The auto industry hinges on the prompt and accurate delivery of auto parts. Mechanics, custom modders, and private car owners all are deeply invested in the quality of their parts delivery service. If you are in the business of delivering auto parts, you can make a respectable profit by building a service that your clients can rely on. Many will become long-term business partners with both regular and special orders because your service is integral to their service.
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Of course, there’s a reason that auto parts delivery is a specialty niche in the logistics sector; it takes more than a few boxes and trucks to get the job done right. Running a top-notch delivery service for auto parts means expert packing, rapid deliveries, a high degree of transparency, and absolute order accuracy. These qualities are what will make any company delivering auto parts stand out and win the loyalty of automotive clients across the country.
At Elite EXTRA, we have worked closely with auto parts delivery businesses to help turbo-charge warehouse operations, fleet performance, and overall customer satisfaction. We can help you today by spotlighting the top five most useful tips to power up an auto parts delivery business.
The first step is to streamline the way you plan your delivery routes. An efficient route can drastically reduce the amount of time your trucks are on the road and speed up delivery estimates for your customers. If you provide same-day parts delivery, routes are even more important to ensure your customers get their auto parts within deadlines that are often both urgent and demanding.
There are three critical factors to consider when building a route for auto parts delivery: effectively navigating local traffic, the load-in/load-out order for larger parts loaded into the truck, and ensuring a practical customer order for multi-delivery trips.
Routing has come a long way from the paper map on the wall. Today, your map is a satellite-backed image of the region and the colorful pins have become live icons of your real-time fleet. Route planning tools have also advanced to provide intuitive optimization based on your priorities. Choosing the right software can help you automatically build routes based on the day’s deliveries, favoring or avoiding certain roads, arranging customer locations in the most practical order, and even have your drivers swing by a good place to stop for gas and lunch mid-day.
These tools can ensure that your parts get to the client on the correct day in their preferred delivery window while also considering the best route decisions for your drivers.
Everyone knows that some roads and traffic areas are better than others for completing deliveries. Some roads move more swiftly and connect smoothly from one artery to the next. If you can navigate these ideal traffic routes, your drivers will make better time, complete deliveries faster, and have a better experience behind the wheel.
Using the right software, you can then plan routes by arranging delivery locations in an order that naturally connects these ideal arteries for fast, efficient routing every time.
Using route planning and geofencing, you can automatically avoid roads and neighborhoods that are bad for delivery routes. Slow speed limits, choppy stoplights, stop-and-go sections of the freeway, or broken road pavement all reduce your delivery speeds and frustrate your drivers. Some areas may actually be dangerous to route through. Use the software tools at your disposal to ensure your auto parts are never routed through these roads and areas.
The road isn’t always the same every day. Bad weather, gravel spills, accidents, and local construction can alter good and bad conditions for your delivery routes. To ensure your auto parts are delivered smoothly and on time, be ready to adapt. Choosing the right route optimization tool can help you in times like these as they can adapt quickly and reroute in real time.
When it comes to auto parts, loading and unloading play an important role. These parts are often large, heavy, delicate, or some combination of the three.
Accuracy is also paramount. Your clients will often order parts delivery from you because you have the specific part they need in stock and can deliver it fast. You need a standardized and reliable procedure to select the right part, package it safely, then load and unload it efficiently to minimize your total handling time and meet your delivery windows.
The best way to do this is to streamline the process, ensuring that both loading and unloading are done with minimum time and maximum precision.
Keep your warehouse or parts storage facilities extremely well organized. Whether you pick up parts from partners or maintain a warehouse of auto parts to deliver, organization is key to a quick and efficient loading process.
Make sure every part is clearly labeled, along with the extra bolts and seals that each part is packaged with. Create your own labels if the manufacturer labels are not fast and clear enough to read at a glance. You can also equip your team with scanners to quickly check, identify, and confirm their parts selection.
Make sure your auto parts are packaged to perfection. Every part has a different way it can be damaged in transit, and it’s your job to prevent all of them. Body components can dent, glass components can shatter, and engine components might even leak. Each is a unique shape, weight, and delicacy. To handle this flawlessly no matter who is doing the packing, standardize your packing procedure.
Provide guidelines and the ideal packing materials for each and every part you stock, including bubble wrap, double-boxes, cardboard supports, and even the occasional wooden crate for delivering very heavy engine parts that must be crated.
Handling time matters. The time it takes you to unload a package is included in the delivery window. This means you can minimize handling time by optimizing your unloading process. Drivers who are quick in their routine to carefully confirm a package, remove it from the truck, and leave it where a client is ready to receive will build the reputation for delivering auto parts with reliability and speed.
Of course, every client is unique. Each auto body shop, manufacturer, and custom modder will have a different area where they want drivers to park, where they want parts unloaded, and perhaps a unique hand-off routine as they sign for the part. Be ready to optimize not just the process of getting parts off the truck, but also to adapt to the needs of each individual client upon receipt.
You will know that your auto parts delivery service is thriving when you get more delivery requests than you have trucks and drivers. While this poses a logistical challenge, it is also a good kind of problem, one worthy of an adaptive solution.
Naturally, you don’t want to ask any of your clients to wait for the next day’s delivery route, and you don’t have to. Instead, you can outsource to local third-party delivery fleets in order to complete those additional deliveries.
The first step is to join a delivery network made up of third-party fleets. Some route and inventory management platforms make it easy to identify and connect with other fleets in your area who are just as reliable, trustworthy, and highly trained as your own fleet. This is essential when your aim is to complete a growing number of high-value auto parts deliveries.
Once you’ve joined a delivery network, don’t hesitate to leverage them when needed. Working with third-party fleets and local delivery services, you can provide quicker deliveries without delays when you (and your clients) need them the most. Coordinate your fleet contacts to determine which services are ideal for each delivery and pair with drivers who are ready to take on your bonus routes.
One thing that both delivery managers and your clients will appreciate is real-time tracking. With current technology, there is no need to ever lose track of a vehicle or guess their location again. You can know where each delivery vehicle is located down to the second and the street corner. You can tell if they have pulled up to the right door on a busy block or how far out they are to a client given the timing of the traffic lights between their location and destination. And your clients can, too.
Even before your auto parts get on the truck, you can provide live and engaging tracking by updating the order status with every scan. When the part is picked and scanned, you can provide an update. When the package is packed and labeled, that label creates a new order status. When the package is prepared for loading and loaded onto the last-mile truck, this provides the final update before GPS takes over.
GPS tracking is an essential element of modern fleet management and delivery customer service, at the same time. GPS identifies the exact location of vehicles that carry a tracker and can transmit that location back to the core dispatch software.
Fleet managers can watch their entire fleet complete planned routes and even respond in real time to route and condition changes with perfect oversight. GPS monitoring can also be conveyed to each package inside each truck. Once auto parts are loaded up, they take on the GPS signal of the truck to which they are assigned so that both dispatch and clients can know exactly where each package is located.
The best way to provide a stellar customer experience is by creating a dashboard where clients can stay in the loop. Automotive clients who are eager to receive their part will track delivery down to the minute, and will wait on bated breath as their part draws closer through the delivery route. Customers will not call to ask where their part is if they can see it’s on the freeway or around the corner, and they may be waiting in the parking lot to receive their part if they watch the truck icon pull up to their driveway in real time.
This kind of tracking provides both useful information and deep satisfaction for automotive businesses and custom builders who often order rapid parts delivery.
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You can also ensure that communication is possible between customers and the delivery service. Using the right communication tools, you can enable customers to call dispatch or connect with their drivers when necessary to ensure a smooth delivery and ease worries if a part gets held up on the freeway a little longer than expected.
Lastly, there’s no need to let returns slow you down. Returns are a normal part of delivery and retail services. Sometimes, a part won’t fit correctly, a client may change their mind, or damage in transit occurs. These are all normal factors that can be calculated for. Properly handling returns can increase customer satisfaction and generate long-term loyalty with your clients.
Make sure your returns process is just as efficient as your delivery process and your business delivering auto parts will thrive.
Start by establishing a clear set of procedures for handling returns and exchanges. The more returns you process into exchanges, the better. But even a return and refund is better than losing a client. Train your team to quickly and efficiently assess a return, process the return, re-stock the part, and quickly deliver an exchange part whenever possible.
Make sure your customers know how to access and process their returns. Provide clear instructions on when returns are accepted, how to request returns, and how to receive an exchange instead of a refund when a slightly different or fully intact part is needed.
Your clients will appreciate a clear view of how to get returns and professionals will learn to work smoothly with your returns policy so that both your business and theirs are not slowed down by the occasional return or exchange.
Smoothly handling returns provides more than just customer satisfaction. A good returns policy can boost the quality of your inventory management and reduce revenue loss. Returns that become exchanges can save a sale, while efficient inspections and restocks will maintain better inventory orders and prevent stock-outs. It’s important to see every return as an opportunity.
If you are running an auto parts delivery service, the right inventory and fleet management software can make a big difference in your efficiency and capacity for growth. Elite EXTRA is a comprehensive logistics platform that provides advanced features for every solution we have discussed today.
Whether you are looking to improve real-time visibility with customer dashboards, connect with third-party delivery partners to expand your fulfillment network, or want to streamline your returns process, we’ve got you covered.
I don’t like junk yards, because I don’t like used parts, but any retail store will do. Call ahead to see if they have what you need in stock, and bring the old part with you to compare to the new one and make sure they’re giving you the correct part.
I’ve been to O’Rielly, Advance, and Auto Zone, (and others) and they’re all the same in terms of service.
OEM parts (especially Honda parts) tend to be more expensive, but not any better than aftermarket parts in terms of quality. After all, most aftermarket parts meet OEM specifications.
Occasionally, I order parts online, but only when I have to because they are hard to find. There is no substitute for holding the old and new part side by side to compare them, and there is often a core charge for recycling the old part at an auto parts store.
When I was young and poor and did all my own work I frequently bought junkyard parts. The difference between $5 and $25 was huge for me then. once junkyards got Teletype and computer systems linking them together there prices went up tp about 50% of new. I usually buy my parts at NAPA but if you are buying over $100 at one time it is hard to ignore the discounts at Advance. I never just go in there and browse or buy something anymore because the have raised their in store prices to make up for the discounts.
If I have advance notice I am going to need parts or I can drive alternative vehicle, I generally order most of my parts online at rock auto but I still price shop. There can be huge price differences between rock auto and local stores. Advance auto has many online coupons that they will not accept in store but you can order and pick up at the store. Sometimes I will end up at the salvage yard if I am looking for something really expensive. I have 3 trucks and 3 cars I keep on the road. It is too expensive not to shop around.
If the only sources you have are the national chain stores, using them usually works out ok. The car-repair skills of the staff there varies widely, from completely no experience at all, to pretty good. Since you can’t choose which of the staff helps you with your parts need, you may have to return something b/c it doesn’t work or it is the wrong part for you car; but easy enough to do. I got the wrong valve cover set & radiator coolant fan switch for my Corolla one time from one of those places , and that’s the only two parts I purchased! lol …
For that reason I prefer a local auto parts store to a chain store, even tho I have to drive a little further to find one. The one I use here in San Jose has plenty of car-repair knowledgeable staff on hand to help and answer common diy’er questions. And if they don’t know, they say so. The staff at the national chain stores guess a lot from my experience.
For mail order, Rock Auto is great, but can be inconvenient and frustrating if you get the incorrect part and have to send it back. And it can be more expensive than buying local if you just need a few parts b/c of shipping and handling costs. For a big order where time isn’t too much of a factor Rock Auto definitely makes sense.
I shop online and then decide what I am going to do. A part that might not fit, I buy from the store, usually AZ mostly because I have a loyalty card and they give me the mechanics discount. If I have questions about a particular repair, I go to the local NAPA because the counter people are knowledgeable.
I used to buy more from rockauto but their shipping is through the roof. I recently bought complete struts from the seller’s website that came with free shipping and no tax, for me that was significant savings.
I needed an air filter recently, WM was out of stock, looked on amazon and they had the OEM for cheaper than Fram with free shipping. Nothing as good as buying my parts on Sunday night while relaxing on my couch.
Depends on the part.
I’ve had problems with Auto Zone parts. They sell a lot of knockoff junk. And they don’t always know what they’re doing… I’ve had to show them what I was talking about. My impression is that they have clerks that probably sold shoes at their last jobs.
I rarely buy parts other than spark plugs from the stores listed. I do buy parts from a company called Sanel’s. They supply all the repair shops in our area. They can be trusted, and the counter guys know what they’re talking about.
Filters I buy at Walmart. Frankly, I think they’re just as good as any other filter. But, than, I change my fluids and filter often enough that they don’t get very dirty. And I don’t drive in the desert, salt flats, extreme heat, or other really extreme conditions. If I lived in the southwest I’d probably reconsider. I’d also move, but that’s a different discussion.
Most parts I order via the internet. However, I have the luxury of having any big work done by the automotive department at the college I retired from. I pay only cost less a 20% discount. While all suppliers I assume offer discounts to all shops, the 20% is an educational discount available from manufacturers only to educational institutions. Brake parts, exhaust parts, and stuff like that the guys at the college get for me… OEM, of course. In some cases, like shocks & struts, I know who the OEM supplier is to the car’s manufacturer, so I’ll go directly to them via the internet.
Belts I get only from Gates. I believe they have the best on the market. I get the “heavy duty” option.
In short, I don’t think there’s a single answer. I suspect most people doing their own cars use different sources for different types of parts.
Guys? Do you all do the same?
I order motorcycle parts on Amazon. Their website has a handy feature where you can list your vehicles so that, when you look at a part, it will show you at the top of the screen if it fits your vehicle. This picture is one example.
Having lived in various places, I chose to say “they’re all the same” regarding auto parts stores because they tend to vary in employee competency based on location. The O’Rielly’s Auto Parts near my mother’s house has great staff who are knowledgeable and friendly, but the Advance Auto Parts across the street seems to be staffed with flunkies who can’t properly test a battery. Where I live now, the guys at the local Advance Auto Parts seem to know what they’re talking about, but the jokers at the local NAPA never seem to know what I’m talking about. Yet the NAPA store in the last city I lived in was the place to go. Pep Boys in Dallas, TX once tried to rip me off, but the Pep Boys in south Jacksonville is wonderful. @bing has obviously had negative experiences from Autozone and O’Rielly’s but I’ve never had a problem at either. My point is that leadership makes a difference, both at the store manager level and at other levels of management, such as area manager, regional manager, etc., and I wouldn’t rule out any auto parts store chain until you’ve checked them out in your area.
Here’s another vote for Amazon. I’m a prime member so I will choose them first if at all possible. I have never been let down by their “this part fits your vehicle” assessment. I do find it is easier if you have the OEM part number for searching as it rapidly narrows down the offerings to search through. Although I have used the filter feature to accomplish the same thing. At Rockauto I can’t buy a kid’s toy, some mints, a plumbing fitting and a ball joint at the same time
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