“The majority of the time the customer is relying on the expertise of the person across the counter to provide them the right product. Occasionally that customer is going to say, ‘That seems a little high. Do you have something else to offer,” said Ryan Hadley, vice president, parts, Premier Truck Group. “Maybe we provide them one product up front that would be more of a premium vendor and then a second option would still be a good product but at a lower price point.”
Tom Wiers, CEO and owner, Wiers Fleet Partners, said he has seen good growth with Navistar’s Fleetrite product, which has been around a long time and become an established name.
“On the independent side, we have a large concentration of vocational customers and typically a lot of the people managing those trucks aren’t industry or brand experts. They’re relying on us to fix the truck properly at a reasonable cost, so they don’t necessarily advocate for any particular brand as it pertains to parts,” Wiers says.
“But internally, as a dealer, when we put a part on a truck in a shop, Navistar is covering the parts and labor warranty on that. If there’s a failure, the dealer is getting reimbursed for both aspects,” Wiers says. “On the independent side, a lot of times our vendors will provide the parts warranty, but we’re providing the labor warranty. We want to make sure we’re putting a quality part on the truck, not only for the customer’s benefit but so that we’re not eating the labor [cost] on a [parts] failure.”
Chris Baer, president and CEO, VIPAR Heavy Duty, said the buying group conducted a brand survey and “somewhere north of 85 percent of what our distributors are selling, in general, are premium brands, so we’ve really made our living and had our success with premium brands.”
Baer said, while every store isn’t the same, “in general we lead with premium brands. The challenge is that some of that alternative brand position is here to stay, depending on the category.”
Inland Truck Parts has created an Inland brand with private-label boxing of some of its parts.
“We found many of our customers don’t necessarily pay a lot of attention to what they’re buying from us as long as they know we’re going to stand behind it,” said Inland President and CEO Greg Klein.
“I’m not going to say none of our customers care about the product and where it came from, but what they really care about is whether somebody going to stand behind [the part] if they have a problem,” Klein said. “I think we’ll continue to push toward the direction of private label, the Inland brand, because it’s not selling on price, it’s selling on value and that value is uptime, standing behind the product and [customers] having a good experience when they come in.”
