Entrepreneurial

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama – It is not an easy time to be an auto dealer. Apart from worrying about when sales will revive, and at what level, Bruce Limbaugh's biggest worry is access to loans.

“This is a major challenge for our industry,” said the owner of Limbaugh Toyota. “Even more than credit for consumers, I am concerned about the lack of commercial lending for dealers. Local and regional banks in particular are spurning our dealers."

Limbaugh’s father bought the Toyota dealership that he now runs back in 1989 and sold it to him in 1995. Like the rest of the U.S. auto industry, Limbaugh Toyota has been hurt by a combination of the recession, the U.S. housing crisis and the credit crunch. So far this year new car sales at the dealership are down 22.6 percent. The industry as a whole has seen U.S. sales fall from a peak of 17 million units in 2005 to an estimated level of just over 10 million units in 2009.

“For us, this truly is a Great Recession," Limbaugh said. "My net worth has been cut in half over the last year."

That said, Limbaugh said that last month was the dealership’s second most profitable October in 20 years, and that sales were actually up over October 2008.

BAYOU LA BATRE, Alabama – Long before America slid into recession in late 2007, shrimp fishermen here on the Gulf Coast had been struggling to make a living.

“Twenty-odd years ago, if a shrimp boat came in with 100 boxes of shrimp, they’d consider that a good catch,” said Avery Bates, vice president of the Organized Seafood Association of Alabama (OSAA). “Now if you come in with 400 you’re barely scraping by.”

The main problem that shrimpers down here say they face is farm-raised shrimp imported from countries like Vietnam or China, or government-subsidized shrimp from Mexico.