The economic storm keeps coming

WILMINGTON, OHIO —  A snowstorm blew through the night before, covering this little southern Ohio town in a stubborn cloak of white. By the time it opened the next morning, however, every car and pickup on the lot at Bush Auto Place had been wiped clean of any trace -- an old trick of the trade in snow country.

“You have to do that,” said a sales veteran who participated in the early morning, all-hands-on-deck scramble. “It makes you look like you are open for business.”

It was a little before 10 a.m., and there wasn’t much business in the showroom -- just one old-timer who would leave before any deal could be closed. The owner of the dealership acknowledged these have been tough times: “Like everyone else, we continue to cut expenses and be in survival mode.”

His name is Mark Bush, a 43-year-old father of three who started working on his father’s lot after college and took over in 1990. When we explained what we were up to, meandering across America en route to the Barack Obama inauguration, Bush smiled.

“You’re going to love this,” he said. “My father’s name is George.”

George Bush?

“Yes, and he’s a Democrat.”

Bush Auto is not what drew us to this particular dot on the map. Wilmington, with a population of about 13,000, is a company town that is about to lose its company.

One week after the election, the shipping giant DHL announced its intention to retreat from the U.S. domestic market, a move that will eliminate 9,500 jobs -- the bulk of them here at a distribution hub the company maintains on a converted air base.

The pullout, expected to occur in stages, will put in jeopardy related enterprises at the privately owned air park, and economic analyses have estimated that the rippling effect could wind up costing Wilmington, Clinton County and the surrounding region more than 10,000 jobs.

The city has been working on the crisis since May, when DHL first signaled its potential departure. Task forces have been formed, grants sought, politicians lobbied. It didn’t hurt that Ohio was a pivotal state in the presidential election.

Laura A. Curliss, executive assistant to Mayor David Raizk, picked up a framed photograph she took of the mayor briefing Obama. Pasted on the back was a remark from the mayor, published this week in the Economist, and she read it aloud: “I like this picture,” Raizk was quoted as saying, “because I’m talking and he’s listening.”

Although Clinton County voted 2 to 1 for John McCain, Curliss said the hope here was that the new president would take specific steps to help. At the briefing, she recalled, Obama said that “he is meeting with us because he knows he’ll still be dealing with this as president. Well, he was right.”

For-sale signs already are posted in front of houses throughout this handsome little town, along with red placards marking where employees of the hub businesses live -- part of a drive to underscore the scope of Wilmington’s predicament. Many downtown storefronts are vacant. And everybody knows somebody who either has lost a job or expects the ax soon.

“It happened to three of my neighbors last week,” said 20-year-old Tiffany McDonald, who was earning $8 an hour standing on Main Street in a Statue of Liberty costume, hawking an online tax service. “One had been there 18 years, another six years and another just six months.”

An equal-opportunity heave-ho.

In a plea for government assistance, an editorial two weeks ago in the Wilmington News Journal described the situation this way: “A hurricane, tornado or tsunami of sorts has hit Clinton County. Although not a natural disaster, the economic crisis that the community faces has a similar devastating impact. . . . Wilmington continues to be battered. We’re waiting for help to arrive.”

And so add this particular economic tsunami to the ongoing national slump in auto sales, and the gas price increase of last year, and the credit crisis and global recession -- and then try to see the world through the eyes of a Wilmington auto dealer.

“It is,” Bush agreed, “a perfect storm.”

Sales were down 20% in 2008. He has laid off employees, reduced his inventory of General Motors products, cut back on advertising.

And yet, he said, “we are hanging in.”

Falling gas prices had customers kicking the tires of pickups and SUVs again. The auto bailout had made it easier to offer credit to mere mortals. The week after Christmas had been a strong one, and “January has not been too hateful.”

“I think we are going to have a tough first two quarters,” said Bush, who voted twice for another son of a George Bush but went for Obama this time. “But my thinking is that it is going to get better in ’09. We are surviving.”

He paused for emphasis.

“We will survive.”

And Wilmington?

“It will survive too. It will be smaller. But it will get through this. Things will get better. They always do.”

Now this Buckeye stoic had some work to do. Bush was hoping to sell five cars this day, and as he prepared to show us the way out he asked if he could ask us one question: “You guys sure you don’t need a new car today?”

Bush smiled as he said it, but he also gave us plenty of time to consider our answer, just in case.

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peter.king@latimes.com