10/31/09

Thoughts On Business - What To Stock

If you were going to stock commercial upfitted trucks and wanted to know the best trucks to stock, here is a good way to get started. Find one of the busiest highways near your dealership and take a couple hours two or three time in a week and watch traffic.

I suggest that you take a notepad and on the left side top to bottom, name the types of bodies that are pretty common, such as, service body, flatbed, stakebed, van body, cargo van, dump body, crane body, contractor body, plumber style body, etc. Get a comfortable chair and as vehicles drive by, when you see a commercial truck, put a mark next to the body on your sheet.

When you are done, tabulate the results and this would be a great mix of vehicles to start with. This isn't scientific, but it is very effective. I've seen a number of dealers who stock items in quantity that you see few of on the road and also stock few things when there are plenty on the road. Obviously, the ones on the road have been purchased from someone. We can just call this the market.

If you take the time to analyze even more closely, you could then improve your mix to insure that you have the right mix of single rear wheel, the right mix of bed length, colors, styles and so on. You could even take quick photos of each truck, then look at the photos.

I did this yesterday for only about 5 minutes on busy Interstate 80 and saw 10 service bodies, 3 van bodies, 4 cargo vans, 2 crane bodies, 2 contractor bodies, 3 flatbeds/stakebeds, and 2 plumber style trucks. Interesting. As you pay attention to what is already on the road, this will help you stock better levels and mix of inventory to maximize sales. This would be the core stock.

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