Crazy markup on parts

About a year ago, I hired a local Ford mechanic, and then I hired his parts department manager. You can take any part at the Ford dealer and divide it by 2 or 3 to get the dealer's cost. My Barletta boat dealer doubles their money on parts because they were dumb enough to leave the invoice in the box.

 

Sounds like y’all should open up a parts warehouse. There’s zero overhead in that type of business.

sound like some “everything after fuel is profit” type of alleged businessmen

You don’t like the price go buy it somewhere else. That’s the same as everybody that shops you for a price on Trucking and tells you that they can’t pay you what you gotta get to make a profit, because some other sucker will do it for a dollar a mile.

 

This is where I’m at. For a little bit more money and a lot less headache I can drop it off in Lincoln for an afternoon. I’m not severe duty like you so I do run 40-45k between changes. I run Delvac 10-30 semi synthetic and at the end of the year I spend the same money as someone doing changes at 12k on a Cummins.

And I agree, no way I’d put filters in this thing that didn’t come from a dealer. I tried Fleetguard once in my old truck and boy it did not like the fuel filters so I assume it also didn’t like the oil filters.

 

Welcome to capitalist America. You're just funding someone else's dream.

 

I had to get some striker pins because I’m tired of my side fairings rattling. Peterbilt usually doesn’t stock them but they actually had a couple of each style I needed in Lincoln. I bought those and went online expecting to pick up the rest for a lot cheaper. The prices I found online were the same as I paid in person.

 

So from the perspective of a guy who works on other people’s stuff I don’t usually mark stuff up more than it takes to cover my time and expenses of acquiring the parts which is often less than they can buy it for as a joe blow off the street. Occasionally if someone is a really ####### I don’t feel bad doubling my money on whatever parts they need.

 

I see several mentions of buying the cheapest parts you can find off Amazon or the like, but from what I’ve seen they are often china counterfeits of various quality.

 

Since covid my local kenworth has been charging 200-400% for the exact same parts I can get online and half the time kenworth says they need to order it anyways.

I just call them to get part #s if I need to and I sometimes give them a chance to price match, but so far they never have. I don't know how they're getting any business ripping people off like that. Maybe they're happy just doing warranty work on new trucks?

 

Is it MHC kenworth by chance?

 

I would get an Uber to take me to Enterprise to rent a car to go to a different state to pick up parts before I’d buy anything at MHC.