Port Strike Parts Impact, 672 Flooded Kias, Q3 Sales Growth Slows, Ford’s Power Promise

Paul J Daly: 0:04

Oh, my volume slider was down. Get it ready to go. It's Wednesday, October 2. I don't know if today's pumpkin spice there. Yesterday wasn't launched it forever ago. But today we're following up on the porch strike the flood sales growth Ford's power promise and whoever else happens to chime into the comments. The

Kyle Mountsier: 0:22

comments were, have been hot fire this week, so we need to keep that running. I think feel

Paul J Daly: 0:28

like I feel like that. That definitely adds a little bit to little pep to my step when I see people asking questions without a doubt. And I think we're still working on this. But there was somebody on the stream yesterday, Nathan, what was the name on YouTube? Do you remember Nathan's our producer, and he's backstage right now. And

Kyle Mountsier: 0:45

he told, find it. Well, fine,

Paul J Daly: 0:47

but he's a pilot. And he said, Go ahead, Nathan. Were you leaning in? No, I'll wait till Nathan. Just pop on when he's ready. Yeah, but he was a pilot, saying, I can help fly supplies into her happy pilots, or something of that. Yeah. And I, and I have someone, a friend, who reached out saying, Hey, do you have any pilots? And so I connected with that friend. He's like, yep, we still need to hook us up. But that person never emailed. They said they did, or maybe the email got wrong. We checked our spams. We didn't see it. Tamborino on YouTube, T, A, M, B, E, I feel

Kyle Mountsier: 1:17

like I've seen that somewhere. I have across the across the I know the waves. If you know someone that uses call sign tambarino, you should let us know. I just

Paul J Daly: 1:28

feel like that's like the person they call in to the hippie band, right? All right, little tambourino in the corner. All right. Now that we're done making fun

Kyle Mountsier: 1:42

of your. Back to the fact that you intro the whole thing and you said, pumpkin spice.

Unknown: 1:48

It's not even in the stories today. As so sad about I just saw it, and I was like, I don't know what's Today, October 2. I don't know. What else can we celebrate on October 2? Oh, I know what. Let's get in trouble. There was a vice presidential debate last night. Oh yeah,

Paul J Daly: 2:01

there was okay, presidential debate where there was zero name calling. I was like, something's up. It was, it was a really nice, civil debate. I was like, Oh, this can still exist,

Kyle Mountsier: 2:12

man, really

Paul J Daly: 2:14

nice. Yeah, I know, I know. We were like, oh, let's, let's watch for a few minutes to just see you know, good. I'm proud of you. And then, like, we're in it, and we're like, this is actually a debate, like we're talking about facts well thing and using rhetoric and logic to have a conversation. I was like, oh, okay, maybe, you know, I don't know, so I think that's worth celebrating. I

Kyle Mountsier: 2:35

could say more things about that, but no, no, don't say anything else. Risk of getting in trouble or, you know, whatever it may we're gonna keep going. You're

Paul J Daly: 2:42

not say anything else. The auto industry did come up in the debate once around EVs, but it was relatively benign, or I would have remembered it. So, yeah, I was kind of listening for the auto industry stuff. Speaking of auto industry stuff, we do have a webinar coming up on Friday. Just go to our website. Scroll down. Quick shot. That's all we're going to say about it. But you should be there because they're a lot of fun. You're going to learn a little something about your marketing and your operations, actually working together, and what that does for your business, which is a lot of good things. All right, we said we're going to update the strike and the hurricane every day this week, if there's something to update, and there is. So the dockworker strike at the all the East Coast Gulf ports is entering day two with no resolution. They they're they mean business. Let me just tell you that European automakers, however, are might face the brunt of the disruption threatening to cripple supply chains, because the European ones, it's like all east coast. It's the only place to get things shipped to and from. Uh, affected ports are handling 34% of US motor vehicle and parts trade worth $135 billion a year. There's a professor, Jason Miller on LinkedIn. He posted a list of the most affected goods by this. Number one is furniture and parts for furniture. Number two, parts and accessories for motor vehicles. Whoa. Number three, bananas.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:02

Bananas. No, not the bananas. The Minions are upset.

Paul J Daly: 4:06

But no, this is, you know, rubber is actually, like five or six down on the list. So I mean, major disruption in the auto industry. Number two on the list. So obviously, the longer this goes on, I've seen some people say that if it goes if it lasts less than two weeks, it'll just be a blip. But once you start going past there's like a knock on effect that start to affect a lot of other things.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:31

So yeah, and if you don't know about like, the main intent of this dockworkers strike is it's not so much held up around pay increase. They've kind of got that figured out. It's much more around automation. And so I didn't know that it's a really it's a really interesting topic, that it's not just like all hung up on pay, it's actually on a commitment to not introduce automation into the docs. So like praying. And power units and things like that. So it's, it's a lot more of a theoretical type thing. So I'm, wow, that's a lot harder to negotiate, harder to negotiate, for sure. So we'll see how that

Paul J Daly: 5:13

economics and dynamics, and you're like, you have to automate everything you can if you're going to stay competitive. There you go. Whoa. Okay, well, that got more complicated, got him. So let's, let's give an update on the hurricane Helene, while dealerships are still trying to figure out, like, what the actual impact and effects the industry is, like, how many far, you know? How many cars do we lose? You know, what facilities are going to be down kenley's Florida Kia dealership. This is Florida, right? You're not, we're not talking North Carolina or Georgia, where, like, we're seeing a lot of this flooding. But just this Florida dealership, they reported a loss of 672 vehicles, including 12 customer cars, being totaled right out of the gate due to flooding. That's just one store estimated launches, uh, losses are 28, to 30 million, with 303 point 5 million in deductibles. That's just one place. They did reopen two days after the storm, despite the severe damage, because that is the spirit of the auto dealer, right? And Ken said Kia was incredible. Throughout this they immediately had cars available for us. Believe it or not, we sold two new Kia yesterday. That's amazing. That is the spirit right there. Get after like now I'm just ready to run through a wall. Forget the rest of that. You can handle anything you gotta you can do that. You're in power, you don't have water damage, you're ready to rock again. We'll continue to keep updated on what the impacts of these are. Fortunately, we haven't heard from all of our sources. Haven't heard anything of any like significant injuries or deaths in the auto industry or amongst industry employees. I mean, obviously a lot of personal losses, though, in property, you know, people's homes and things like that. So again, we're here to help. If you know of anyone that needs help or something that needs some attention on it, to get some help, please reach out crew, C, R, E, W, at asotu, com, and we'll do our very best to help move whatever we can forward. That's right, speaking of moving forward or backward as we're moving forward as the third quarter ends us, auto sales growth has slowed to an estimated 3.8 8 million union units just point 2% of a year over year, decline way below expectations, signaling a lot of caution in the market. So basically, inflation and higher costs are making consumers more cautious, pushing demand towards smaller, budget friendly vehicles like subcompacts, SUVs, subcompact pickups. GM is expected to retain the top spot in sales, though it will see a 3% decline, while Toyota and Ford are close behind. Interest rates for loans remain high, with rates nearing 9.61% for new vehicles and nearly 14% for used keeping buyers on the sidelines. Here's Chris Hopson from S and P Global Mobility says consumers in the market continue to be pressured by these high interest rates,

Kyle Mountsier: 7:58

and I you know it's just going to continue to be this story for probably another six to nine months, and we're not really going to know what the real demand is out there until we have pricing and interest rate parity in the market. There's just going to continue to be sidelined buyers, right? I think that being intelligent about your stocking strategy and being intelligent about your payment communication strategy, especially up front in the sales process, is extremely important right now to make sure that you can move a customer through the process, because they're hearing all of these mixed things in the Market, interest rates, there's the political conversations around the economy going on, and so your level of communication about payments, interest rates, how that impacts what type of cars you have available for different market segments is like the way to overcome this in the short term, until we get parity again? Yep,

Paul J Daly: 8:57

absolutely. So look, I mean, this is the ups and downs of this year. I do think this is not quite more of the same, but I think dealers take this news with saying, like, Okay, this is what the this is what the defense is lining up on this play. We're going to snap the ball and we're going to go for it, right? Just how we go. So again, paying attention, but leaning in, because that's what we do, speaking of paying attention, segway,

Kyle Mountsier: 9:24

I like this one. This is a good promotion, man. Well, first of all, I should have told Nathan beforehand, and maybe he can go run to Instagram and find the Jim Farley photo of him in a garage with talking about this, because it's amazing.

Paul J Daly: 9:39

What is it on? Is it on Ford's Instagram or

Kyle Mountsier: 9:42

Jim Farley's Instagram? Jim Farley's Instagram? You go find Jim Farley's Instagram. Let's see if we can pull it up while I read this story. But starting October 1, that was yesterday, Ford is offering free home chargers and installation of electric vehicle to electric vehicle buyers through its new Ford power Promise Program. Amy. To remove the barriers to or for potential EV customers, the program includes free installation of the Ford charge station Pro, a level two home charger, and they're hoping that it'll ease a lot of concerns around charging infrastructure, boosting some EV sales for especially for like the Mustang Mach E, buyers who opt out of the charger program can even receive $2,000 toward their EV purchaser lease. So they kind of like balance that on a rebate. The program also highlights Ford's robust battery warranty covering EV's high voltage system and battery for 100,000 miles or eight years. So they're going the Kia play Marion Jaja COO of Ford's model e EV business, said, the way we

Paul J Daly: 10:44

there he is, oh, we got,

Kyle Mountsier: 10:46

oh, there he is. He just standing in this little, like made up garage. He's got the little charter, and somebody's got that set up in their garage. Got that little smile. My favorite part of this, my favorite part of this, just so everybody knows, is the fact that he has a GTO shirt on, which is, like the antithesis of,

Paul J Daly: 11:07

it's the weirdest thing

Kyle Mountsier: 11:10

of any sort of gas love, right? Like, it's just, there's just no GTD,

Paul J Daly: 11:17

it's the Mustang. I was like, GTO. GT still a Mustang. GTD,

Kyle Mountsier: 11:21

okay, okay, okay, yeah. Like, GTO, I was like, that's a Pontiac. Okay, yeah. Well, I mean, shoot, you never know this car guy. GTD, got it guys, but still it's just, I think it's so good. But either way, like, I think manufacturers are starting to figure out, hey, we got to figure out how to get people into this and remove the barrier of all the ancillary things that they have to think about, that's right.

Paul J Daly: 11:43

So, yeah, no, I mean, it's, this is a beautiful thing. I mean, it's just a big barrier. And dealers that we've talked to and we've been on site, figuring out, how am I going to charge at home is a big point of unknown. People have never had a charger. There's questions like, oh, do I have to have something installed whenever you I mean, shoot these days, whenever you need something installed in your house, right? You need a contractor and all that. That's, that's its whole that's its own thing. So if you can solve that at the dealership level, and I know a lot of partnerships are, are coming into play, where the dealership has solved that, including it in the financing, to my, in my, you know, my thinking, that's, it's like the only way to make it easier. So good. Good for Ford to doing this. It makes sense. It is timely. And Jim Farley's just hanging out in this garage ready to plug in, hanging

Kyle Mountsier: 12:27

out, by the way, by the way, the GTD is a 5.8 liter VH street legal supercar. So you know, charger GTD just throwing that out there, irony.

Paul J Daly: 12:44

Oh, the irony of a Wednesday. Look, there's no irony in the fact that you're gonna go out, you're gonna serve some people, you're gonna sell some cars. You're gonna make this country better, regardless of politics, because you're in the auto business. I

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