Autocare delivers half the OEM cars to dealerships and now it wants to grow dealer swaps
Autocare Services is moving to build its competitive advantage of having trucks just about anywhere at any time to increase its service capacity to move dealers’ cars between dealership locations.
The company has been watching the “significant percentage of vehicles” that are swapped between dealers and has expanded its services in direct response to cater for this market demand.
Autocare Services is engaging with dealers to explain how its huge transport footprint across Australia can be used, not just by the OEMs to deliver cars to dealers, but how its truck fleets can perform dealer swaps in a timely and cost-effective manner.
Autocare Services receives and processes more than half of the one million cars that are sent to Australia by OEMs and delivers them to the franchise dealers on a fleet of approximately 300 trucks.
When deliveries of new cars are completed, the company has a huge resource of trucks in metro, provincial and rural areas across the nation with availability to pick up dealers’ swapped cars and deliver them to where they are needed.
Joe Berlingeri, Autocare Services national business development manager said “the feedback we are receiving is that a lot of dealers don’t realise that Autocare Services already performs these vehicle movements between dealerships. The perception is that we only concentrate on new vehicle deliveries from the OEMs.
“We have such a sizeable fleet that we can pick up, deliver and collect across Australia in very short, responsive timeframes.”
Michael Feltscheer, Autocare Services national customer manager, said “dealers are telling us they need competitively priced solutions that also meets their customers’ demands. A vehicle purchase is an emotive process and there is pressure on dealers to get the right vehicle in the right place as soon as possible.
“We have adapted our service offering to meet the demands of the market and, as the largest transport service provider in the country, we have been able to provide our customers, the dealers, with more value.
“We are regularly delivering more than 50 per cent of the Australian car market’s vehicles direct to dealerships, and also have the capacity to then move vehicles back from dealers to other locations, either within the state or interstate.
“It depends on the locations, but with the bigger-volume metro dealers, we are sending trucks to them daily. In terms of rural areas, major provincial cities would be at least every second business day, if not every day.
“The more remote locations are two to three times a week or less, depending on where they are.
“At Mount Isa, for example, we provide more services there than others can provide because we go through Mount Isa from Townsville on the way to Darwin.
“The message for dealers is that we are available to service their transport requirements today.
“Even if we are not at your dealership, we are likely to be at the dealership next door, ready to pick up any cars that dealers want swapped into the hands of another really quickly,” Mr Feltscheer said.
Mr Berlingeri added “we see the fact that we are already in a dealer’s area with a truck that has to return to its base as the best value Autocare Services can deliver for dealers. Our service frequency is the key to our customers’ success and we are keen to build upon that far and wide.”
Mr Feltscheer commented that the relationship between the transport company and its dealer clients was crucial.
“Relationships are important. We have developed very good relationships with our existing dealer customers and, for them, it is important that we are able to react to a transport request at short notice,” he said.
“Our large fleet enables us to pick up at short notice and, while someone might be able to do it at a lower price, more often than not we are able to do it in a timeframe that meets the dealers’ often short-term needs, given the reactive nature of business processes.”
Mr Feltscheer said Autocare Services was able to react quickly to get rental cars into North Queensland following the floods in February.
“We were able to do that because we have the trucks on the ground running regularly between Brisbane and Townsville. We helped the rental car companies because they needed to get people into cars because their own cars had been washed away,” he said.
“This is just one example of how Autocare Services has capacity and care to respond to market changes quickly to support our customers anywhere, anytime.”
As featured in GoAutoNews Premium.