named RV Dealer of the Year at the Ontario Recreational Vehicle Dealers Association’s (ORDVA) annual general meeting on Aug. 23.
Five dealers are nominated annually for the title.
This is the second time Keith’s Trailer Sales has been nominated for the title, but the first time it has won.
“Two years of being nominated, we ended up winning, which is a huge honour for us and the whole team to pull that off,” said owner Keith Barrick.
“It’s a great honour for both my family and also the entire staff here.”
His trailer business started small, but now has 16 employees.
“We’ve had significant growth in the last few years. And the team that we have here, our employees have grown as well,” hew said.
Barrick told the Advertiser his team did not know it had won prior to the event. He took all of his employees to the event with the intention of either winning together or “not winning together.”
“We got to celebrate the accolade with all of the employees, every single one of them,” he said. “It’s like a humble beginnings type of thing for me because nine years is a long time, but in the scale of business, it isn’t.”
Barrick’s business has been growing since moving to Erin from Hillsburgh in 2014. Submitted photo
Keith’s Trailer Sales began in Hillsburgh 20 years ago at a small vacant lot that Barrick purchased.
“It was a quarter-acre lot with an office trailer,” he explained.
“That was just me, a truck, an office trailer and a piece of dirt that I bought and sold trailers off of.”
He spent 11 years at that property before moving his business to Erin in 2014, where it has been ever since.
Barrick added that over the past decade he noticed family-run dealerships are not as common as they once were. Nowadays, auto groups will own three, four or five dealerships, he explained.
“That’s what is becoming the normal in the industry. You’re ending with a very disconnected experience from the consumer to the actual owners of a business,” Barrick said.
“It’s the disconnect of large corporation versus family-run mom and pop shop, because that’s what this is. It’s me, my wife and my three kids that live on the property, and we are active in the business and we are the business.”
To find out more about Keith’s Trailer Sales, visit keithstrailersales.com.
