Updates
A dealer's brochure page named a brand its line lists did not
This week we built a sample line sheet for one equipment dealership, from its own public website only.
We counted a brand as a line it carries when any of these named it:
- its Product Lines pages
- its showroom menus, as a heading of its own
- its About page, as a line it is the dealer for or represents
Two things needed care. Some brands were written two ways on the same site; each became one row. And its brochure library had a page for a brand that its Product Lines pages and showroom menus did not list. So the sheet did not list that brand either. Instead it said which rule would apply if the dealer does carry it.
A line sheet names only the lines a website names, not every line a dealer may carry.
A repair closed 23 October can age out by 22 November
An Aspen Dealers article says most OEMs give dealers 30 to 60 days to file a claim after a repair. A claim submitted after that window closes is denied automatically, however valid the repair was.
Applied to a repair closed on 23 October 2026:
- under a 30-day window, the last day to file is 22 November 2026
- under a 60-day window, it is 22 December 2026
The article's range is a general statement. We have not checked each OEM's own policy, so the window that applies to your line is the one shown in your own OEM material.
Only 32 of 100 sampled machinery wholesalers sell and service OEM lines
Equipment dealer locators and dealer directories bar commercial use or copying, or need a login. So we drew a seeded sample of 100 from a public record instead: the SBA's PPP loan file, rows filed under NAICS 423810 or 423820, 1,396 entries after removing duplicates.
Each entry was read from its own website for 3 things:
- sells and services new equipment of at least one OEM line it names
- shows a service department
- shows a store in the United States
32 of the 100 passed all 3. Size was not one of the tests: by jobs reported on the loan file, 15 of the 32 fall in the 20 to 99 band, 12 below and 5 above.
Scaled to the whole file, that is about 447 dealers, with a 95% interval of 330 to 582. It is an estimate from 100 entries, not a count.