I have to agree with Buggyman that the “rethinking your buying practices” response is absurd.
Long post inbound, please be patient.
As an employee of a company that buy and resells things, I deal with both wholesale and retail outfits daily. As a consumer, I deal with wholesale and retail outlets as well.
For instance, I can buy mulch and various landscaping supplies (gravel, fill dirt, compost, etc.) from an outfit in town. They are open from 0900-1700 M-F and in the mornings on Saturday. They have great (wholesale) prices, but they are primarily there for businesses….so you have to accommodate their banker’s hours schedule, as that’s what their business is. They don’t have sales people to tell you what you need or how much you need. Their primary customer is the guy who already knows all of that.
Now, I can also go to Home Despot, they are a retailer. As a retailer, they have to accommodate the retail customer’s needs more so than the wholesaler. They are open until 2100 or 2200 on weeknights and 2200 on Saturdays. They have customer service folks who are there to help you if have an issue (in theory at least).
Now, let’s talk about surplus trucks.
In the old days, trucks were sold wholesale. The process wasn’t closed to end users (the hobbyist) but the difficulty in buying in the old, pre-internet days was much higher. This kept prices down and left room for surplus outfits like Joe Young to buy trucks, get them serviced and fixed up and sell them at retail prices.
Now a days, GL is the retailer. Not only are they the retailer, they want to be the retailer. They are working on being the retailer. They run ads on SS, eBay, various truck trader/equipment trader-type publications and of course, their own website, which is aimed at….the retail customer. The end user. GL doesn’t want to sell trucks at wholesale prices. They want to sell them at retail prices. Nothing wrong with that, none of us want to get less than the maximum price we can get when we sell our stuff, that’s capitalism.
And this policy has benefited them greatly. Just a couple weeks ago, I watched a single Deuce bid to over $5K. I have watched M816’s go to almost $20K recently. I have watched residue trucks go for more than running, motorpool quality trucks went for 5 years ago.
Now, if GL wants to be a retailer, they need to operate as such. They need to accommodate the retail customer’s schedule. No more of this asinine “Preview on Thursday between 1000-1400 hours” and “pickups only Tuesday-Thursday”. I don’t know about you guys, but for me to preview and item and then go to pick it up, I have to burn a minimum of two days vacation. If I only get 2 weeks a year, I just used 20% of my entire year’s vacation buy ONE item.
They need to actually have something as bone simple as an SF97 available in a reasonable amount of time. Actually, it should be supplied with the vehicle at the time of purchase. If my local Ford dealer can do it, so can they.
This is what retailers do.
Now, of course, they won’t, because they have a monopoly on the market. They know this and they will take advantage of it in every way they can.
It is absurd for an SF97 to take 90 days. Patently absurd. NO excuse whatsoever. NONE.
At the prices GL is selling these trucks for, they could hire one full time guy $10-12 an hour, train him for a day on serial #'s and turn him loose doing the appropriate paperwork and have him doing this when the vehicles come into GL's possession.
At $10 an hour, a person is making $21K a year, which with taxes, insurances, etc., only costs the employer maybe $30K.
With the current prices, each location could easily pay for such an employee with just a few truck sales.
Of course, they won’t do that because they have a monopoly. Their monopoly allows them to practically commit murder and get away with it.
The company I work for always has a huge rush in the tax refund season. Our sales go up almost 100% for 2-3 months. And guess what? We hire additional employees. Because otherwise, our customers would have to wait 3 months for their packages. Which would make them mad and send them somewhere else. Wish we had a monopoly on the market.
Now, this is not a slam on Robyn. All these decisions are made far above her pay scale. She has been more than patient and upbeat, considering the hostility of the some of these posts. I appreciate her presence, even if it really accomplishes very little in terms of fixing the problems with attempting to deal with GL.
In closing, the point I am trying to make is that if GL wants to be a retailer, that's fine. They can behave like a retailer and offer flexible hours for previews and pickups and they can take care of issues like SF97's in a far better way. EUC delays seem to be mostly an issue with Battle Creek (the govt.) so there is little GL can do to alleviate that issue, but the problems that are due to GL's policies can and should be alleviated.
