The technical definition of dumping is the act of charging a lower price for a good in a foreign market than one charges for the same good in a domestic market. And then it came flooding into the United States! Various domestic golf car manufacturers filed suit challenging a law then on the books described as the anti-dumping law.
The answer was that the Polish Government was approached by an individual to build a golf car He had complete plans to the E Z GO golf car! So the golf car was produced at a fraction of the cost of building it in the United States. Something was amiss, what was happening? Why would two profitable companies suddenly cease manufacturing their products? Within the next month, Otis Elevator Company suspended production of the Otis Golf Car. Up to this time, Cushman was the leader in sales, and it came as quite a shock to the industry when in June of 1975 they ceased production of their number one selling golf car. By early 1976 we were out of the service station business. My partner and I decided to start to phase out the service station in two years. We took him up on his offer and represented his brand throughout the following year. We were contacted by a dealer from Sun City to inquire as to whether we were interested in trying to sell golf cars, noting that we were doing a large golf car repair and service business. With all the governmental interference in the oil industry, we knew that we needed to do something to put the control of our business in our hands. Which of course we could have sold in one day, but, we in turn had to allocate gas sales in order to spread our supply evenly to all of our customers. Our allocation was something like seven thousand gallons per month. The gas companies didn’t help much, by instituting an allocation system for each of their service stations, allocating a portion of the previous year’s sales to each station. All around the country there were lines at service stations, people waiting to fill their tanks. Those of you old enough will remember the famous “Gas Crunch of 1973”. In Fact, golf began to explode all around East Mesa with the development of “Fountain of the Sun, Leisure World, Sunland Village, Dreamland Villa” and other golf enhanced communities. During the next few years as Apache Wells expanded to welcome new Arizonans, Homes began to appear around Camelot Golf Club. TEE TIMES, you know!īefore long, Apache Wells added a second nine holes to the golf course and in 1968 another golf course opened approximately one mile east of us on McKellips Road named Camelot Golf Club. We soon learned that we could take our time with the automobiles, but, that golf car had to roll now. There were instances where we had both, a customer’s automobile and golf car on our premises to be serviced on the same day. We started slowly repairing flat tires, doing lubrications, installing batteries, and doing electrical repairs.
Little by little, our customers would ask whether we could work on their golf cars as well.
We soon built a large number of customers who also trusted us with the servicing of their automobiles. The residents of Apache Wells were very appreciative of our service station, many times risking running out of gas just to get back and buy gas from us. Some of the people bought mobile homes, but kept their travel trailers so that they could live the good life during Mesa’s mild winters but still travel the rest of the country in the summers. By autumn, however, Apache Wells came to life as people began arriving with travel trailers to escape the cold winters of their home states and Canadian provinces.
At the time, McKellips Road was only 2 lanes, and ended at Power Road (which was then known as the Bush Highway). We opened our doors in May 1966 and there we spent a quiet summer. The development boasted a nine hole golf course and approximately 50 mobile home sites. The premise was to serve the infant development directly north of it, Apache Wells Mobile Home Community. In 1966, The only retail business east of Stapley Drive was opened as Apache Wells Enco, a four pump, two bay service station. The history of D & T Golf Cars has a very unconventional beginning.