Disappointed in Peterbilt Dealers and Prices

Yes Paccar prices can be high for certain things but they usually have them. But some things are also very cheap, we buy all of our brooms and other odd things because our kw dealer is the cheapest. Try buying european Iveco or Volvo parts, make sure you are sitting down and then there is the wait because they never have stock.
Just like every business, some things are cheap some things aren't that is why you should shop around.

 

Subscribing to read later

 

Just an FYI, proper grammar is the difference between knowing your #### and knowing you're ####. Just saying...

 

Belials Thank you for all your posts on the subject. You put time and thought into your comments with nothing to gain by it.

 

Bigguns, I believe there is a lot to gain from it. There is often a gap between the dealer and the customer. My gain is to bridge that gap. The chances are small that someone who reads this will ever enter the dealership I work for, but hopefully they'll enter a dealership with a bit more understanding of how things work, which either leads them to be more satisfied with the service they received or less likely to treat an employee badly for not being able to do something.

As an example, one huge misunderstanding with warranties is that the dealership does makes the rules for warranty. Of course we don't. Peterbilt, Paccar and the individual vendors do. Yet many times I have been yelled at from customers who believe it is me who is trying to screw them!

So there is certainly a lot to gain by lending what I know.

 

Hi Belials, well, don't forget, you are the representative for all those vendors and the company. People want to express their displeasure to someone, and can't very well go to the president of Peterbilt, or Eaton, or whoever. I'm reminded of when my son worked at Walmart, and was asked to assist a customer who was returning a bicycle that had a flat tire. Well, obviously, this guy's day was ruined as it was supposed to be a present for his granddaughter, and chewed my son out because he was the 1st one there. If you are going to deal with people, you have to expect that.

 

I haven't had many issues with dealers, but this reminds me of one that I did have an issue with. It was specifically on how the dealer handled warranty. Not what they would/wouldn't cover or even procedure, it was about timely service. I used to run a shop that serviced over 600 Sterling trucks, every year they bought 75-80 new and retired the oldest. Warranty work was plentiful when EGR's 1st came into play. Trucks would sit at the dealer for sometimes a week before the even looked at them. I figured that they were overwhelmed and needed some time to get through the learning curve of the new issues. That wasn't the case, I had 3 units there for 7 days, a 4th went down, rather than call, I just drove it over there to talk to them and see what was taking so long. Outside their shop there were only 3 trucks, all mine. I walk inside, there were 7 bays, 3 had trucks in them and I seen 5-6 mechanics working on those 3 trucks. Before I even said anything, the service manager came out, here's a summery of our conversation:

SM, "2nd shift is going to get your trucks in tonight."
Me, "What's taking so long? It's been a week."
SM, "Every time we try to get them in, something comes up."
Me, "What comes up?"
SM, "Customers need work done and we have to get them up and running."
Me, "Customers? What the F*** am I?"
SM, "Well...you're warranty work and we don't make much on warranty work, so we do it between other jobs."

I got Sterling reps got involved and it got a little better, but the real solution was to stop getting parts from that dealer. Once they lost a lot in parts sales they set up a meeting to smooth things over. The point is, I don't care how much a dealer makes on a sale or warranty work. Not including parts, we spent about 7 million a year on new trucks, I don't care how Sterling divided that money up, that's what we spent. Who made what was between the dealer and Sterling. Warranty work is between the Dealer and Cat, Detroit, Etc. Not my problem, I bought trucks with warranty, and I want warranty. What do you do with something that needs work covered under warranty? You call a dealer to get it done.

I didn't expect any special treatment, just do work in the order you get it. An O/O couldn't afford a new truck from them, he'd go broke waiting for warranty work to get done. It's even worse for O/O because they don't spend 100K in parts per year to have the leverage a big fleet has. I totally understand that warranty sucks for the dealer, but it's part of the job and the customer should not suffer for it. Dealers make the bulk of profit on parts and service, but if you don't sell trucks, who needs parts and service? You have to take the bad with the good. Treat new truck buyers good and give them good warranty service and they are a lot more likely to keep using you when the warranty runs out.

That was the only real big issue I've had. Different job now and I'm dealing with Pete and KW dealers mostly, but we have a few Freightliners. I get along well with all 3 dealers pretty good though.

 

That's an absolutely terrible way for a dealership to handle warranty repairs. Honestly I am sure there are many out there who treat it that way. There are plenty of dealerships who I know will actually refuse to honor the Paccar 12 month / 100,000 mile warranty if you bought the part from a different dealer. They're not supposed to, they're encouraged to honor the warranty. But they won't. I've filed dozens upon dozens of warranty claims for parts that were never sold by my dealerships to customers who aren't typically our customer, because another dealership refused.

I am happy to say that the dealership I work at does not treat warranty work as a second-hand job. We work on all jobs with the same level of importance, warranty or customer pay.

 

Welcome to corporate America, where the big companies play and the little men pay. If you really want to see how it works, strike out on your own. See how many independent shops recupurate their labor for installing oem shatty parts. Then see how many of them get blamed for faulty workmanship because of shatty parts. The message is clear from corporate. You have one choice for shatty overpriced labor practices and a warranty, that's us. Like it or not, we don't care. The competition is all but eliminated.

 

It's not even worth it to try and get warranty on parts that are less then a few hundred bucks and I think that's what their goal is. If it's too difficult to recover warranty, many shops will give up for less expensive parts. Then they get to sell 2 of them.

There's not enough time to list the hard ones, so here's my complete list of manufactures that have given me replacement parts without a big hassle:

Grote
Hendrickson