HOUSTON — For Jerry and Houston Baker, buying cars for their four Liberty Auto Sales dealerships has always been a kick-the-tires kind of deal.
"Dad is not an internet person," says Houston.
"I’m not real techy," laughs Jerry, adding, "We’re used to looking at cars, physically examining them, starting them, things like that."
Then COVID-19 kicked them, along with all other dealers, out of local car auctions.
"It was a little scary," says Tim Bowers, owner of Houston Auto Auction.
In early March, he made the call to take all his sales online.
"It was a lot of thinking, lot of worrying, lot of sleepless nights trying to figure all this out," Bowers says. "But we did."
For five weeks, no live auctions. Then in May, as the rest of Texas reopened, so did Houston Auto Auction. But it looked decidedly different: face masks, social distancing, hand sanitizers and more online bidders.
"Some of them have now become acclimated to it," says Bowers.
That's evident when you watch a sale online. There's a window that lets you keep tabs on the bids. "Floor" means it's one of the guys on site. Anything else is a digital bid.
"It’s kind of shifted our whole industry to where there’s more confidence for these folks to buy them online," Bowers says.
That includes dealers such as Jerry Baker.
"I think it will become more common and we will buy more inventory online as time moves forward," says Jerry.