Holman automotive turns 100 years old, with the founding family still at the wheel

Steward Holman established a Ford dealership in Merchantville in 1924. A hundred years later, the company has expanded beyond selling cars into an automotive services organization with 9,000 employees across North America, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

Steward’s family is still in charge and still based in South Jersey.

Company chairwoman Melinda “Mindy” Holman, 63, of Moorestown, reflected on the century of family ownership, her grandfather’s and father’s legacies, and the future. Her husband, Frank Beideman, serves as executive vice president and chief development officer of the company.

She talked with The Inquirer about the company’s longevity as what it describes as one of the largest family-owned automotive services organizations in the world.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

He was a true entrepreneur. And he was scrappy: When Ford stopped making cars and started making airplanes [during World War II], he went around the country buying up used vehicles from dealerships that were going out of business, so he would have something to sell on his lot.

From the beginning, it was important to him not just to be successful but to be a good employer and give back to the community.

My grandfather made it clear to my dad, Joseph, and to [me and his other] grandchildren that the company was not here to serve the family. The family was here to serve the company. Currently we have seven in the fourth generation who are working for the company. They have to go out and do something else before they’re invited to work here.

Fleet management is now the biggest part of it, and that business began in 1948 after a fleet manager told my grandfather that RCA in Camden was looking to lease a fleet of panel trucks so [technicians] could go to people’s homes to fix their TV sets.

When we acquire a company, we look at how they do business and how they treat their people. And typically, the seller has first vetted us carefully as well to make sure about whom they’re entrusting their employees to. If they’re entrusting them to us, we take that responsibility seriously,

I sold cars as part of my job training at Holman, and I wasn’t very good at it. But I can say the business of selling cars has become much more transparent. There’s a reason car [salespeople] don’t have a stellar reputation, but now, with the availability of information online, it’s better for us — as a business that wants to do the right thing for everyone — to be on the same page. We want to build relationships with our customers, not just have transactional relationships with them.

I drive one, and I love it. It’s just such a different experience [that] you have to drive one to understand.

The manufacturers have it really hard, with the government telling them to do one thing and the consumer telling them to do another. The manufacturers are really caught in the middle.

So the [charging] infrastructure isn’t there yet. But it will be. And in the meantime, a hybrid can be a good option.

They’re being tested in certain places, such as San Francisco, under very controlled circumstances. But they’re not perfect.

Plan A is for us to remain a family-owned company. We have no Plan B.