Heavy Duty Trucking, July 2018

ness development for Vipar Heavy Duty says The heavy duty aftermarket is behind when it comes to e commerce but we are seeing a lot of momentum to move into it more aggressively In fact Vipar has seen a 50 improvement since the beginning of the year for online parts sales through its members e commerce platforms Aftermarket research firm MacKay Co found in a recent survey that fleets ordered 12 of their parts online John Blodgett vice president of sales and marketing reports that survey respondents also indicated they expect online parts purchases to increase to 15 of total purchases in the next three years See graph on opposite page Interestingly 31 of those parts were purchased through a heavy duty distributors website with Amazon seeing 14 of total online parts purchases from the surveyed fleets See graph on page 48 According to Bill Wade managing partner of consulting firm Wade Partners more than 6 million of heavy duty parts are bought online each year Dave Seewack founder and CEO of FinditParts an online truck parts marketplace says the company is seeing 100 sales growth year over year but declined to quote specific numbers Our customers are coming back and buying more frequently and more fleets seem to be getting comfortable with the process of buying online He explains that fleets initially used the site for hard tofind parts but today they are using it more frequently for more SKUs He says many fleets are purchasing consumables such as lights filters belts hoses etc Seewack attributes the growth to more millennials in the workforce who are more accustomed to buying online and to the convenience online buying offers And in fact MacKays research indicated that convenience was cited as a rationale for online parts purchases by 78 of survey respondents We have people that order from us every day or two Seewack says Basically they fill a cart and then every couple of days they process it and place their order I think the benefit is that they can get a trailer part or a tractor part across a variety of categories all from the same supplier Seewack admits that online parts sales will never replace the local distributor but is a good adjunct to distributor sales Mike Harris senior vice president of sales and branch operations at FleetPride o much of the news in the trucking industry lately is about the vehicle or the supply chain Will trucks be autonomous Will electric power replace internal combustion engines What will be the impact of blockchain on the delivery of goods What about last mile delivery Not being talked about as much is whats going on in parts distribution Yet there are a variety of significant factors at work that are changing or soon will change the face of truck parts distribution The continued growth of e commerce There is no denying the impact e commerce has had on all our lives We certainly have seen retail sales via e commerce as a percentage of GDP on a very healthy growth trajectory says Steve Tam vice president of market research and analysis firm ACT Research He explains that if you include food and services about 10 of all retail sales are made through e commerce Moving specifically to the trucking industry Jim Pennig vice president of busi DISTRI PARTS How e commerce consolidation new competition and technology and integration are changing the aftermarket By Denice Rondini Aftermarket Contributing Editor drondini@ truckinginfo com HDT JULY 2018 46 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM S SHIFTING PATTERNS OF