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Unknown Parts Counter Guy: Supply Plus Demand Equals One Big, Fat Delivery


Unknown Parts Counter Guy: Supply Plus Demand Equals One Big, Fat Delivery

The daily life of a parts counter guy is pretty much four items: Sales and service, loss control, money control and supply/stocking. The first three are exactly as you’d expect. So let’s take a look at the supply and stocking that keeps your favorite car parts store filled to the brim of every part possible…except that one you need right now.

Most places are now operating on a computer delivery system using the JIT (Just In Time) concept. This keeps us from having one big-ass store and keeps costs down. Instead of having a ton of stuff, we can have a few pieces on hand that we know we sell pretty often and can easily resupply, and the rarely-sold items can be ordered in quickly so we aren’t paying warehousing costs from the store’s budget. Say you come in and buy taillight bulbs for your ’76 Camaro. We track what kind of bulb you buy. The computer automatically removes one from our inventory tracker and automatically places an order for another bulb. This keeps the monotony for the worker to a minimum, and within a business day or so, we receive a new bulb to stock the shelf with. Nice, right?

Now, let’s say something causes a rush on a particular item. In this case, this winter weather caused a rush on antifreeze, for example. We sell out. We have to put out the “sorry!” cards, and we call our nearest warehouses to get more. If they are out too, we’re S.O.L. until the manufacturer sends more out. People get pissed, and the guy behind the counter has all the likeability of a whore in a church.

Eventually, the supply has to catch up. And that is what happened recently. In our case it was a laundry list of items…oil, trans fluids, diesel oils and lubricants, washer fluids, antifreezes, de-icers. All of it showed up overnight. That morning we walked into the store and found no less than five maxed-out pallets of everything that we were out of. Store manager is happy that he has supplies. The guy responsible for inputting all of this into the computer system looks like he could eat glass and shit out Swarvoski crystal. The counter people are playing “Not it!” to see who is going to get to stay behind the counter and help customers (which suddenly looks outright heavenly) while the others get reduced to Egyptian slave level, moving blocks that smell like ATF from the loading bay to either the shelf or to the storage area.

I drew the short straw first. I’m normally not averse to moving heavy objects, but five pallets of automotive fun wasn’t looking great. But it’s part of the job, and within two hours we get the first four pallets done, checked in, prepped, and either stocked or stored…not a small feat.

Then I see Pallet No. 5: batteries.

The typical car battery is a heavy little package. Batteries for older cars and pickup trucks are even heavier. And we stock semi-truck batteries. Those bastards can earn you a trip to your local chiropractor in one shot. And we have it all. If you don’t know what “FML” stands for, Google search it. You’ll agree with me. At this point there’s two of us left to move batteries, and I’m already wondering if I might be able to take an early lunch so that I can lump this onto our Special Ed as retaliation for stealing my food out of the break room fridge. Unfortunately, she’s putting on wiper blades, so forty to fifty pounds at a time, in rhythym, we move the batteries from pallet to rack, making sure to not disturb the connections or to be too rough with them.

I left work that day hunched over like Quasimodo crossed with the old guy from the movie “Up!” I’ll lie later in life and tell my kids and grandkids that my back injury was a war wound or something…or maybe I’ll ramble about building a fort behind boxes filled with 15W-40 looking for Charlie just to freak them out. Heh…I can see that now. “MOOOOOOMM!!! GRANDPA’S BEING WEIRD AGAIN!”

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23 thoughts on “Unknown Parts Counter Guy: Supply Plus Demand Equals One Big, Fat Delivery

  1. Chris

    Seriously, EVERY TIME I see that paper bag face pop up I drop whatever I am supposed to be doing and read. Keep it up.

  2. cyclone03

    When I complain about the weather (I’m an Aircraft Mechanic and work 90% outside,the other 10% in an Unheated Hanger) my wife says “It’s not my fault you made the wroung career choice”.
    I think that applys here.

  3. Geezer Counterman

    JIT computer inventory (“The computer automatically removes one from our inventory tracker and automatically places an order . . . .”) doesn’t work so well when there’s “shrinkage” (employee theft, shoplifting) . . . .

    Wear your back brace when moving batteries.

    1. James Boos

      We use to do that “JIT”. Quit doin’ that when the chain stores moved in and killed the profit margins. I do 90% direct factory order. That’s pallets of fun every week.

    2. Parts Guy

      Very true. Luckily, our shrinkage issues are really the most stupid items: keychains, the little chrome pieces in the Fast and the Furious aisle, etc. Shrinkage is shrinkage (lol), but our store is pretty lucky where that’s concerned.

  4. Mrocketscience

    Oh yeah, I worked in a parts store in high school and college. When that Interstate battery truck pulled up, it was always “Oh F*&%!”. Me being the grunt meant I was was unloading that SOB. The truck that delivered all the exhaust pipes was a joy also. Had to untangle that mess and hang it all up in order. Bleeding for hours.

  5. threedoor

    I get the battery stories from my wife the counterman, batteries show up, the modern soft centered retail men around her disappear.

  6. AngryJoe

    worked at a garage that stocked batteries, I hated the effing interstate truck..why, because teenager working with a bunch of old dudes…thats why.

  7. BlueCuda340

    I have worked with batteries for 16 years now. Its like anything else you get used to it after awhile….kinda.

  8. john brown

    After 35 years working in mom and pop parts stores that didn’t do JIT inventory, I feel for those of you that do. We were known for having what you need if you don’t mind paying a little more if you really need it. Only thing was, we really weren’t any higher in price than the other places. We didn’t sell floor mats, wax and bling parts, we sold parts that your car really needed. With as many as five people at any time on the counter it got a little crowded at times, but with paper parts books for research and our personal knowledge base, we could usually get the right part to the customer when they needed it, whether the customer was a newbee standing at the counter or a lifer old time mechanic at his shop. What other kind of business will you find that buys from another store just to keep their customers happy?

  9. TheSilverBuick

    I always preferred stocking to running the counter. Especially the anti-freeze, oil and batteries!

    1. Parts Guy

      Move battery…or talk to customer. Give me the battery any day of the week. Some of the customers make me envy the deaf.

  10. tom campanelli

    I remember going to work at the parts store as a teen in the late 60s. One hot humid New Jersey August day, I get to work to find a 50 ft tractor trailer in the street alongside the store. I quickly found out that it was filled with cases of antifreeze. The only way to get a great price was to buy a truckload. With no forklift we slid the cases on rollers from the truck into the building and then stacked them about 12 ft high all over the store room. 4 of us worked all day to unload that beast. When I got home my mom thought I had gone swimming with my clothes on.

  11. fast Ed

    Fortunately we only get shipments of 25 batteries at a time (usually that’s what we order) at the dealership where I am … so putting away that many regular automotive batteries at once isn’t too much of a back-breaker.

  12. Schtauffer

    Try carrying a battery fifteen feet up a ladder, then doing about sixty curls with it while standing on said ladder. Then do it over and over. That is what it’s like to install garage doors. Not much sympathy here, Mr. Parts Guy.

  13. tigeraid

    I assume/hope you were using a battery carrier to move the batteries without handles?

    We had a severe, severe, Province-wide shortage of batteries this past January, thanks to the cold snap. Nothing worse than being completely out of 65-series Ford batteries, all the new GM 48s and 90s, and Honda 51s. I swear every single Ford Escape on the planet failed to start that one morning.

    We have our own corporate inventory system, but I suspect it’s a ripoff of JIT anyway. Inventory control is there for a reason; that little mom-n-pop store might have “everything you ever need” (they usually don’t, despite what you think), but they also have ten of everything no one will ever need, ever. And it takes up space, and eats up inventory cost, and collects dust and goes nowhere. The JIT method is sound.

    Besides, as long as you get to me before 10:30 AM, I can have anything you could ever want from my warehouse on a day run delivery, AND I can buy from any other jobber in the city if I have to.

    1. Parts Guy

      Absolutely. My luck is every 98-04 Chrysler LX in a four-county radius showed up with a dying battery and I had the joy of telling the customer that I wasn’t going to do an archaeological dig to find their freakin’ battery.

    2. Mrocketscience

      Battery carriers? Handles? This was 1973. None of those things existed where I was. You tilt the battery up and slide your fingers under it and lift.

  14. Doc

    Oh batteries are NOT fun. Thankfully where I work the battery guy comes once a week with the new batteries and places them on the rack. We do help him with the huge bunch of cores, those old, messy, sometimes leaking batteries… I only went thru one pair of pants because of leaking batteries this year, a girl I work with just burned thru her 2nd pair this week. I use my battery carrier everytime a battery doesn’t have a carrying handle.

    Those big deep discharge RV batteries are pretty fun too.

    A few weeks ago I went to deliver a set of brakes for a heavy duty truck and carried the disk separatly inside and the guy looked at me like I was a wuss… until he tried to show me how things are done by picking both at the same time… he didn’t go far 😉

  15. tigeraid

    That’s one of the questions customers ask me most often that I have NO answer to: why does any battery, EVER, come with no handles? There’s only a few series left that don’t, and of course some of them are the biggest. It’s mystifying to me.

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