Expansion is a fundamental tenet of profitable parts distribution. Succeed in a product line, add another one. Dominate a local market, expanded outward.
While increased market maturity and competition has made the latter harder, expansion through product proliferation has always existed as lever parts operations could pull to generate new business opportunities.
And it’s a lever that won’t go away if propulsion methods change.
Despite eye-catching headlines from the federal government and private sector about how electric vehicles could require fewer components and less maintenance, vendors across the trucking space say their product offerings continue to grow.
The electrification of trucking will be a multi-decade process, if it occurs at all, and industry suppliers say in the meantime there’s little reason for distributors to fear a reduction in the part numbers they stock. Part numbers are retired each year, vendors say, but new lines are added at a much higher rate.
Additionally, thanks to increased technical innovation and complexity across equipment, recent years have offered a dramatic boom in the sheer number SKUs parts warehouses could stock.
Distributors who continue to evolve their inventory with the industry’s vehicle population should continue to see new product line opportunities.
