Tradein from Whitemouth MB
In the late '80s we had a new competitor, Weller Medical Systems of Canmore, Alberta. Weller would import Wheeled Coach ambulances from Florida and would offer them at prices that were lower than our Crestline ambulance prices. The reason he could sell at such low prices was because he had virtually no overhead expenses - no shop, no wages to pay for service and warranty personnell, etc.
Whitemouth, Manitoba purchased one of these low priced Wheeled Coach units and had electrical problems with it right from day one. They asked Weller to fix it but of course he had no experienced personnell to help with the problem. They communicated with the Wheeled Coach factory in Florida but that didn't solve the problems. They had local mechanics pulling wires in an attempt to fix it but nothing seemed to work. Finally, after about a year the Whitemouth ambulance board asked us to take the Wheeled Coach unit in trade on one of our new ambulances - one that would work correctly and if not - at least they knew they could rely on us to get it repaired. But how much tradein value should we allow for their Wheeled Coach with electrical problems? We were fairly certain our electrical staff could repair it but at what cost? We decided to allow a low tradein value due to the risk we were taking on the unknown, and the Whitemouth Board accepted our offer.
We delivered our new Crestline ambulance to Whitemouth and drove the tradein back to Saskatoon. We were nervous - how much would it cost to fix this thing? But this time it turned out we were lucky - our electrical staff fixed the electrical problems in one morning and we could then offer it as a low mileage, almost new, ambulance which was just right for Quill Plains Ambulance in Watson, Saskatchewan.
