The aftermarket e-commerce impact on truck service

The battle to find truck parts has never been greater. Supply chain shortages and trucks that have grown long in the tooth have increased the truck service stakes. Uptime is paramount, but how do you keep your trucks on the road when you can’t get the right part to the right place at the right time.

Enter e-commerce, which has been altering the shape of the heavy-duty aftermarket for the past several years. What used to require a phone call to your parts supplier is now available at the click of the mouse-availability and pricing are just a few of the e-commerce truck parts buying benefits, but, in many ways, this is still the early days of trucking aftermarket parts e-commerce.

To get a sense for where it’s going, I connected with Mike Harris, senior vice president, sales and operations, FleetPride, which has been on tear of acquisitions to beef up its parts availability and storefronts, but also its aftermarket service network. It has also invested heavily in its e-commerce platform. Watch the video above for all the truck aftermarket service insight from Harris.

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The headline is a question that's on a TMC taskforce docket, and one that Al Anderson, vice president of sales and marketing at Peterson Mfg. Co., has a keen interest in.

"We haven't finished the recommended practice yet, but we're trending towards some percentage of LEDs being out before it's not legal anymore, which therefore [means] it's not safe anymore," he said, standing inside the Peterson Mfg. Co. show trailer at this year's TMC show held in New Orleans. "Keeping trailer lights lit is vital to uptime because you're not going to get a violation, you're not going to get an infraction, you're not going to be put out of service by CVSA. It is just very critical to keep everything illuminated like it should."