The vehicles navigating American roads are older than ever at an average of 12.6 years, with 38% in the sweet spot for aftermarket service, typically from 6-to-14 years old.
That’s excellent news for repair centers, tire shops, and aftermarket parts companies. But grabbing a more significant share of those repair dollars requires winning the loyalty of car owners through fast, high-quality service.
For many shops, meeting customer demand for speedy service comes down to procuring parts. With 1,232 different car models sold in the United States and the average car boasting 30,000 parts, no shop can stock anywhere near what even one day’s worth of repairs would require. Larger parts like tires, manifolds, crankshafts and camshafts can be particularly costly and difficult to keep around.
That’s why parts runners and parcel services have long been part of the aftermarket repair business. But with today’s more time-pressed consumers, higher labor costs and the difficulty of managing oversized parts, old logistics models aren’t often up to the task. A growing number of shops and parts sellers are replacing or supplementing their current parts delivery programs with on-demand delivery, especially for oversized parts.
The Oversized Parts Challenge
Quickly obtaining the parts needed for a specific repair job is already challenging. When those parts are unwieldy, they are even harder to get from source to shop. Oversized parts sent via parcel services often incur surcharges, delays and early cut-off times because they don’t fit in standard conveyor systems. Waiting for a part to arrive at the end of a distributor’s long delivery schedule can be frustrating. And employing parts runners gets costly.
Delayed delivery for tires and other oversized auto parts not only incurs the direct costs of higher delivery fees but also costs shops in several other ways.
- Frustrated customers may seek out other providers instead of agreeing to an overnight wait for service — and not come back for their next repair.
- Inventory costs mount as the order-to-cash cycle extends or shops place orders with multiple providers with a plan to return the later deliveries.
- Delays can also mean overcrowded lots full of cars awaiting service and inefficient use of labor as planned repairs cannot be completed on schedule.
What hurts tire and auto shops also harms the parts distributors that serve them. Slow service disappoints customers, but throwing more labor at the issue can quickly become costly. Oversized parts are more expensive to manage all the way along the chain, from tying up more dollars in inventory to manual picking processes to higher delivery costs.
Stitching together multiple delivery channels to address these issues creates unnecessary friction and headaches. Repair shops will gravitate to those providers that can get them the big, unwieldy parts they need quickly and efficiently.
It’s clear that auto repair brands and parts distributors need a faster and more efficient way of getting the parts they need, particularly when they are oversized.
Auto Parts Delivery On Demand
On-demand delivery empowers parts companies to avoid all the delays and costs associated with parts delivery, especially for big & bulky parts, boosting loyalty and revenue.
By tapping into the network facilitated by crowdsourced delivery platforms, auto parts distributors can deliver oversized and other parts in just a few hours, keeping business humming and customers satisfied.
The Roadie platform enables tire and car part sellers and buyers to avoid the extra packaging, dim weight fees and long lead times of oversized goods shipping via less-than-truckload (LTL) freight or standard shipping carriers. Instead, sellers can use the Roadie platform to match with drivers equipped with a large vehicle and a hand truck needed for those tires or large parts. Businesses can send smaller items, too, so repair and tire technicians can get everything they need to get a job done quickly.
The more than 200,000 independent drivers active on the Roadie platform can take parts as heavy as 150 pounds (300 pounds if on wheels) and deliver up to 100 miles from the pickup point. Roadie’s logistics management solution features real-time tracking and last-mile delivery updates, as well as flat-rate, transparent pricing and delivery windows as fast as two hours. UPS customers can access even more benefits, including billing from their UPS accounts with Roadie deliveries counting toward small package revenue tiers.
Speed + Efficiency for Oversized Parts
Today’s consumers are conditioned to get almost anything they want whenever they want it, whether it’s a bag of groceries, a length of timber or a milkshake. They also bring this expectation for speed to other transactions, including car repairs. With lots of competition for repair dollars, tire and auto shops must offer fast service to win and keep customers — and so do the vendors who support them.
Until recently, getting the needed parts to make that possible was a costly hassle, particularly for larger parts like a camshaft or set of tires. Inevitable delays cost businesses in efficiency and loyalty.
On-demand delivery is an ideal way to supplement or even replace traditional parts delivery channels. Auto parts sellers can initiate delivery in just minutes on the Roadie platform and quickly be matched to a nearby independent driver with the availability and equipment needed to whisk that oversized part and other items right to the shop where they are needed quickly and affordably.
And when these sellers use Roadie, they get transparent pricing, real-time tracking and last-mile delivery updates that make the entire delivery experience work well for everyone involved.
That’s just the level of service every business needs to keep customers happy and business in the fast lane.
