CARY, N.C. -

It was a “punch in the gut,” says Sam Chaple.

Manheim Nashville, an auto auction where Chaple has worked for 20 years and whose current location he helped launch, took a direct hit from an F3 tornado during the devastating and deadly storms that hit Tennessee in early March, he said.

“To bring this one out of the ground, and for the sun to come up that morning to really see how hard we were hit, it was devastating,” Chaple, the auction’s general manager, said in a phone interview late last month. “It's kind of a punch in the gut … but the thing was, we had boots on the ground that day by 2 o’clock in the afternoon. And were assessing the damage.”

The damage, as it turned out, was extensive.

But just over six months and a near $14 million rebuild later, Manheim Nashville began hosting in-person Digital Block sales in mid-September.

To tell the story of the auction’s comeback, Auto Remarketing connected with Chaple and Matt Trapp, Manheim’s regional vice president for the East, by phone in late September.

‘We were moving quick’

The team at Manheim Nashville had initially expected that the severe weather approaching the area that day would be a hailstorm, something they took seriously but had been through before, Chaple said.

The team was able to secure the facility the evening of March 2, knowing inclement weather was coming through. Late that night, about three or four hours before it ended up hitting, the forecast changed to project a tornado, Chaple said.

“It hit us at 1 o’clock in the morning. And thank goodness for that, because having all my teams on the property at that point, there would have been 350 to 400 people on the property at any given time, in those workspaces in recon and operational buildings,” he said. “So, we're blessed it hit us in the night.”

All seven buildings at Manheim Nashville were affected. One was a total loss, four required rebuilds and others had cosmetic damage, Chaple said.

As Chaple mentioned, it was tough to see the damage when the sun rose. But the auction went right to work, assessing the damage, but also connecting with team members to make sure they were OK.

“That was our main focus. At the time, we had just over 600 team members at our location. So, we really wanted to make sure we (connected with) everybody. And that took us about two-and-a-half days, to get in touch with everyone,” Chaple said.

“But from there on, it was boots on the ground,” he said. “We were moving quick.”

Adapting to pandemic

And then, less than two weeks later, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic.

Prior to that, Manheim Nashville had lined up a digital sale to happen in March and they were looking at ways they could continue doing sales.

“With that said, we were all learning with the pandemic. Every week we were learning something about it. We were well-informed," Chaple said. “Matt (Trapp) and our team, our region, were on the phone daily, updating (one another). It was just changing, every day.”

He added: “The most challenging part I think was, we could sell cars digitally, but how do we continue to stay focused on safety and protecting our auction families, and our clients, and our dealers? And it was changing.

“You never got used to one thing … you had to be very flexible and very receptive to change. And it was something that we all experienced,” Chaple said.

He emphasized the auction “never took our eyes of the severity of this pandemic. We never took it lightly.”

The auction continued to have online-only sales during the spring and summer months, with an adjusted schedule. Where they would normally have three sales each week at the auction, Manheim Nashville was able to combine its Tuesday and Wednesday sales — running that one on Wednesday — and maintain its Thursday sale.

Of course, during all of this, there was the rebuild, which also had to bear in mind restrictions from COVID.

But Chaple said the construction company, as it scheduled subcontractors and projects, “did a really good job of keeping compliant and making sure we didn’t have a lot of overlap in the social distancing.”

With all various projects, crews managed to stay spread out, he said.

One of the challenges to the rebuild, however, was the lead time with supplies, particularly with mechanical and electrical tasks and ordering parts associated with those jobs.

"There was a lot of lead time. We had a lot of facilities were shut down during this time. So, for us to be up and running between six and seven months from the tornado is a blessing,” Chaple said. 

“Our construction company did a very good job of scheduling and making sure these products and this material that needed to be ordered was timely,” Chaple said. “That was probably the biggest challenge.”

Game plan

A big part of the rebuild and comeback was the business continuity plan at Manheim.

“Our business continuity plan really came in play. It's definitely been updated because … there's a lot of findings and things you learn. Every facility is different. We're all made up differently … our footprints are different. With that, when you look at the opportunities to go after it, you have to first handle the disaster. There was probably a good 45 days of just de-trashing and tearing the buildings apart and just getting to what was there,” Chaple said.

“Then you had a structural engineer that comes in and makes sure the existing buildings are safe to rebuild. So that took a lot of time,” he said.

Trapp pointed out that Chaple and the team had put together a command center in one of the auction’s conference rooms, where they plotted out their strategy in phases.  The first phase of the plan was Manheim’s overall business continuity plan, related to the recovery.

Manheim Nashville also had to think about aspects specific and unique to its own facilities. Tasks like rebuilding a body shop might take several months or more, so you have to think about you would gradually bring clients back for that work in phases.

“It had elements of communication and those pieces within the plan, but you still have to tailor it to the specific situation. And so that war room was critical to phasing out the recovery and understanding you have the physical piece of it, and security and the team members that we have to take care of, then you have the market itself and the auction,” Trapp said. “We have to bring that back within a certain order, and then the client services that go along with that. And those each have dependencies on one another.

“For me, I have the benefit of kind of seeing it a little bit from afar. I came up a few times during that early period and each time you go into the war room, you can see it adapt and shift based off of new things they're learning and then the timelines get updated,” he said. “And the construction crews got in there so quickly, we were able to pull forward a few months on that execution. And really just got it done in such a quick time, it was pretty impressive.”

The new facility

After the rebuild, the new Manheim Nashville facility now has a bigger body shop with four paint booths, Manheim’s Lot Vision GPS-tracking technology, two state-of-the-art paint booths, two lanes dedicated to support enhanced vehicle imaging, and new LED lighting and various fixtures in the shops that can not only save energy, but improve the technicians’ work environment.

“It sounds kind of funny, but it's a huge thing in your shops,” Chaple said of the LED lighting. “Because it's all about quality control (in) different processes you might have in the detail and body shop.”

The auction’s imaging building had been completely destroyed and the rebuild was still underway at the time of the interview, but was scheduled to be completed this fall with new technology and software.

All in all, a rebuild does present some silver linings.

“You take the opportunity to take a step back and see what are the new technologies and things that we wish we could have upgraded and yet, what has worked well and been tried and true and tested over time. And Sam and the team did a great job at kind of blending those two, bringing in the environmental impacts, the things we care about in terms of LED lighting, going more efficient, and also adjusting operational flow to reduce carbon footprint, to reduce the number of movement of vehicles,” Trapp said.

“But then (with) some things, the recon shop is built where it is. We don’t have much choice but to rebuild it. But also, it's worked over time. So, you keep what's worked and you bolt and throw the stuff you wish you could have changed and you bolt on the stuff that you want to bring to the table this time around,” he said.

‘Big step for us’

Manheim Nashville began hosting Digital Block sales the week of Sept. 14, but had already been allowing previews three days a week and since had been offering Simulcast-only sales.

“But rolling our doors open and letting the dealers into the lanes was a big step for us,” Chaple said.

That said, the auction didn’t necessarily have hundreds of folks back in the lanes, as a lot of the buying is still done online, he said.

“It's funny. Most people came out to see the facility and see how it looked. They had not been down the road in seven months, and they still see devastation or empty lots. So, they came out to see that. It was somewhat a reunion, to be honest with you. It was fun,” Chaple said of opening back up. 

Trapp added: “There's always a magic to sale day. And so, any time you can welcome clients back into the auction on sale day, it gets the blood flooding, it gets the juices going, it gets the team excited.”

And having a rebuild makes it all the more meaningful.  

In closing, Trapp really summed up what Manheim Nashville’s comeback story is all about.

“To me, the summary of this story is just the resiliency and the community of the auction, the clients and the greater Nashville community itself and how it all came together, in particular with Sam's leadership (in the recovery),” Trapp said. “We almost take it for granted. It seemed pretty seamless but it's a great story, all around, and I can't be more proud to see it and have Sam be leading it.”