Dealing With Auto Parts
There are just some things that the USA do better than here in the UK. Take buying used car parts for example. Yes there are larger used car breakers in the UK who use a database to tell a customer on the phone what is in stock and the part condition and a nationwide database called Pinnacle (not sure of the correct spelling), but majority of car breakers throughout the UK, just remember what they have in stock and only sell to their own customers.
With greater distances to travel to breaker yards in the USA , you find that many more transactions are done over the phone, or certainly the location of the parts in question. As you enter many USA breaker yards you see telesales guys on the counter describing the parts in question and delivering prices through headsets. In front of them is a national or certainly a state wide database of car parts waiting to be bought, not just by the consumer bit the breaker yard as a middleman.
This means that many breaker yards sell stock that is in fact at another yard. They just ring this yard up and ask them to deliver the part to the relevant consumer. Both yards make a profit on the part sold and so long as the breaker yard who has the car part in stock gets the cash asked, he does not care how much has been added on by the second breaker.
Although the technology for this sharing of stock database is in place, many refuse to take the time to add stock to the database or remove it should they sell out. The USA breakers do this much better and understand the benefits better than here in the UK.
For the consumer they may find themselves paying a bit more for the part as there are now 2 margins added to the price, but when they consider time and gas saved by driving around or ringing around, this can be cost effective in the long run.
As the bigger yards get bigger and the small yard struggle to survive within the UK, it would make sense to become a collective force to the big guys, but their still seems to be a reluctance to do this.