May 18—WATERTOWN — The road for F.X. Caprara Car Companies to reach the 50-year milestone marker began at a neighborhood grocery store in the Bronx.

There was a butcher in his early 30s, Francis X., at that store, Caprara's Grocery, and he faced a crossroads in his profession.

"A big chain was coming in the street across from us," said son Charles G. Caprara, who owns F.X. Caprara Car Companies with his brother, William F. "My uncle took care of the produce, my father was the butcher and my grandfather managed."

The chain, Charles said, told the family that it was giving them one chance to buy them out. "We wound up selling our family business after 23 years."

The family store built its base on customer relations. "In New York City, it was a big thing to take orders," Charles said. "People would call in their order. They'd want a gallon of milk, eggs, fresh turkeys at Thanksgiving and everything else we delivered. It was an old-fashioned neighborhood."

That relationship with people — employees and customers — continues to be the formula that has made F.X. Caprara Car Companies a success, the brothers say. "If you take care of your customers, and you take care of your people, it comes naturally," Charles said. "It's a circle."

"My father said that all the time: Shake as many hands as you can in a day," William said. "Your business is built on relationships."

"There's one thing we've learned in this, whether we sell 700 cars a month or not," Charles said. "You've still got to sell them one at a time. That's the bottom line."

F.X. Caprara Car Companies consists of F.X. Caprara Kia, 19138 State Route 11; F.X. Caprara Honda, 23115 State Route 12; F.X. Caprara Chrysler, Dodge Jeep & Ram, 44170 State Route 12, Alexandria Bay; F.X. Caprara Motorcycles, 17890 Goodnough Road, Adams Center; F.X. Caprara Chrysler, Dodge Jeep & Ram, 1651 County Route 25, Canton; and F.X. Caprara Ford in Ogdensburg. The company has a total of 180 employees.

Soon, the company will enter the Syracuse market by opening a dealership in Phoenix, Oswego County.

That's a lot of vehicles, but it all began with three on Perch Lake Road in the town of Pamelia, after Francis X. uprooted his family and moved it to Northern New York.

"There was a gentleman who used to come in all the time to the store who bought meat from my dad," Charles said. "He said, 'I think you're a good car guy. So he took him to Jerome Avenue and taught him the wholesale business. There was a big dealer in Scarsdale, a Ford dealer."

Francis X. wound up managing Scarsdale Ford. A twist of fate in the parking lot of the dealership changed his life.

"A Realtor was in the Ford store was looking to trade his car," Charles said. "My father sees, on the front seat: '90 acres of land for sale in Watertown, New York for $3,800.' He goes, 'I gotta see it!'"

Francis X. scheduled a flight north. "It was snowed out and he couldn't go," Charles said. "So, as kids, we were driven up there. We all packed in the car, a '68 Ford Falcon, and we drove up, met the people who were selling the property and wound up buying the 90 acres."

The sellers were Charles W. and Harriet Niles. He was a retired farmer and carpenter and she was a retired school teacher.

Harriet was also the "Perch Lake News" writer for the Watertown Daily Times.

"We met them, and they would become like grandparents to us," Charles said. "We were really close." Charles died in 1977 and Harriet died a year later.

The move north for the brothers was a case of culture shock.

"I was just graduating from 8th grade and my father said, 'The best living for us is to go to a rural area. It'd be a great education,'" Charles said in an interview at the F.X. Caprara Honda store, about 6 miles from the family's Perch Lake Road homestead. He recalled he was 14 at the time of the move and brother Billy was 16. Sister Teresa is about 10 years younger than her brothers.

"Bill was taking three buses and two trains from our home in Riverdale to All Hollows High School every single day, both ways," Charles said. "It was near Yankee Stadium."

Charles said his father had enough money to buy three cars for the used car lot at the Perch Lake Road home. They were purchased from the Jerome Avenue dealership and in June of 1974, they were put up for sale.

"We continued to grow," Charles said, as they sold inexpensive cars. "Probably the most expensive car we'd sell back then was for maybe $1,000." In today's dollars, that figure would be approximately $6,300.

Meanwhile, Francis X. went to work as general manager at Bob Kurtz Chevrolet in Watertown.

After-school sales

"My brother and I ran the used car lot out of our house," Charles said. "The deal was that when my dad went to work for Bob Kurtz, Bob would sell us some of the trade-ins that we could sell at the house."

The brothers graduated from General Brown Central School District. "My father said he'd send us to any school we wanted. But we felt we had a passion for the business," Charles said. "My brother and I would get off the school bus on Perch Lake Road. And we'd start selling cars. Or we'd be cleaning cars in our garage. That's all we knew. My mom did all the paperwork. We did it out of the basement of our house for many years."

Charles said some people may believe he and Charles grew up with a "golden spoon" in place. "But it's not the fact. But we had such a passion for what we did. On a Saturday, I'm here. I enjoy the game. We enjoy the car game. And we made it a passion to enjoy the people. If you can make a living with something you have a passion for, you are blessed."

After four or five years, the brothers were selling 50 to 60 vehicles a month. But selling began to collide with personal space.

"We had big family roots," Charles said. "We had to be home for Sunday meetings and it was always religious to come home for the Sunday dinner and we would talk about what we would do. It seemed that even on a Sunday, we lacked our privacy by having the cars at our lot — people driving in at all hours of the day."

Francis X. purchased some property on outer Washington Street, next to the old Robert Hall Clothing store, now the site of a Bob Johnson franchise.

"We put in a small used car lot with a three-bay garage," Charles said. "We continued to sell cars out of Perch Lake Road." Sales continued to increase, so they sought sales people.

"I believe Roland Charlton was the first sales person we hired," Charles said.

At the Caprara Honda dealership, where Charles has his office, a board lists names of "Dedicated long-term employees." Charlton is on it, noting his 36 years of service. The longest-serving employee is service adviser Chuck Snyder at 38 years. He works at the Alexandria Bay store.

"As we grew, we grew with people," Charles said."In order to be successful in life, it takes good people. I don't give a sh** what anyone says. You've got to have good people. So, over the years, we've entertained good people and we've done everything we could to keep them part of our nest egg. We grew so easily because we had people who felt, 'It makes you feel good to take care of people.' I think the biggest asset we have is that if we sell someone a bad car, we take it back and trade them into a different car. It's just one of those things."

The first dealership the Capraras purchased occurred in 1991 with the acquisition of Northland Motors on outer Washington Street.

"My father was a guy who was always out there to keep an impeccable reputation," Charles said. "So it made it easy for us when we hit on every cylinder."

Taking their places

Francis X. Caprara died at the age of 80 on Oct. 17, 2014. By then, Charles and William were running the business. The brothers said they never fight.

"One of the things my dad always said is that the only thing that's going to take us down is ourselves," William said. "So, we've always lived by that and stuck together."

"I think the biggest asset for us to get along is that we both took our places in the store," William said. "I was terrible with books. I wasn't a books' guy: making sure we had the proper insurances, that the floor plans were done and that you got paid for all the cars. Bill was that paper guy. I was the car sales person. I was never any good at his job, and he didn't like mine. So we had a good balance. It's worked out really well for us over the years."

In 2017, the Caprara family sold two of their dealerships: F.X. Caprara Kia and F.X. Caprara Volkswagen to two limited-liability companies based in Garden City. It followed the sale in late 2016 of the family's F.X. Caprara Auto Sales Superstore on State Route 11.

"Sometimes, you get to the point where you say, 'Geez — wouldn't it be nice if we could just sell and relax?" Charles said. "I was 54 and Bill was 56 in 2016, and it was going around all over the country — Warren Buffet was going around buying all kinds of dealerships. Big stores were buying out the little guys."

Charles recalled meeting a good friend of his at a Manheim auto auction. With over 100 locations worldwide, Manheim is the world's leading provider of used vehicle services.

"He says, 'Charlie! I sold all my dealerships!' and, 'These guys want to buy more stores. Would you ever sell yours?'"

Charles thought such an option was out of the question. "I came home to my brother," he said. "We had lost our dad in 2014. I think my dad's goal for both my brother and I was, 'You guys worked really hard. Why don't you guys retire early?'"

Charles said he mentioned his friend's question about selling to his brother.

"He said he would in a heartbeat. He said, 'If we can entertain selling some, and keep just a couple, for the kids.'"

But as they were selling, interviews were being held in Watertown with Honda, which wanted to open a new dealership in the city.

"Honda came around and was doing interviews with everybody," Charles recalled.

"They wanted to put another franchise in Syracuse and another in Watertown. We (the community) had lost the Dealmaker Honda. They said, 'Listen. The franchise is going to cost you nothing and we know the value of our franchises.' Honda is one of the top-tiered franchises out there."

"So we did multiple interviews with them, and one day they called me and said, 'Charlie — what are you going to do with your new Honda dealership?' I couldn't believe it, at the same point where we were selling the other stores. I had Harley-Davidson left, and I was in the midst of building a Honda store."

A new approach

The 38,000-square-foot F.X. Caprara Honda dealership opened on May 9, 2016. The blue and white building on outer Bradley Street (Route 12) was built on a corporate park owned by Purcell Construction Corp.

Charles said he wanted to make the Honda dealership more attractive for his employees, so he did "something different."

"The biggest problem in our business today is having proper sales people," he said. "But generally what happens is they get worn out easily. We wanted to make it more attractive. So instead of hiring eight people, we hired 16 people at the Honda store."

Charles explained that a group comes in at 8 a.m. and works until 2 p.m.

"And then we have a group who comes in at 2 and work until 7," he said. "Each week they split the different shifts. But it gives an opportunity to have a life. If you have a child in school and want to watch him play lacrosse, football or baseball, you can. Before, you couldn't get out. So, by having the proper amount of people, it gives those people a life. But yet — it gives you longevity with your employees."

The shifts have paid off.

"Since we first opened Honda, I think we've lost one or two sales persons since and I think they moved away. We just haven't lost people," he said. "It's good when you are a sales person and you stay in one place."

And once again, the interview circled back to the importance of dealing with people.

"The biggest problem in our business is you wear people out," Charles said. "You've gotta brush cars when you get two feet of snow. Or you're dealing with the heat when it gets too hot. Sometimes, we all have too much time to think about what we want to do, or 'Is it always green on the other side of the street?' We've tried to give everyone a good life, and they've given us a marvelous life. I can't phrase it enough to say, without the people that we entertain today, we could never do it."

Family ties

Charles said he and William are now involved in the "outskirts" of the business. "We're not on the showroom floor like we used to be, bell to bell, because our children are," he said.

William has two children and Charles has a blended family of seven children. Charles said five of his seven children are involved in the business and both of William's children are involved in it. "That's our exit strategy," William said.

During the interview, Charles's youngest son, Matt, 18, entered his office for a quick word before leaving. Matt will be running the Phoenix store.

"I'm opening a big used car store," Charles said. "We're going to be back to seven stores. Back in 2016, we had no plans on selling anything. We wound up selling eight of the 10 stores."

The sister of the brothers, Teresa, was involved in the business in its early days.

"She didn't grow up in the heart of it," Charles said. "We put her in the office and she was bored with it. She wanted to be outside, part of sales, and she always enjoyed real estate. So she went off on her own and became a broker owner. She's done very well for herself."

The brothers said their customers are their biggest advocates. "You plant seeds," Charles said.

At times, those seeds of success are seen in a different light by others, he added.

"Sometimes people get jealous when you become very successful. We try to give back," he said, noting the company's sponsorships and advertising in the community. "We don't want to get anyone jealous. Bill and I were brought up that everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time. There's no one any better than anyone else. We worked as hard as we could, but we always had our customers in mind."

Part of that work was evident at the beginning of the interview, when Charles, running a bit late, excused himself for a minute before beginning.

As he walked past the waiting area at the Honda dealership, he greeted those waiting, with loud "Hellos" and "How are you doing?" The patrons looked up from their phones, surprised at the greetings, and shared smiles and hellos in return.

Later, Charles explained that is a daily routine for him.

"Every day!" he said. "Because you want to know something? That costs me nothing. It costs me nothing to put a smile on my face. It costs me more to frown. And you want to know the truth as to what the biggest asset of that is? You say, 'Hi,' it's not that you are being a phony. Every time I go to the bathroom, I talk to people in the waiting area. But the difference? They're not used to that. People don't see that."

"You know, if somebody has a problem with a car, most dealers want to hide behind mirrored glass. We're not those people. We face it. We deal with it. Because if I take care of you today, I won't sell you one car. I'll sell you cars for a lifetime."