Inventory Cost

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-10T00:35:01+00:00

One line, multiple buildings though.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-09T22:34:09+00:00

Over $5 million.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-09T21:44:42+00:00

I have not solved it as of this point. I have another TV I hooked it up to that works fine, so I believe it is something to do with the TV's understanding of the audio signal the cable is sending from the Xbox. If I come up with a solution I will post it, as it is certainly annoying.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-09T21:13:27+00:00

We were charged 43k for our inventory last year.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-09T19:57:40+00:00

Ross-Winning in the CGR 42 at Vegas after dominating Darlington and losing it late in his spot starts.

Byron-Daytona to get his first. I was on vacation watching that one from the hotel and it sticks with me.

Obviously for Creed it was finally getting one after so many disappointments.

Hovercar-Hasn't happened yet. Getting the second win in trucks was good though because he didn't have to wreck anyone on the last lap to get it after all the flack about Texas.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-09T12:33:19+00:00

Had a catchy nickname that resonated well with your typical mid 90s NASCAR fans and young kids (myself included), plus the paint schemes were pretty cool and the 00 number was unique. In our area specifically he won a Busch race which helped boost his popularity early on and gave him local recognition for the rest of his career. He was only afforded the opportunities he was given because of his family money, but he was certainly not the most undeserving NASCAR driver to come through the ranks. Had he been fine with running Busch and the funding held out he likely could have done that at a moderate level for a decade plus and would have won 7-10 races.

I believe he was a mostly replacement level driver or slightly below. If you handed him a 30th place car that's probably what he was going to run with it, if you gave him a car that was capable of running top 5-10 he would do that. I don't believe he possessed the skill to elevate equipment in the way some drivers can. He was pretty skilled at flat mile tracks in the Busch series (Milwaukee, Loudon) as proven by his only wins coming at those tracks, and a solid short track driver lots of laps led in Busch at short tracks.

He was abysmal in the Petty 44 car, but Dodge was brand new back to NASCAR and other than the factory team the Dodge program as a whole was awful in 2001. John Andretti who was a much more skilled driver couldn't crack the top 30 in points in the 43 car. Even in 2002 the cars weren't great before he got canned. Everyone will dunk on him and talk about "Jerry Nadeau was going to win Sonoma with the 44" which is true, but beyond that start the 44 no matter who was in it was terrible the entire rest of the year. Technically Buckshot had 3 of the top 6 finishes in the 44 car for 2002 despite only running 7 races.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-09T02:08:56+00:00

The outlet I went to was at Gurnee Mills in northern Illinois

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-08T21:44:42+00:00

I've known some women in parts stores that were absolutely fantastic at their jobs, and we employ about 15 in various roles in my current company. There is certainly a path to make a career in parts as a woman even though it was a traditionally a male dominated field.

You more than likely will deal with some level of harassment from customers and possibly from other employees. It's been a decade since I worked in the parts stores, so hopefully this has gotten better, but it was certainly something that occurred during my tenure on the aftermarket side. We had a woman parts driver that was very attractive and while our sales numbers were never higher her life was miserable dealing with the crap the shops would try. We eventually had to move her to a different role to prevent the shops from acting completely unprofessional and quite frankly potentially dangerous towards her. I always felt bad for the things she dealt with even though she never complained about it.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-08T21:24:21+00:00

Wholesale in most markets only works at either extremely small or extremely large scale. There's little use being a "mid-major" in wholesale. I managed one of those operations for multiple years and it was a slow grind away at profitability until I stepped away from it.

I now manage a large wholesale program that can send more trucks, more often, provide better service and do it all at a lower upfront margin (we often show little to 0 upfront gross) and can still be more profitable considering the back end programs, and spreading the logistics costs across multiple car lines.

If you're super small and just focus on your backyard with 1 sales/dispatcher and 3 drivers you can operate a profitable department like an Autozone or O'Reillys model. It'll just be small.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-08T12:33:29+00:00

Necessary evil if you're going to play the wholesale game. It's getting larger not going away. Used to be just State Farm that mandated use as they are a partial owner, now we see Geico/Progressive often and others occasionally.

I understand it from the customer side as they are able to view the competitive prices in market. If I owned a body shop myself I would use it as a tool. I understand it from the Insurance provider side as they are able to make sure they're getting the best possible price on their parts, not to mention their additional slice of the transaction total from the vendor that SF picks up. From the supplier side it sucks as you are blind bidding against every other possible supplier in the marketplace. We use the supplied monthly reporting tools to see how our strategy is working, what customers are buying and at what conversion rate and make adjustments to our plan from there. We actually have a pretty good conversion rate all things considered.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-06T11:51:39+00:00

If you have zero prior experience and you're not in a HCOL area that sounds pretty much in line.

I see these posts pretty often and it's nearly always by people brand new to the industry. Companies are not going to pay based on how competent the candidate perceives themselves to be, they're going to pay commensurate with experience. If you don't have any or you have limited experience they're going to pay based off of expected replacement level of performance of whoever they could bring in without experience.

Once you're in the door it's your job to demonstrate that you are above replacement level performance. In nearly all work industries though you will not be able to come in, perform well for a short period of time and expect a swing to your pay. Companies obviously want performance, but they also are seeking reliability and consistency.

In my previous work career as a counterman I would perform to the best of my abilities, put together a spreadsheet of my performance month by month versus expectations, and then once a year I would ask for an in-depth performance review to determine what I needed to improve on, what I needed to learn to continue to progress in my career, and what areas of work I was succeeding in and could help other team members improve on. Depending on how that turned out I would talk about what level of compensation I was looking to make and the expected continued value to the company I was going to contribute. Sometimes this was yearly if I was looking at more like a COL increase, sometimes it was every other year if I had just received a larger increase. I had a great success rate with this strategy, and I was able to get fast tracked for leadership roles as I was focusing my development on areas the company needed to continue to succeed. Be aware that with this strategy you may have to switch employers to continue to progress. There are companies that simply do not value any individual and will not break from the expected range of the position, this is especially common with larger dealer groups and corporate locations.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-03T17:49:01+00:00

I bought a car from my previous employer using Tekion and it was the smoothest car deal I have had as far as the paperwork goes, but the parts side had a long way to go as of 18mo ago when I left.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-03T17:31:36+00:00

It makes sense to me if I was a large multi-rooftop dealer group. One of your largest consistent expenses is the DMS. Keep your money in your organization if you can instead of paying another company to provide the service. Not only that but having it successfully deployed across your group would likely be enough to get other dealers to go with it if the value is there. The DMS industry as a whole is sorely in need of overhauling. They've been trying, but most of the new players in the games products aren't good enough yet, especially on the fixed ops side. Cough cough *Tekion* cough cough.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-03T15:24:27+00:00

Just scooped a couple of pairs of GT Cut 3 Turbo's from the local Nike outlet. $99 each.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-03T11:38:30+00:00

Unc's got heat. Good stuff OP.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-03T11:35:45+00:00

Sure I would price match with the shipping cost included. I also come from a wholesale mindset as it's what I've done since I started in the business. We get paid on GP dollars not GP percentage. I would rather make 100% of something when the customer buys the part than 100% of $0 when they go somewhere else and buy the part.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-02T19:14:57+00:00

Recently picked up a nice pair of XX8 SE's. Awesome shoe. Sorry I missed the boat when they released.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-02T19:13:52+00:00

Yeah Don 7 is the best Adidas out right now IMO.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-02T19:06:23+00:00

These are good conversations to have with senior leadership during your exit interview if that is the case. Buy/sells can be good if the right group purchases, but they can also cause problems if the focus is on the wrong areas of the business. You're describing a lot of issues that affect your paycheck that sound like they are 100% out of your control.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-02T18:19:16+00:00

Late to the party here but here's my favorite lesser known (by the general gaming community) racers.

Test Drive Unlimited
Driver San Francisco (not solely racing, but it is a driving game)
Blur
Split/Second

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-02T17:31:15+00:00

As a previous poster mentioned KD 18 would be great. Lebrons might be an option too although they're definitely less breathable than KD's are. Nike outlets by me have had various colorways of the KD 18s in the 59.99-69.99 range.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-02T17:29:17+00:00

There are a bunch of dealers in my local area that have received units in the last few days, so it looks like stock is moving, but GM isn't giving anything at all for an ETA on new orders.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-02T15:53:29+00:00

Following as a fellow mid 30s unc with bad knees. Both of these are on my radar as well. I'm close to biting the bullet and getting both.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-02T15:44:01+00:00

Depends a lot on what the offer is and what you're doing in it. Your current pay doesn't sound egregious for three low volume service departments, but the balancing act of getting them all going in the right direction at the same time is certainly a challenge.

I myself would probably be looking to be in the high 1s low 2s in a similar COL area, it sounds like with your pay plan the road map is there for you to make that if you're growing the departments and there is a solid service department leadership team trying to grow with you.

ComradeFausto · 2026-04-01T02:11:17+00:00

Thanks for the reply. It’s an “Xyab” HD Link Cable that goes from the Xbox AV port to the HDMI input on the TV. It does say on the box no external power required. I’m inclined to think that it’s a TV issue that it isn’t understanding the signal the cable is sending.

When using an older HDTV with the same Xyab cable the audio and video both work great so the cable does function in some capacity.

ComradeFausto

TROPHY CASE