TEAM WORK
The formula for success at
Dixie RV Superstores
by Thomas LaVeque

Take a self-taught accountant with a strong inherent work ethic and an insatiable thirst for knowledge and give him the opportunity to explore the depths of his imagination, and you have the wind behind the sails of one of the most successful RV dealerships in Virginia, Dixie RV Superstores.

The year was 1967. Crosby Forrest, current president and owner of Dixie RV Superstores in Newport News, VA, was returning home from his first professional job working as an accountant in a steel firm in Richmond. After landing the accountant's position at the firm, he worked 60-70 hours every week and only officially got paid for forty. But as he says: "I was getting something that they couldn't take away from me . . . experience."

Although many people would consider that a pretty foolish thing to do, Crosby did not see it that way. In his eyes, and in the eyes of his grandfather and father this was what was known in their business as "putting in your dues." Their business was the seafood industry business. He learned this incredible sense of work ethic and patience for obtaining higher yields in the future by growing up with "the hardest workers you will ever encounter in your life," . . the fishermen of the Chesapeake Bay.

Crosby worked alongside the men and women in that industry since he was five years old, and when he was eighteen his grandmother gave him enough money to obtain some business college to learn the basics. From there he used his own motivation and perseverance to teach himself accounting and get his first job out of the only industry he ever knew. He had the same work ethic there as he did when he was in the seafood industry. "They just endeared me, and they couldn't believe that I would come in and work as hard as I did."

Crosby says: "In life, talent without opportunity goes to waste" and he sites himself and his situation when he returned home from Richmond as a prime example of the validity of his statement.

Crosby Forrest was destined to become a third generation fisherman, pulling gill nets, crab pots and racking clams from the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay, but one slight twist of fate in 1967 changed all of that for good.

His wife Mary and he were childhood sweethearts. They got married real young right out of high school and they got by on the money that he actually did earn at the firm. In 1967, at the age of 24 he returned home in search of new career opportunities. After a bit of a search and after seriously contemplating returning to the seafood industry, he got what he considers to be the opportunity of his lifetime. "I came to work with the gas company across the street called Dixie Gas."

The company sold gas in the winter months but the summer months were very slow, so they started selling RVs and truck caps to subsidize the business during that down time. "This was around the time that Mr. Hanson (founder of Winnebago) and his son where on the assembly line. We would have someone fly to Forrest City, pick up a unit and bring it back. We would sell one at a time, then go get another one. And that was the very beginning of the RV dealership."  continued