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estimated $500 per car in transport fees. To arrange transportation to the dealership, the group uses CentralDispatch. Nachbar and his team post the vehicles they need shipped and the price they're willing to pay; then, shipping companies contact the dealership with offers to transport the vehicles. Nachbar said CentralDispatch has a rating system similar to eBay, so he can research a company before contracting it. "We do our due diligence on trans- port companies to make sure we use the most dependable and reputable ones that are available," he said. He estimated he saves a couple hundred per car using the service. "We price the cars at a fair rate, and because we're not paying a middle broker – we're dealing directly with the transport companies themselves – we're saving that expense." Another way he's stocking the lots is with trade-ins. "We're keeping a lot of [trade-ins] that we used to wholesale. We're having to make it work." He said the stores now keep 60 to 70 percent of trades, most of which have fewer than 100,000 miles. More recently, he's been considering his service drive as a place to acquire inventory. He posed the questions: "How can we figure out if cars coming into our service lane are ones we are in need of on our used car lot, and how can we present competitive bids to those consumers in a professional, businesslike manner, and then relate to them what kind of deals we have for them on our new cars or even a newer- model used car?" He'd like to set this process in motion but said the biggest issue is "man- power." He feels like this task requires someone who is knowledgeable about the service department and "can put a quality appraisal together in a timely manner that will turn that customer into a sale or purchase." He said, "We're in the process of discussing how we would do it, and the biggest key right now is personnel." Ready to Turn on a Dime Brad Dumdie, the owner/operator of Autoland Inc., consisting of three locations in Sioux Falls, S.D., does 90 percent of the used-vehicle buying for the dealerships on online auctions, and he expressed the importance of always staying nimble. He said, "It's like the stock market. It can turn – what's selling and what's not – on a dime." And it's no eight-to-five, Monday-through-Friday job. "I drive my wife nuts because sometimes I'll be on the computer until two in the morning looking at the prices." He's been buying online for over 10 years now, and he recalled the one reliable auction he purchased from when he first started. "I was using a GM Manheim auc- tion out of Florida. That was the only dependable one that had condition reports." Now, some- times he buys from dif- ferent auctions simultaneously, and there are several auctions he regularly purchases from (mostly Manheim). He said, "The reason we use Manheim auctions the most is because they have a 30 better grading and scoring system." He explained that vehicles are given a score of up to 5.0. Dumdie doesn't typically buy anything under a 2.9, and if he's considering something with a lower score, he "really scrutinizes the condition report." He added, "When you're buying some- thing that's a 4.0 to 5.0, you're pretty safe other than checking the [tires]." Over the years, he's become accus- tomed to how the different auctions score vehicles. "With the auctions we use, we're kind of used to which ones are tougher on the condition reports." When he's buying at auctions that grade tougher, he's more willing to buy cars with lower scores because he knows a vehicle with a score of 3.5 might be considered a 4.0 elsewhere. In total, he buys about 80 cars a month and prepares for sales on a daily basis, which is a time-consuming process. "I would spend the whole night prior looking at condition reports, making my notes, checking CARFAXes, looking at everything from damage to tires to histories, and get myself prepared." He recently started using the Auction Ge- nius tool to help simplify the research and acquisition process and said it has been a very valuable tool. "It's shaved hours off of my buying process." As for online buying, Dumdie said, "I think it's the future. Why wouldn't it be?" He said if dealers can do the necessary research to buy vehicles in- telligently, why wouldn't they just buy online? One of the benefits to buying online, he said, is having access to more information. "There's just a lot more knowledge at your fingertips … I want to know what the CARFAX is … I need to know if it's had an accident and how many owners it's had," he explained. "CARFAX has become such a huge deal for consumers … You actually have to have so much more information because the consumer has so much more information." When researching cars online, he makes sure to check the tire tread on every vehicle. Autoland spends $400 to $500 a car on recon, and the average is kept low, in part, because Dumdie tries