Dealer of the Year, 2022
Honest Abe Log Homes wishes to congratulate Robert and Dianne Callahan of Little River Log Homes on being named the 2022 Dealer of the Year.
The Callahans, based out of Ft Payne, Alabama, have been independent dealers with Honest Abe Log Homes since 1992 and are recognized as the nation’s top producing dealer for 2022.
For 30 years Robert has delivered and built many log homes in Alabama and northwest Georgia. We wish the Callahans many more years of success and thank them for the many productive years they have been associated with our company.
Robert, who is pictured above with his wife and daughter, contributed the following story about his time as a dealer.
Actually, I just happened across the log home business. I am from Ft. Payne, Alabama, which is the hometown of the country group ALABAMA. One of the members was talking to me about wanting a log home. I got on the phone and called several log home companies to see if they were interested in a celebrity endorsement for special consideration on a log home package. Honest Abe was the most receptive, so I mediated the deal for that to happen and also dried it in.
At that time, 1991, there was one person that handled all of the dealers. Her name was Linda Smith. She would call me every couple of months to see if I would be interested in selling log homes in my area. After three or four phone calls, I decided to give it a try. I hung out a shingle, got a crew together and started selling and building log homes. That is how I got into the log home business in 1992.
Since then – 31 years ago – I have seen a lot of dealers and Honest Abe employees come and go. And then there’s Jeff Clements. I got to watch him, come and then I got to watch him go, and then I got to watch him come back again. What’s up with that?
My general service area is NE Alabama and NW Georgia. This is the area of the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. When I first got in the business, people were getting more interested in having a log home in the mountains as opposed to a condo on the beach, and I was sitting right in the middle of it.
When I first got started, Alabama was wide open for my dealership. My wife DiAnne, one of my daughters Jennie, and I would attend several log home shows a year in the Northern half of Alabama. After two or three years, we did not have time for the home shows. Ordering all of my conventional materials locally, which I did from the start, I knew that I would never be dealer of the year because that is a big part of the package. Then covid hit. Lumber prices started going crazy and material was hard to get.
That is when I decided to order the complete package from Honest Abe and let them deal with the lumber companies and daily changes in the lumber prices. Up until then, I did not think so much about Dealer of the Year. I did get excited about it when Jeff called me and told me that I had a good chance of becoming the Dealer of the Year. So after 31 years, I think it’s neat to be at the top of the list.
My future plans are to keep on keepin’ on. Before I got into the log home business, I worked in a stall in a drafting department for 18 years. I am an outdoorsman and wanted to get into something that would get me outdoors. As it turned out, the log home business does get you outdoors. I still enjoy fishing, I just don’t go as much as I used to.
At this point in our lives, my wife and I are mostly into our adult children and the grandkids.
