Stop Doing Monthly Physical Inventory Counts: A Contrarian Take on Parts Department Accuracy
Most dealership parts managers have a recurring monthly nightmare: the physical count. Picture this — it's 4 p.m. on the last Friday of the month, and your enti...
Parts Pricing Tiers: Why Velocity Beats Customer Type (Contrarian Take)
Your parts department is probably leaving money on the table by pricing the same part differently to different customer types. And that might actually be the ri...
The Vendor Rebate Lie: Why Chasing Rebates Destroys Your Parts Inventory
Your Parts Department Is Leaving Money on the Table—But Not How You Think According to industry surveys, dealerships chase vendor rebates worth an average of $...
The Hidden Cost of "We'll Get It In"
Here's a question that'll probably tick off a few parts managers: Are you actually making money on special order parts, or are you just tying up cash while conv...
The Inventory Turns Trap: Why Your Parts Manager's Metrics Are Lying to You
Imagine it's a Tuesday morning in July, and your parts manager just pulled the monthly aging report. You're staring at $47,000 in inventory that hasn't moved in...
The Hidden Cost of Wholesale Growth
You're sitting in your parts manager's office on a Monday morning, and they're asking for budget to expand the wholesale operation. "We can grab another $40,000...
Your Accountant's Obsolescence Reserve Might Be Costing You More Than It's Saving
Your accountant brings it up every year like clockwork, and you probably hate that conversation. The obsolescence reserve—that accounting line item that sits th...
Why Parts Inventory Turns Are a Misleading Metric (And What to Optimize Instead)
According to NADA data, the average franchise parts department turns inventory about 4.2 times per year. That number has barely budged in a decade, even as inve...
The Benchmarking Trap Nobody Talks About
Most dealerships are pricing their service menus wrong, and it's costing them money they don't even realize they're leaving on the table. You've probably done w...
The Uncomfortable Truth About Your Fluid and Filter Menu (And Why You Should Unbundle It)
Sixty-three percent of dealership service departments are hemorrhaging front-end gross on fluid and filter maintenance packages. That number should make you un...
The Recall Campaign Myth: Why Your Service Department's Productivity Doesn't Have to Crash
Sixty-seven percent of dealership service directors say recall campaigns tank their shop productivity for weeks at a time. That's not a feature of recalls. That...
The CSI Feedback Loop Is Broken (And Here's Why)
Back in 1979, Toyota introduced the idea that you should measure customer satisfaction after a service visit. Before that, a car got fixed or it didn't, and tha...