Having tradtor hauled.

[John Dougherty]

I myself would drive it to the Dealer.When I bought mine I drove mine 50 Miles to Home.

Are you even paying attention?

 

[Rustyiron]

I find this sort of discussion interesting. Dealers do not get reimbursed for hauling on warranty. A dealer needs to figure out his strategy. He can pack some $$ into the price and haul under warranty for "free", but that isn't really free, it is "pre-paid", even if the customer does not know it. But a customer that wants a Mahindra will often shop hard and wants the very best price. You can't do free pickups and deliveries for service work and still have the lowest price. It costs about $0.85/mile to run a 1-ton and a trailer, plus the driver. And time needs to be calculated from the time he leaves the shop until he gets back. 25 miles might take 40 minutes, depending on if this is part town or all highway. Then he loads, speaks with the customer, ties down etc. Another 30 minutes. Then 40 minutes back to the shop, then unload. You can't do that in under 2 hours normally. If you pay your driver $20/hr and have another $10/hour in taxes and benefits, that is $60 for employee cost and $40 for truck/fuel/maint/depreciation. That's $100 to do that 25 mile run, and the dealer has made nothing. If that same driver would have instead stayed in the shop and serviced tractors, he would have made us money.

We sell a lot of tractors and keep a couple of trucks busy with deliveries and picking up service work, and even at $2/loaded mile with a minimum we lose money on delivery each and every month. To make any sort of return on investment, delivery needs to be about $3.50/loaded mile and $100 minimum. But people see that as way too high....and unless you really analyze it, it does seem high.

For a while we offered a loaner trailer for no charge. But rarely would anyone use it. Once they calculated a few hours of their time, fuel usage, the responsibility of hauling the unit, etc., hardly anyone took us up on the offer to use the trailer.

I like the idea of charging more for the tractor upfront and giving free hauling and even a free loaner....but remember, free isn't free, it must be included in the initial price. That might work with JD, people pay for the brand, but if you are Mahindra or LS or Kioti, folks often shop price.

One last thought, if a tractor is delivered and the next day or a week later a guy calls and says oil is running out of it....a dealer just goes and gets it and apologizes. To do otherwise will cost you a customer, and I think that is different than a problem that arises down the road.

Just my thoughts, and I always appreciate hearing opinions on this.

I see your point and had asumed that you were re imbursed by the mfg. But the next post by alafarm is hard to argue with. Then your later (#53) post tell's me that you have a good handle on it! A zillion different customer/senario posibility's out the, gotta judge them each. I think that you would have fixed up alafarm's problem before it left the lot!:thumbsup:
Would documenting your (pick up) cost's over a year or so get you anything negotiating with MH for re payment even if partial?

 

[DavesTractor]

I see your point and had asumed that you were re imbursed by the mfg. But the next post by alafarm is hard to argue with. Then your later (#53) post tell's me that you have a good handle on it! A zillion different customer/senario posibility's out the, gotta judge them each. I think that you would have fixed up alafarm's problem before it left the lot!:thumbsup:
Would documenting your (pick up) cost's over a year or so get you anything negotiating with MH for re payment even if partial?

Warranty costs are figured by geeks with spreadsheets. You can cover anything, including hauling, but it raises the cost. I'd like to see that covered, but the aforementioned spreadsheet guys would have to calculate the cost. If "free pickup/delivery" during the 5 year warranty period costs on average $427 over 5 years, the price of the tractor would go up that amount....or more. This may cause the tractor to be perceived as too expensive by some folks who might then buy a different brand that has not packed this coverage into the cost. Alternatively, the dealer could build in $500 extra margin and cover that expense, but again it is paid for by the customer one way or the other. I think all dealers put a little in the margin for the odd problem that surfaces within the first 30 days, as it is hard to explain to a customer that he has to pay for hauling on a tractor that he is pretty sure was delivered to him defective. And that customer would have an excellent point.

I do agree though, if the manufacturer had to bear all the cost of the warranty, like hauling and actual labor time (warranty flat rate is ridiculously low), they might be forced to increase quality and perhaps do more preventative campaigns instead of "fix as fail". There is some merit to that concept. You could tell the quality department that they have 2% of the net dealer cost and they must manage all customer warranty out of that or look for work elsewhere. But anything that is caught at the plant level before shipping would not count towards their 2%. That might work....

We try hard to catch everything before we deliver, but we miss stuff also. Lately we have started dyno'ing some of the units for 20 minutes before delivery. That gets them up to temp, checks HP, and during the 20 minutes the technician raises and lowers the loader a bunch of times trying to see if he can find any leaks. Essentially his dyno time gives him 20 minutes to do nothing but look over the tractor. He has to stay at the dyno, he can't go do something else.