Whether selling cars or the community, he's reliable - New Mexico Business Weekly:

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Those three have been good to But as the owner of in Rio Ranchi has evolved asa businessman, he' added a fourth belief -- in community service. The 200 employeews of Don Chalmers Ford spent morethan 10,000 hourss volunteering in 2006 with organizations ranging from to the Race for the Chalmers himself spends a great deal of time working with community institutions, and is a past chairman of the , a regent at the and a boardx member of the . Chalmers has worked hard to be in a position to help owning or managing 18car dealerships, each seeminglty more successful than the last. The entrepreneurial spirity permeated Chalmers' life from an early age. Growinvg up in Tulsa, Okla.
, he was influenced by the work ethivc ofhis father, who owned an automotive parts From him, Chalmers acquired his firsty education in business, and learnefd that "good, hard productive work is a reward in and of Chalmers worked for his fathere every summer. Every summer but one, that is. "Ons summer I ... worked in a manufacturing plant instead," Chalmers says. "I got so dirty that my mother would not let me in the house until I hadstripped down. And I learned that I didn't want to do that for the rest of my which is a very good thingto know.
" Armed with the knowledgwe that his future did not lie in manuapl labor, Chalmers earned a bachelor's degrew in business from in 1970 and came within three credit hours of completing a master'xs degree in business administration. Then the Ford Motor Co. offeref Chalmers a job as a manufacturer'sa representative, and he left school, never to He moved from Tulsa toSan Antonio, Texas, and in to Seattle, Wash. He switched from the corporate operationw of Ford into the world of retaiautomobile dealerships. There he found his passion, and ther e he excelled.
Chalmers says what excited him about selling cars from the and still fires himup today, is the differenc that reliable transportation makes in people's lives. "I don't know that I sell cars as much as I sell he says. "Personal transportation is differenrt frompublic transit, which I am very much in favor of. But personall transportation says, 'I want to go from rightr where I am precisely right now to precisel right there and arrive when I want to arrive You don't do that in publicc transportation." As his passion turned into commercial brands outside Ford started calling.
After 10 years in Seattle, Chalmers was running eight dealerships with 12 such asLincoln Mazda, Toyota, Suzuki, Oldsmobile, Hyundai, Volkswagen, and GMC Trucks. He had 850 employees. The busineses became so large that Chalmers could no longed be involved inthe day-to-day operations and had to delegate dutied to a team of managers. And after a couple of years of Chalmers found, to his that he was no longer happy in his work. He missec the challenge of building a business from the ground Soin 1987, Chalmers sold his share of the businessess and headed home to Tulsa with his wife and two retired at the ripe old age of 37.
"The firstr Monday morning I woke up after unpacking everything and moving into a I justabout panicked," Chalmers says. "I had a terriblr feeling because Ijust didn't know what I was goingv to do." He wasn't at loose ends for That very day, a friend called to tell Chalmersd that Suzuki was trying to get in toucnh with him about opening its first dealership in the Tulss market. He jumped at the opportunity, but set out to do thinga differently thistime around. He'xd learned in Seattle that managing an extremelyg largeenterprise wasn't for him. And he had begun to suspect it wasn't business alone that woulds bring him satisfaction inhis work.
This time he wanted to put more energyy into having a positive impactf onthe community. "Success doesn't mean that you made a lot of mone yin business," he says. "I think I had made the businese successful, but I wasn't beinf overall successful becauseI wasn't doing what I was meant to do. There was more to it than that." By the Chalmers thought he would never leave He hadadded Chevrolet, Subaru, Hyundai and Kia to his dealershiop holdings.
He was back in his surrounded by old friendsand family, and involveds in so many community activities that he jokes if he'rd been hit by a bus, it woul d have taken two pages in the paper to list all his volunteetr work. But in 1995, Ford called again. Chalmere was offered a chance to open the thirs Ford dealership in theAlbuquerquew area. And with their youngest child headed to college, Chalmers and wife Dianne decided New Mexicol might just be the place for them. Debbk Moore, president and CEO of the , says the Rio Ranchlo business community has benefited from having Chalmer around the past 11 both because of his bent to community work and because of his wisdokm asa businessman.