Earlier this week i priced a water pump for my skid steer online, it was from $75 to $104. Komatsu place in birmingham had one in stock for $835, same part. Today i went to blount county tractor, kubota place to get some wheel studs and nuts, 7 studs and 6 nuts cost me $235. I googled the studs, advance auto parts has them for $1.68 each.

I refuse to buy dealer parts on equipment. I buy after market and fix it myself and save thousands a year.

Yeah but the online store doesn’t have any were near the overhead a dealer/ brick and mortar store has.

Nope

#metoo but i was in a fix this evening. At 3:30 i had a tractor with a wheel fell off in the field. I have to use it tomorrow. It had to get fixed this evening. I didnt know about the ones at the part store till it was over.

But 10x as much is pretty excessive, wouldnt you say?

Very excessive. Maybe Kubota genuine parts vs aftermarket?

Are they gold plating studs and nuts now at Kubota?

I try to buy local, but I ain't gonna be stupid about it. If I know they are high, I give them a chance to meet or get close before I order, unless it's an emergency to get the equipment running again.

I understand brick&mortar overhead. I also know for a fact that I can walk into a dealer within 50 miles of me and buy a $200 part, or I can go into their online store and buy the same part for $80 and get it in 2 days.

Their response? Well, the internet sales group is under a different group, and they have different markups.

If the online prices weren't so good, I'd tell the whole location to get bent.

yeah but whats the Temu price.

They usually aren't the same product, different warranty usually too. Sometimes it's fine but sometimes you will wish you had the $800 fuel pump. $800 ain't a drop in the bucket that downtime costs a contractor.

Not to hijack. But prices are plucked up across the board. Groceries. Gas. Parts. Lazy people that will not work. $20 dollar min wage. Uber eats. Ordering groceries. I’m guilty.
I piss more money away on BS.

Usually it’s not the same like mentioned
Sometimes it might meet spec but many times not.

Like it may be made from steel but that doesn’t make it the same quality as steel quality can vary. It’s not just steel either.

Here’s another thing that actually grinds my gears

Don’t go to Mom & Pop and ask for donations for your kids sports teams if you don’t support mom and pop. That used to fly all over me when I had a store front. It seems I spent as much time talking to folks wanting a handout than actual customers.

For years John Deere and IHC made parts from there own specifications. NO AFTERMARKET AVAILABILITY. Now more independent companies are making replacement parts at 1/4 the price

Yeah, I just replaced the seat on my John Deere tractor. From JD it was $1550.00. From Amazon it was $120. I can replace it a lot of times for $1550!!

Some things are well worth the dealer OEM part. Like motor mounts, fuel pumps, master cylinders....because they last. When I was a mechanic, we quit buying parts from AutoZone, O'Reilly's and the cheap places because their stuff was bad out of the box or it would die within a year or two. Buy OEM on important stuff and then you don't have to gamble with breakdown redos.

I get the OEM part number then search online for the OEM part off eBay or Amazon. Be careful, you gotta pay attention or will get knockoffs.

CAT is out of stock and been out for a couple years on a lot of parts and has a long wait time. Backorder is a big problem with cat right now. To the point we're having to buy Komatsu equipment instead. The CAT dozers we run are 500k but we can buy two Komatsu for the price of one CAT. CAT feels like Cadillac compared to everything else. Performance is 2nd to none.

I gave the guy at Komatsu the part # i had got online. I assume itwas the same part