The old adage that sold Packard automobiles for many years, “Ask the Man Who Owns One,” still rings true in Clayton Homes’ Abilene, Texas office. General manager Buddy Parish, a veteran of nearly thirty-five years selling manufactured homes, earned the company’s Five Star Service Award sixteen out of the last seventeen years, and ranks in the company’s top ten percent among four hundred home centers across the country. A map of Texas stuck with pins surrounding Abilene represents satisfied customers willing to recommend Clayton Homes to friends and family, and according to the company’s tracking at each home center, Parish’s customer satisfaction rating stands at eighty-six percent. He says, “When you sell a home in Rotan, Texas, or Bronte, or any of the area towns, everyone there knows the person who bought it, where they bought it from, how much they paid for it, and how they were treated.” According to the Abilene-Reporter News, a site-built home in rural areas outside Abilene costs more than one hundred dollars a square foot, but Parish offers a manufactured home for fifty to fifty-five dollars a square foot, and says you cannot tell the difference. Eighty percent of the homes he sells are custom ordered, and he believes the market will continue to grow because of the affordability of the houses. He sold his business to Clayton in 1992, and his wife, son and five others staff the operation. “I believe my grandchildren will be living in manufactured homes,” says Parish.