Truck repair -- parts markup seems high...
The water pump in my F250 died. The garage I took it to (came recommended by a local and good reviews) wanted to charge me $235 for water pump I was able to buy at the auto supply place (with lifetim...
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I work for a medium/heavy dealership and also deal with a lot of heavy duty independent repair shops and can tell you that is the normal depending on the part. This is how they make their money because you can't make it on the hourly rate alone. Many of my repair facility customer will charge you double the hourly rate if you want to bring your own part. However, that mark up on the water pump seems a little high, but that is the light duty industry in general(and yes a F250 is a light duty truck in my industry). You would be lucky to get that GP on an engine part in the heavy duty world.
Here is a funny little story about mark-up. In my previous position as an accounts manager, I was over an hour away from my dealership and a customer who was only 10 minutes away called me needing a water pump for one of his medium duty Ram trucks with a 6.7L Cummins in it. The dealership I worked for is a Cummins distributor and the water pump cost us $59 from Cummins at the time and my markup to my fleet customers on engine parts was around 10% so his cost would have been $65.
Since I was an hour away from my dealership, and my customer needed the part quickly, I decided to just call the local Ram dealer since they would be selling the exact same Cummins OE part in a Mopar box. They wanted to charge me $189 for that water pump and that was without Vaseline. I told the guy on the phone that he was nuts and I knew how much he paid for that part. He would not budge so I decided to call another Ram dealer about 30 minutes away in the next town over. They wanted $195 for the same part I get for $59.
After telling this to my customer, we just decided that it would probably be best if I just charged him an extra $10 markup to drive back to my dealership and pick up the part for him. He also told me that he called the Cummins dealer and hour away and they wanted $130 for that part.
Moral to the story... if you own a Cummins 6.7L and need an engine part, get your engine serial number off the engine and try checking the local medium/heavy duty dealerships like the Peterbilt and International dealerships instead of the local Ram dealership. You might be surprised on how less the OE Cummins part cost is. This may not be the case for every market though and is mainly due to the fact the medium and heavy duty parts industry is so competitive.
Here is a funny little story about mark-up. In my previous position as an accounts manager, I was over an hour away from my dealership and a customer who was only 10 minutes away called me needing a water pump for one of his medium duty Ram trucks with a 6.7L Cummins in it. The dealership I worked for is a Cummins distributor and the water pump cost us $59 from Cummins at the time and my markup to my fleet customers on engine parts was around 10% so his cost would have been $65.
Since I was an hour away from my dealership, and my customer needed the part quickly, I decided to just call the local Ram dealer since they would be selling the exact same Cummins OE part in a Mopar box. They wanted to charge me $189 for that water pump and that was without Vaseline. I told the guy on the phone that he was nuts and I knew how much he paid for that part. He would not budge so I decided to call another Ram dealer about 30 minutes away in the next town over. They wanted $195 for the same part I get for $59.
After telling this to my customer, we just decided that it would probably be best if I just charged him an extra $10 markup to drive back to my dealership and pick up the part for him. He also told me that he called the Cummins dealer and hour away and they wanted $130 for that part.
Moral to the story... if you own a Cummins 6.7L and need an engine part, get your engine serial number off the engine and try checking the local medium/heavy duty dealerships like the Peterbilt and International dealerships instead of the local Ram dealership. You might be surprised on how less the OE Cummins part cost is. This may not be the case for every market though and is mainly due to the fact the medium and heavy duty parts industry is so competitive.
