At age 30, Bradley Schefferstein has been an employee of Chabill’s Tire & Auto Service almost half his life. He started working in the warehouse loading tires when he was 16.
But Chabill’s CEO Beth Barron is much more than just his boss. She’s been a mothering figure since he was a teenager.
Schefferstein’s parents split up when he was 13, and he and his twin brother Brandon were given a choice — to move out of state with their mother, or remain in Louisiana with their father, who was older and in poor health. Schefferstein opted to stay with his dad.
Over time Schefferstein got to know Barron and her family. He was good friends with one of their nephews, and he was also in the same high school class as their daughter, Amanda, though the two weren’t in the same social circles. The Barrons were aware that Schefferstein’s elderly father was ill and that his mother had remarried and moved to Texas. Schefferstein was 16 and a high school sophomore when his dad died.
Barron says she couldn’t stand by idly.
“I knew that child was in need,” Barron says. She told him that if he needed a place to live, he could move in with her family. She made the same offer to his brother, though he opted to move to Texas with his mom.
“I never once questioned taking him in. Never once. It really was his choice,” Barron says. “I offered him a place to stay because he wanted to be with his friends and graduate from the school he’d gone to.”
Schefferstein took her up on the offer, and today can see how clearly that decision changed the trajectory of his life. He finished high school and kept working at the Chabill’s warehouse. He had no interest in attending college — though he says the Barrons offered to send him. Instead, after high school he became a full-time Chabill’s employee.
His first full-time job was as a general service technician, and then he moved to the front counter to work as a service advisor. Six months later, at age 19, he was promoted to manager of the company’s smallest store. After a year there, he was promoted to manage the hometown store in Morgan City and made improvements there over a five-year span. He’s spent the last six years as manager of the Thibodaux location, and has grown it into a $3 million store, the highest sales volume location in the company.
“When he went into that store, we were convinced that store was topped out. It probably was doing about $1.6 million in sales. He started growing it right away,” Barron says.
He’s won the company’s top awards along the way, but now sees that one of his biggest achievements is his skill in molding new employees. “I can’t do it every time, but a lot of the time I can get them to fall into our system and participate in all the things that we require of an employee … and hold them to that standard.”
He thrives on systems and processes and believes strategies in the front of the store also aid the work flow in the service bays in the back. Each technician has his or her own designated hook, and tickets are assigned to specific technicians and scheduled in a precise order. “I feel like I’m really good at finding people’s strengths and their weaknesses and playing into their strengths,” Schefferstein says.
Earlier in his career he had an opportunity to leave, and talked that over with Barron, who convinced him to stay. She remembers telling him, “We own this business. It’s our family business. You’re part of our family and you’ll have a place. He decided to stay. I’m glad he did, because he will be an integral part of what this company becomes down the road.”
Schefferstein says, “I’m just happy to be part of it.” He’s watched the company evolve and says in the last 10 years especially it “is just amazing how much growth we’ve had.”
He gives Barron the credit for leading that success, and for changing his life.
“Beth swooped in … and we talk about this now, we didn’t realize what it would turn into (or) how close we would be (or) that the relationship would maintain and be as strong as it is now. I look to (Beth and Carey Barron) as my true guardians. I call them for anything that you would call a mother or father for.”
But the family feeling involves the entire extended family who also embraced Schefferstein as a teen, and today they extend that embrace to his wife Amber and their two young children. They are part of holiday and birthday celebrations, as well as vacations. The only sticking point is that Patrick Barron, the youngest of the Barron kids, works as a service advisor in Schefferstein’s store — and the two can’t be gone at the same time. That means they’ll split family vacations in half so each one can spend time with the rest of the family.
“I always tell my wife … without them, we don’t really have anything," he says. "We don’t have this life that we live right now. I’m very invested with this family, and with this company.”
