Are You a Retailer or a Wholesaler? The Habit Costing You $3,000 a Trade

Well, the first thing I, the first thing I think that we should probably drop in there is Manheim Index fell another 1.2%.

Oof.

In the first half, in the first half of August, and is now flat year over year after a hot spring.

So used truck prices rose almost 400 last month while SUVs slid around 130, and with the roughly 300,000 leased EVs hitting the used car market this year, and that was up from 100,000 last year.

So you got a lot of inventory that is, uh, making the wholesale market, uh, move, right? And so I bring that up only to get you, get you fired up because I know-

[laughs]

I know one of your, I know one of your pet peeves, and I, and, and let me say, by the way, I happen to agree with it, right? Are we in the retail business or are we in the wholesale business?

Mm.

Mm.

[laughs] So, so let me ask you this, Chris.

How much, how much do we want to...

Uh, 'cause it, I...

You know, here, look, earlier this w- or was it the end of last week, I think?

It's all running together, John.

Yeah, I don't remember.

One of the, one of our PEs on our, on our internal channel dropped in, dropped in some information on, on wholesale, right? And, and so he dropped in a couple charts, week over week wholesale price changes.

And, and so, and then he highlighted some of the changes.

And so I asked a question.

I said, "John, just curious," I guess I just said who that was, but, "Just curious from your perspective, how does this affect what we do for our dealer partners?" Right? 'Cause I...

And, and I was just, I was, I was sincerely curious about his response because of what we always talk about, right? Should we be focused on that? How does it affect what we do, right? Because once you own the car...

Now, get...

Listen, I get it for sourcing.

From a sourcing aspect, I get it, right? But once we own the car, are we, are we, are we truly looking at what the wholesale value is, or are we trying to retail the car? So what's your feelings on all that, Chris?

So here's my feelings, back to what you said gets me fired up, okay? Are we in the wholesale business or are we in the retail business?

[laughs]