Dirty cars at my local Carmax

[svtrit]

When I traded my Routan in, I did a quick detail on it. Since I keep my cars very clean, the quick detail made it perfect. I brought that up when they shot me a stupid price, telling them they didn’t have to do any cleaning inside and could basically drive it to a spot in the lot and sell it as is.

They gave me $300 more for that, which hit my floor trade in price.

 

[KrisZ]

Most likely the ex Uber Lift of food delivery service.

People still cannot adjust to that reality. Most cars in there were not used for personal commuting, but were used as a business tool.

 

[zzyzzx]

Doesn't seem to negatively affect their profitability:

CarMax Tops Expectations on Cost Cuts, Solid Profit Per Car

(Bloomberg) -- CarMax Inc.’s third-quarter results exceeded Wall Street expectations on strong profit per vehicle and cost cuts, as it resumed a stock buyback program. Its stock rose by double digits in early trading. Most Read from BloombergVilified Zero-Day Options Blamed by Traders for S&P...

finance.yahoo.com

 

[supton]

Not surprised. One of the newer youtube channels was bemoaning this a while ago (whatever it is with the kid and his dad Ray is). Thing is... the cars are still selling. So why should a dealer do anything more than necessary? It's not free to detail, and as we have bemoaned about here, it's hard to get help that is willing to do menial work, right? So if a dealership doesn't have to detail and PDR and touchup rock chips... why bother?

 

[wag123]

Dirty/undetailed vehicles are an everyday problem for all large used vehicle operations. The shear volume of product that flows through these stores makes it physically impossible for their limited detailing staff to keep up with as it can take an entire day for a good/experienced detailer to do just one vehicle, so, they really only have time to detail the worst vehicles. In the mean time, they need to sell the vehicles as quickly as possible (turning over vehicles very quickly is the hallmark of any successful used vehicle operation), so they simply wash them (and some of them even get vacuumed) and put them out on the lot. An average CarMax dealership sells 420 vehicles a month which means that they would have to detail at least 20 vehicles a day to keep up with the volume, and this would require a detailing staff of at least 25 experienced individuals along with the space and supplies to accommodate them, which is unrealistic. Furthermore, after a vehicle has been detailed it needs to spend at least 24 hours in a dry heated/air conditioned space and left open to dry out, otherwise it will get moldy inside when it is left closed-up.