#214 - Squeeze Pages, Transporters, Gas Prices and more

You are listening to the Independent Dealer Podcast with hosts Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson. Hello and welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast, brought to you by Buckeye Dealership consulting. Luke, happy St. Patrick's Day, buddy.

Hey, I forgot to put on my hat. Should I put on my hat?

Yeah, you probably should. I mean, technically, yeah, you go get it and I'll give the intro here. Technically, obviously we record this, you know, a couple days before the episode comes out. But this is coming out on St. Patrick's Day, so if you're watching it on the YouTube channel, Luke is fired up. He's got his bowler hat on. What is that thing called?

Golfing hat, man.

The golfing hat.

Yeah. I look good? You like it?

All right. All right. So anyways, guys, thank you for listening. Obviously we'd like to thank everyone who's left us reviews in the last couple of weeks. We're trying to get to the consulting calls that we offered back then to chat with everyone. It's a little bit hard coordinating three car dealers schedules, so patience with us, but stay persistent and keep leaving the reviews. Keep sharing this with your friends. We really appreciate it and we're looking forward to seeing everyone come convention season starting to kick up. So obviously we'll talk about some great ones that are coming up and some of the sponsors of the podcast to make sure we see you guys in Vegas in April. But Luke, couple of questions and conversations that the dealers are having in the Facebook forum and kind of personally to us via text message and email that we get to the podcast. We just kind of want to address some of the hot topics that are going on right now. A few things that, you know, it's kind of continually debated. You have your opinion, I have my opinion. And then everyone can kind of kind of fall where they may when they kind of hear both sides of the argument.

Yeah, the first thing is squeeze, Squeeze, Squeeze page. Jeff. I'm having a hard time saying that Squeeze page because I think there's such garbage I can hardly get out of my mouth.

Yeah, so. So there's two different philosophies if you don't know. A squeeze page is basically when you go to a dealer's website and you want to look at their inventory, you get the pop up blocker that says, hey, sorry, you got to put in your name, your phone number, your email before we'll allow you to look at our inventory. Kind of, yeah, I get it. I have one on my page. Luke does not have one on his page. Yes, I understand that. If I was A consumer, and I saw that, I would be a little bit peeved. Right.

I would bounce so fast, man. I can only imagine how high your, your bounce rate is. Jeff.

Yeah, maybe I'll try to pull that up while we have this conversation, but can you. Here's the thing. So the very first caveat is it does not work for all dealerships. I will 100% concede the fact that if you are a prime or even subprime, this may not be your thing. If you're just basically competing on a commodity, you've got the same 2019 Honda Accord that 50 other dealerships in your town have, then yes, you definitely need to A, post your price and B, don't have a choke page, have your inventory page open because you are competing on price.

Yeah. And there's no chance would ever work for a prime page for a prime dealer. And if somebody could prove me wrong by showing me that I'm fine. But I think, I think it's different. Five years ago, 10 years ago, this may have been the ideal scenario for subprime dealers because you're selling, you know, you're selling financing. That's what, that's what we're doing too. But, but I think it's evolved because there's so much information out there already about how you can get best financing, what kind of car you can afford. The cars become so different in the buy here, pay here world. That and the subprime world for that matter. It is about the car a lot of times, not necessarily about just getting financed. I know we talk about selling a program. Selling a program, but I think, I think the car has to appeal to the buyer before, before any of the rest happen. Now, I might be totally wrong. Jeff, are you argued that that's not the case?

Yeah. So even though I can't, the only thing I would argue is that I'm. I'm getting way more at bats than I'm getting without it. Right.

So you're saying you're. You had more information about the people on your website, is that it?

Yes, yes. I just like, I want my customers to go out and approach every customer that drives on the lot and try to get a name and phone number, even if they're quote, just shopping so that we can then follow up remarket to them, maybe hit them at the right time. I treat the web, my webpages the same way. It's my showroom, you know, it's my digital showroom. So yes, mine says, hey guys, you know, we're trying to keep other dealers from stealing our pictures and prices and whatever. Please just make sure you're not a robot. Enter your name and info, right?

And well, couldn't, couldn't they falsify that stuff?

Of course. And I encourage them to, you know, if someone gets mad at me, if someone gets mad at me and says, well, I'm not going to give you my name and number, I'll be like, hey, pro tip test dot com, you know, Fred Flintstone, like, big deal. If you really want to see my inventory, you can get around this stuff. But there's a lot of people that are on the bubble or that are like, hey, sure, you know, like, here's my name, here's my info. We contact you, we send you a text message and my choke page goes directly into my texting platform. So the second they hit my choke page and they enter their info, I get my texting platform pops up and I instantly can text them back and say, hey, you're on our page. Do you have any questions? Let me know, I'm here to chat. You know, so we're getting an instant communication with them the second they're there on the website, shopping and, and yes, looking at my Google Analytics, if someone comes in to my website from a listed auto, it looks like, you know, my traffic that's coming in off of Facebook, a listed auto and they hit my choke page, it's a pretty substantial drop off, 80%. So yeah, if you hit my page trying to look at a car and the show page pops up, 80% are bouncing out. If you come in through a Google search and, or through my front door, which is my, you know, main.com and then you jump over to inventory, I've got a 30% drop off. So if you're coming there with intentions to shop my store and you're coming here because you know, my dealership, I'm getting a 70% pass through rate. If you're coming just to look at a car because you saw a fancy ad on Facebook or something, then yeah, I'm getting a, the opposite. I'm getting a 70 to 80% drop off rate.

Somebody was a friend of mine who's not from the United States, grew up in Europe, our family's from Europe, said that there's a total different mindset between an American shopper or American store owner compared to a European store owner and an American shopper compared to European shoppers. So Americans, when we walk in a store, we don't want to be bothered at all, right? We kind of want to sneak around and not let people know that we're there. And in Europe, that would be considered bad business. Like, if you walked into my store and he didn't talk to me, I would think you were being rude. And I started thinking about this thing. So how does that work on our website?

And.

And I want everybody to have total access to everything. If you don't want to be bothered, don't be bothered. And so I think, and I don't know because I don't have my numbers available for this, but I would say that when you get to my website, you stay on my website a lot longer than those with choke pages. You go to a bunch of different cars, you're checking them out, and if you like what you see, you are going to fill out an application. And we see a lot of applications. Yeah. So I don't think, I don't think there's one right or wrong answer to this, but I think it's old. I think that thought process of, of show pages is old and maybe outdated.

But do you think the same about, you know, do you think the same about. On traffic, on lot traffic? Do you encourage your salesman to go out, greet the customer, talk to them, or do you wait for that customer to come in the front door?

So there's two, two different trains of thought there. I would like a customer service representative to speak to every customer walks on the lot, and we train for that all the time. And you don't have to give us your information. We're going to come out there, we're going to say a couple things that are scripted, and we're going to try to get your information. We're going to try to walk you through the approval process and get you inside. That's what we try to do. We want to make you feel like you're. You're wanted. I think if customers aren't greeted, then they, they feel like they're not wanted. But that's just my thought process.

You put your prices on your cars, window stickers, info, everything's on there. So the customer, your. Your salesman wouldn't necessarily need to go out there. The customer could do the same thing on the lot as they do on your website. Shop around, snoop, get all the information they need. And then if they want to talk to you, they could submit 100%.

And we got front door, got QR codes so they can scan that to get approved to, to do their application while they're walking around. So, you know, you kind of. Tracy and Troy said this long time ago, you want Your facing dealership to be the same as what's going on on your website, as what's going on in your advertising. Everything needs to look exactly the same. And with that being said, everything needs to be exactly the same. If you got prices on your. On your lots, you need to have them on your website. You have it on your advertising. You know, and that's what we try to do. We try to stay as consistent as possible across all platforms.

I don't put any pricing on my cars. I put pricing on my website now. I used to, not I do now. I don't put them on my car because I don't want to print up window stickers every other day because, yes, I do continually adjust my prices based on market demand, based on repairs that I put into the car, based on a number of factors. I'm always changing the pricing of the vehicle, and I would just never be consistent. I'd have one thing on the website, one thing, you know, that the salesman would see, and then the printed one that's now two weeks old would be completely different. And that, that. That's the reason I don't.

I mean, I see the value of that, validity of that, but I. We don't change our prices that much. Maybe, maybe once a month if. If we think something's out of whack and we're going to old unit.

Yeah. So, Luke, moving on, Central dispatch best practices. If you guys don't know Central dispatch, online transportation, what do you call it? Aggregator hub.

This dispatcher. I mean, I think it's really. You know, there's probably a lot of newer dealers out there that, that haven't been shipping cars as long as I have, but I've been shipping cars for probably close to 20 years. And back in the day before Central dispatch was an online platform, it was a fax platform. I know that sounds crazy, but what you would do is essentially you would send a fax out to the dispatchers. Well, you would have a dispatcher and ours, we had one in South Carolina. A lot of the bigger that are now bigger logistic companies had them as well. And they would just all day long send out faxes of where cars needed to go, and you would have one person that kind of controlled that, and they make 10% of the shipping or whatever it was, and off you'd go. So what we have now is a true dispatcher. And everybody can see, does it have flaws? It has tons of flaws. It's owned by Cox and it was bought, I guess, you know, 10, 15 years ago. But the biggest problem is, is they don't care. They don't regulate it. It's the Wild West. You don't have to do anything to get to be approved to be a transporter. That I can see. It's just, hey, I've got a truck and trailer. If I. If I have documents, I'm going to post them. If I don't, I'm not. I think there could be a lot better legislation, regulation on this site, but it's not. So we're kind of left with what we're left with.

What's the difference between Central Dispatch and Ready Logistics then? That's where I get confused because Ready Logistics is just. I mean, I can. I can order that directly if I buy something on Manheim and I don't have to worry about it, right? It gets dispatched, it gets shipped. I don't talk to anybody. The car shows up.

So essentially, Ready Logistics is a logistics company that uses Central dispatch. So they're posting your car to Central Dispatch, but as Ready Logistics, and they're making a spread right in there. And they're both on. They're both owned by Manha.

So, yeah, that's what's interesting to me is when I do see the quotes on transport through Ready Logistics, obviously it's a bit higher than it is if I go through Central. But, you know, and they had this conversation online with some guys, I look at the stuff that I pay through Backlot, that transportation is reasonable. Man, I'd pay that all day long, the stuff that backlot charges me. So I don't think. And maybe it's different regional or geographical, but, man, what I pay through Ready Logistics is almost double what I would pay that same car through backlots for the same distance.

Well, that's.

It's really interesting. There's a disparity and the middleman you.

Don'T know about, there's a trade off. So the trade off when using Central Dispatch is you get a better price, but more headache.

You gotta deal with everybody. It drives me crazy.

So these are my four tips. Okay? Number one, always, always check the rating of the company that calls you. And so what I do is I get the incoming call and I say, please text me your information who you are. So I use that. I go in there before I, you know, before I sign it.

Yeah.

Say, all right, what are these people's rating? If they have a hundred percent and they've been doing it for years, boom, it's good to go. If they have a zero rating and they Got in business last month. The chance of me assigning that pretty negligible because unless. Unless it's something I hadn't been able to move for a while.

How often are those people, just forwarders? How often are those people contacting you from central dispatch? Just a dispatcher, I think. Drives me crazy.

I think about 10% of the time is what I see. And I mean, I spend a lot of money on transportation. Every month I probably ship 40 to 50 cars a month. And I see that it's a small percentage now it might be different. Different regions of the country, too. We've got it lucky, we've got it easy on the east coast because you got 95 running through the state. I got I20 running this way and I40 right above me. So I can ship anywhere, anytime, no big deal, right? But you know that that might change. So new profiles don't use high ratings. People have been in business a long time and typically you'll have. You have good, good results. Number two, create a preferred list. And what has happened over the years. I know which way people run and if I know if I got a car sitting in Texas, I can call a couple people and more than likely they'll be able to pick it up. I got cars in Florida. I can have them home typically the next day. If I've got cars on the West Coast, I've made a couple people out there that can bring them back. So make the preferred list. Use them without having to post these things. Check for insurance, W9s and DOT documents before signing. If a company does not have that on their central dispatch profile, I'm not saying they're not good, but chances are they're not as good as people who have it. So make sure that you're checking that and be wary of using people who don't have these things unless you have a car that's really hard to move and you have to do that. And number four is kind of the most important. Stay in contact with these people. If they're supposed to have a car delivered to you today, and you have your alerts turned on at Manheim. So if a car leaves the lot, you get texted. So let's say I have not received a text message, that car's even left a lot yet. I'm going to text them probably yesterday and say, hey, we still still offer delivery tomorrow. And you've got to really pay attention to that. If the. If they will not respond, give them a day. If they don't respond on that, say, hey, if you don't respond very soon, I'm going to contact authorities because I'm. Either. Either you haven't picked up a car. You have picked up my car and have it. It's been an accident, whatever. But you need to. You need to be consistent and you need to be very persistent when contacting these people.

Yeah, I mean, the biggest takeaway I've had from all this is just. It's the preferred list, man. I mean, yeah, you use central dispatch a few times. I think most of us, well, a handful of us probably buy out of the same auctions, the same locations pretty consistently, at least the same main routes. And then get those guys that are consistent and are reliable. You know, that's the hardest thing in the transportation business. And I have sympathy for them. They're dealing with a lot of stuff, man. I could not even imagine. Imagine trying to coordinate many dealers and many cars and many pickup locations. But I mean, yeah, it's like no matter how many times you use a transporter, they can be great and just completely solid for you for two or three years. And then all of a sudden, they just completely fall off the radar for some reason, personal, mechanical, whatever it is, and you're left kind of scrambling, trying to find someone else to run that route.

And trucks break down, guys. You got to remember that. And I said this a while back, give some of these guys a little bit of grace. If they said they're going to be here today, and for some reason they get here are, who cares? They deliver the car to you in good working order. That's all that really matters. If they're day late, they're two days late, okay? How many times have we been two days late to our customer?

And of course. And at the same time, Luke, it's also the loyalty, right? It's like, are you always trying to squeeze your transporters for every dime or are you okay paying them what the rate is and also knowing that it's going to go up? Their biggest expense is gas. Their biggest expenses, repairs and maintenance, that has gone up. So, yes, your transportation costs do go up. And if you're trying to nickel and dime your transporters every single day, guess what? They're probably not going to tell you that they scuffed the rim on that car when they loaded it or that a chain dangled and scratched your pain. You know, they're. You know they're going to nickel and dime you too. So I think it's finding the right people and keeping that relationship is super important. Luke, we are looking forward To April, of course, you guys know by Here, Pay here United States, the summit is a sponsor of the podcast and it's going to be a great opportunity for Buy here, Pay Here dealers to get together and learn.

Yeah. You know, we were just talking about building relationships with transporters. Well, building relationships with other dealers around the country is equally as important because let's say you do have a car sitting at a somewhere where you got to get it moved. How many times have I had people that I've met at these conferences park cars in my storage lot? Well, I met them at a conference. And Buy here, Pay here, United Summit is going to be one of those opportunities. You really meet a lot of other dealers from around the country. You're not going to be sold to. You're only going to be taught. And that's what we love to do. That's what you and I do, Jeff. And I do believe that Buy Here, Pay your United Summit is going to be the way for us to advance that.

Yes. So jump online, buy here pay here united.com get signed up. Now is the time. It's coming up April. So we've got a month, basically a month from today and we'll be out there in Vegas. So looking forward to it. Luke, we mentioned a little bit about gas prices going up and some of the unrest going on around the world and in Ukraine and Russia and what these guys are doing to gas prices. Where do you see that affecting us? I mean, I've seen a large drop off in your gas guzzlers so far.

Oh, buddy. Yeah. So I had bought several new body, newer body style Suburbans, Tahoes that typically sell really fast. And I bought them in December. Gas prices are okay? Well, they have dropped like a freaking, you know, like an anchor in the last month. And so I'm stuck with, you know, a couple almost $40,000 trucks that are probably worth around 35 right now, you know, so. So what do you do? Do you wait it out? I don't know. But if you look on ACV or any of these other auctions, you'll see there is a lot of big SUVs sitting out there. So be aware that it might be the price range to anything over about 25 grand I think has been hit the hardest. Trucks don't seem to be as hit as hard because people still need trucks.

Yes.

But the large SUV's has definitely been hit.

Yeah. So I've got a couple of philosophies. Mine is I am telling my, you know, I'm looking to Buy them. You know, especially private party, because I feel like right now the public sentiment is, oh, no one's buying gas guzzlers, and I've got to get rid of my this, that, or the other. Great, Mr. Customer, I'll buy it from you. But here's where I need to be because of all these reasons. Me fully knowing that in my price point, I can sit on that car and in six months, 12 months, it's still going to be worth the same, if not more, you know, and I'm talking about your sub 20,000 stuff. And I do agree with Luke. I have seen that the stuff in the 50, 60, $40,000 range is taking a little bit of a hit, you know, from. From the ones I've seen. So. So, yeah, I would say don't panic, you know, that. That would be my only word to anybody. These things come back around, you know, gas prices. It's. It's an election year. It's a midterm election. I don't think, you know, we're going to see these things stay up for very long or. And it's the same conversation I have with my customers when they come in, especially our buy here, pay here customers, that all of a sudden they want to come turn in their SUV for some sedan. And I said, Mr. Customer, let's sit down and do the math on this. Yeah, you know, you're talking about getting, you know, five miles per gallon better gas mileage if you trade out of that SUV into this truck, you know, going from 15 to 20 or 20 to 25 miles per gallon. So if you're talking about 5 miles per gallon, you're talking about a tank, you know, one gallon of gas that you're spending more. So I'll sit down with them and I'll do the math. You're filling up once a week or once every other week. You're really talking about saving 20 bucks or 40 bucks a month. You know, is it really worth being negative equity or being flipped or having to come up with this higher down payment or monthly payment? So really, I think a lot of it is just putting in perspective now. I mean, if you're driving all day every day, you're an Uber driver, you're a transport, and all of a sudden your gas costs went up substantially. Maybe that was your whole gross profit and you're in a bad situation, but for your average daily driver, I just. I don't see it.

No, it's not worth it. You know, and what I. I mean, I. I don't. I Mean, I, I'm hopeful that this Ukraine situation won't bug us for too much longer. I think that what's going to happen. Chip production is being hit again, which is unfortunate because of the Russian Ukraine situation. So as soon as gas prices do come down a little bit, I think the big SUVs are going to still have a good demand, and so prices will probably come back. So if you can buy a couple right now that are, that are cheap, buy them because you'll probably be able to sell them hopefully within a month or so. I just don't. I've talked this past weekend, talked to several new car dealers, and they don't have any good news to talk about when it comes to production levels, getting cars.

Yeah. And yeah, I always just think zig when everyone zags, you know, like, you just, you just, whatever the sentiment is and what everyone's doing, just do the opposite and you feel like you're gonna be right most of the time.

Warren Buffett said, be fearful. Fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful. Exactly. Just always take that to heart.

And with some cars, you need to be greedy when everyone else is greedy, you know. Yeah, I'm glad. I picked up a Couple of Teslas 3 weeks ago, you know, timed those perfectly, you know, and I'm going to hold on to those and wait till the supply dries up and, and, and then get top dollar. But you never can be right on. So you always just kind of have to be moving.

You can't. You can't. Time to market. We all wish we could. We just can't.

Yeah. Luke, we had some questions about credit card payments. Do you allow customers to buy a car straight out on a credit card? 20, 30,000. Okay, no credit card payments on large dollars. What's the max you'll do for a down payment on a credit card?

4,000.

4,000 is your max. Any specific things you require to. For a customer to do that car.

Needs to be in their name. They have to sign the receipt. Of course, they have to sign all the documents for the car. So. And I mean, if they, if they take back the down payment, I can just go repossess car. So, you know, it's not on the, on the finance car. I'm not all that. That concerned about it, but it needs to be their driver's license, their, you know, their card and, and have a paper trail, I think is the biggest thing there.

So. So if it's an outside purchase, say you're a subprime or your retail or your cash lot. And you say, hey, I'm going to do $5,000 on this guy's, you know, H and R block card. I know the H and R Block card is in his name. I know that the ID that he has matches. I have a signed receipt. I have a signed purchase agreement, and I have photocopies of his card and his driver's license. Those are the kind of the three, four main documents you need when you have a dispute come through from your credit card provider. Right. I think you're like 99% sure to block a chargeback if you have those four documents.

I think. I think 100% is if you have one of those old knuckle buster carbons is the only way to do it.

And that's.

I mean, somebody actually told me that one time, it actually.

What do you do? And you fax it over to them after you ran it?

I don't have a clue. So, you know, but the problem is this. They're going to pull that money out of your account until that process is done. So let's just say you have a. I mean, God forbid one of these smaller dealers sells a $20,000 car, and for some reason, it goes sideways after the sale. And that person who was so nice to you and you were so nice to them before start button heads. And they use a credit card. Well, the next thing they're going to do is they're going to call their credit card provider, say, I didn't do this. Well, the credit card provider is going to contact your bank and suck the money out of your account immediately. So let's just say you made $1,000 on that $20,000 car you paid off your credit line because you only really had about $20,000 in the bank. Well, they pull that money out and they're holding it here, and you've already paid for everything, and now you got zero dollars in your account. You can't make payroll. You can't do this. Now, I'm not saying that's how you should operate your business, but we all know that this is happening.

Right?

And so is it worth the immediate deal by running on a credit card versus saying, you know, Mr. Koster, we just don't do that. Please go to your bank, get a certified check. I don't think it's worth it.

Have you ever lost a deal?

I don't think so.

Okay. And what about the unique situations like the H and R block cards? You know, hey, my money's on an H and R card, you know, it's my tax return.

Yeah, I think he probably, you know, I don't know that I think it'd be a little harder for someone to file back on one of those cards. I don't know that, but I would think it probably is compared to your own personal card.

But you say, hey, go to the ATM, take 500 bucks out a day for the next 20 days and then we'll sell you the car.

I don't know. I don't know. In that situation, I really don't know. Check.

It also helps on those larger transactions. Most people have to call in and authorize it to even run. And I think that gives you a level of protection when the customer has called in and said, yes, I'm running $15,000 at this and this place. Please authorize that. You know.

Yeah. And you know, and then every once in a while you see some people. Yeah, I do it, but I charge them a 3% processing fee. Well, let me tell you, in most states that's illegal. So I know it's illegal in South Carolina and it's probably illegal in Utah. And I would check with my ag office or with my dealer association to see if that is okay because it probably is not. Even though the state can charge you a 3% processing fee.

Which they do.

Which they do. And your gas station can charge you.

It's I guess cash or Credit.

Yeah. About 10% it is. It is illegal for car dealers to do in most circumstances. So I would, I'd follow up on that and check and see. Because if you're not doing it properly and you charge the 3%, they can, they can go back on you on that too.

And the big difference that people get away with a processing fee is third party processors.

That is how people like way to do it.

Yeah. You know, pay near me and repay. And all these big guys, they get away with it because they are a third party processor. They are charging the fee, not the merchants.

And probably. And, and more than likely that's what's going on on the state level when they're charging you to pay your taxes.

Online and probably they're using some process.

With gas stations and everything. That's probably exactly what's going on.

So they'll find a way around it.

It's for you to do it on your terminal is more than likely illegal.

Luke, just a couple more things before we wrap up today. Buckeye Dealership Consulting. A great sponsor and supporter of the podcast. Everyone has their reinsurance company set up. I hope by now, if you're listening to this and you're doing more than 20 cars retail or buy here, pay here, whatever the case may be, there are reinsurance products that you can be doing to keep more of that money in your own pocket.

Yeah, I mean it's a, it's a no brainer. We've talked about it for two years I think. Jeff, you've got to have your reinsurance company set up. You need to hold that money yourself. You don't need to give it to third party companies and you need to offer the protection to the customer of a warranty or a service contract. If you're not doing that, you are short changing your customer and it could come back to bite you. I mean just think about this, the deal we just talked about on the credit card. If that customer that paid 20 grand has a warranty and all you have to do is say no problem Mr. And Mrs. Customer, let's file this with a warranty company, get it straight for you. That could have solved that whole problem, right?

Yeah, yeah. You might completely save a chargeback or at least a bad angry customer that's not going to come back to you or send their friends and family. It's definitely great. And if you're, if you're, if you're a buy here pay here dealer that's giving an in house guarantee anyways, which I did for 15 years before I started my reinsurance company.

90% of them are. Yes.

Yeah. And my thought was well, I'm self insuring. Why would I want to put that money aside and into a separate account when I can just keep it in my own account And I kind of self insure. There's a level of a tax benefits that come but also almost like an arm's length transaction if you treat this right in that, hey, let's have the warranty. Oh, the warranty company is covering X, Y and Z for you or hey, I went to bat with the warranty company to get this covered for you or hey, you have to, you know, they're only paying X amount and you have to pay the rest. So it just creates a level of formalness between you and your customer that you can use for your, you know.

For your advantage 100% and call Buckeye and get them to get it set up and get it done the right way.

Luke, so who do you have in your dealership, in your service shop that handles your parts ordering? Do you have a specific dedicated parts only person? Are you at that size and yeah, yeah.

So we hired a parts manager in November of 2020 just because our service property gotten to a point where we just had a lot of parts going in and out of the business. You know, probably half a million dollars worth of parts or more a year. And the problem there is you're not always getting the best deal because your service advisor, they're not calling around trying to get the best parts price. And also you start to get a core backup and you also get a lot of parts not being returned. So the more we thought about it, we had to figure out a better way to track our parts. And our decision was to hire a parts manager. Well, since that time, we have shrunken. Our service department has because of lack of text. And actually the guy who we hired, our parts manager, is now our service manager. And he's kind of doing both jobs and he's doing a good job at both jobs. So I can't complain there. Um, but when we get back to our previous level, we'll probably have to go back having a parts manager.

Yeah. So it's really interesting. And unfortunately, I make the same argument. I hate going down this road because it's the same thing that a vendor uses on you when he's trying to sell your product. Well, if this, you know, this $500 a month, if it sells you one more car, then it pays for itself. Right. And so I use this argument with that caveat. But yes, if that parts manager saves you a thousand dollars a month, $2,000 a month he pays for himself. Right. And how easy is that? That's like two cores, you know, two engine cores or a transmission core and a couple of batteries. And maybe he found a part at a better place and he's able to order these things because he has the time to dig in. Whereas right now, your service writer and. Or your mechanic who is doing the inspection ordering part, he's just going to the same old place because it's easy.

It's.

He knows Bob down at the, you know, O'Reilly or at the AutoZone and he can just call him. Plus he's maybe getting some sort of a kickback on his tools from the truck every so often that you don't know about who's selling the fricking cats that you're pulling out of your scrap cars. You know, where are those things even ending up? I mean, there's just a million places and a million places where parts can walk off and where returns happen. But you didn't get credited. But the part went back. But nobody had the time to check their, you know, Invoice to make sure that it actually got credited back to your account and that the driver just didn't throw it back on the parts shelf. You know, it's. There's a million holes in the dam. And so hiring someone at what, 20 bucks an hour? You know, what do you pay a competent part person?

I think 18 or 22, you're probably exactly right. So, yeah, I mean, it's worth it, you know, One thing Jack had brought up was that autozone had offered to put someone in his store to be the parts person. That's an interesting concept. I haven't been offered that before, Jack selling a ton of cars a month and recon a ton of cars a month. So I could see why it would be. It. It'd be, you know, a good thing for. For autozone to do. But I think. I think having your own parts person is probably better than then leasing out space in your building for Autozone, O'Reilly's or Napa to put somebody in there. I just not sure if you're gonna get the benefits from shopping around.

Yeah, I mean, obviously, red flag for me, you know, no, I don't want to order from one place. I don't want to just be beholden to one company for all my parts. That seems like the opposite of what we're trying to get at in having a guy that can, you know, source from all places, Especially right now, where they're just so hard to come by, man. Some parts, some certain, you know, it's just. It's impossible. So to have someone that can just turn over a few more rocks and do a few more digging could beat all the difference from your guy and be like, oh, I made a phone call, and it's three weeks out. Like, well, I made three phone calls, and I found one that'll be here tomorrow.

What's. What's interesting is when you talk about how hard parts are to come out right now, because the relationship we have with different parts suppliers. Last week we were told, hey, Baha Honda, this is. We are running out of valve cover gaskets. And if anybody's selling the 2013 up Honda Accords, every single one of them needs a valve cover gasket. Anyway, they're running out of them. And so we were able to leverage that to go buy 10 and just have them sitting on the shelf.

So you hoarded?

We hoarded. And then we also got news from our local ram store last week. They run out of cams for the 3.6 engine. So what did we do? We Went and sourced a bunch of different cams for those things because we use them so much and we know that if we don't have them, we're going to be in some serious trouble.

You may be in the parts store now.

Well, he's been able to leverage what he finds out from different stores for us to stock what we need to stock currently.

Yeah, Luke, one last topic. Let's cover gps.

Yeah.

Obviously, if you're buy here, pay here, you're probably using a gps or should be if you want to sleep at night. What are you doing? Wired wireless.

So we've always done wired with starter interrupt, but we've started now deciding on these really high, really higher end SUVs and trucks that we're doing. We're putting a second one in there and a wireless for one. I want to try this wireless technology. I know you're using only wireless right now, but it gives me that extra peace of mind when I am financing a $40,000 truck to know that I've got a backup in case for some reason my tech didn't wire in the original gps. Right. I've got a way or the customer removed it. I still have a way to try to get my collateral back in the case that I need it.

Yeah, it definitely makes a lot of sense where the units have come down. I mean, give or take. You're 100 bucks for all the providers. They all have a wired version. Most all of them have a wireless version now. Yeah, that peace of mind of like, hey, yeah, this is a 30 or $40,000 buy here, pay here, which blows my mind. You would do that. I'd put like 10 in there. It'd be like one on every tire, one on every seat. But, yeah, 100 bucks on a $30,000 car is not a big deal at all. Right. Even if you're doing that times three, 30 or 40amonth, you know, it's still. It's still peace of mind over having one lost car or one skip trace. That costs you a little more tracking as to post to just a quick ping. You know, it's about.

It's about time. It's about how quickly can you repossess that car if that has to happen?

Yeah. Yesterday, my collector and I sat down and we made two repossession decisions. And I mean, it wasn't even an hour later, and both of them come rolling in on the back of the tow truck. You know, that's great. You know what? That's amazing. It's the only way to go. But Yes, I use wireless. My failure rate on wireless is not bad at all. And I say that with, you know, a couple little caveats because we were kind of early in the wireless game and some of the technology wasn't great. And I think those providers have kind of fixed those issues since then. But my tamper rate with wired was just as much because people knew, and they knew where to go look, and they'd see a wire that was not supposed to be there. You know, so unless you're actually welding that GPS to the engine block, people are going to get in there to do a stereo or they're going to have a friend that does it on purpose and goes in there and pulls the fuse or cuts the wire. With a wireless, if you're installing it accurately, I mean, there's just. There's literally no way. You're never going to find it unless you tear the whole car apart.

And there's something to be said for, you know, retail lots out there to just stick a wireless in every single one of your cars. If for some reason, you know, you got somebody on test drive, it doesn't decide to come back, you can trace it pretty quickly. If for. For God forbid, you get broken into and. And somebody steals much keys, you can find your cars and recover them quickly. Or if you're having a hard time tracking where all your cars are at, subcontractors that are all over town. Oh, where is that car? Oh, yeah, here it is. You know where it is. You don't have to kind of rattle your brain. So I think there's. I think there's a place for GBS devices across our industry.

Yeah. Oh, man. If I. If I had a. If I had cars that were 50, 60 grand out there and I even thought I was a target for theft, 100%. I mean, you got a hundred cars on the lot, 100 GPSs, you know, cost you 10 grand, and you put them on active track and you have to replace them every six to eight months. I mean, it just. I don't know, man. Seems like, again, a way to sleep at night.

Yeah, for sure.

Luke. Hey, we're going to let everybody go. That was a good 45 minutes there. Anything else coming up, Parting words for everybody.

I just, you know, it's. We're about to wrap up tax season. Don't. Don't go crazy. Y' all just keep going down the same path you've been going. This year is going to be a little rockier than last year, I think. Keep your head up. Keep doing business. The way you're supposed to be doing business. And I think. I think we'll all get through this in time.

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