Transportation costs?

[jima1153]

I assume BRP averages their transpo costs and charges every dealer the same delivered price. That way the FL, CA,TX, etc dealers do not have a disadvantage over Northern states. Do other manufacturers do that also? (Honda, HD, Suzuki and so on). Just wondering.

 

[woodz428]

I know at the dealerships I worked ( all the jap, spanish/Italian and a British,very long ago). The dealer pays a delivered cost. I have been away from the dealers for about 10 years,but that allowed them to trade amongst themselves for bikes they needed with ones that another dealer needed. When you order at the beginning of the year you were allowed a certain number of bike choices in the pecking order of how many you had sold the year before. I know we used to get a bunch of dirtbikes that we could trade to other dealers that wanted them and had an overage of Sportbikes for instance. It's hard to predict the consumers interest in advance. I can recall when Honda introduced their new swoopy Magna, I think about '88,they couldn't give them away. Many wound up back in the factory warehouse. Honda dropped the model for a year or so and when they re-introduced with an even more cartoonish look, they couldn't get enough of them. All those earlier ones that had sat in the warehouse were now in high demand.
Things may be somewhat different now, but most mfg.'s have distribution warehouses that bikes are routed through and that helps to keep cost equal. Now that was only only in 49 states, Ca. had their own EPA requirements and I am sure those bikes were a little more costly. We needed an Intruder 1400 one year and the only ones left were Ca. models, but we didn't charge any more, so Suzuki likely subsidized any difference...I know the shop owner didn't