August 16, 2023
A budget is a financial plan based upon your business goals, which forecasts profit and loss within each area of your company to define your net income for the year. Developing a sound budget is all about quantifying your business model for the next 12 months. What are the elements that drive your business and…
June 1, 2023
ow that the winter is behind us, dealers are reflecting on how things went financially and how to shift gears for the remainder of the year to get back on track with their annual profit targets. If you were like most full-service dealers, you experienced a mix of ups and downs over the course of…
March 31, 2023
If you’re reading this and the sun is still rising every day, it’s likely a great time to improve your profitability in your Service (and Installation) department. In the past, the Service department had traditionally been a loss leader for most dealers and, therefore, represented one of the biggest and quickest opportunities for a dealer…
December 20, 2022
As we approach the end of 2022, we have done some reflection on the top issues that dealers have faced this year. Above all, cash flow has been the issue that we have heard the most often, among the many challenges that dealers faced this year. In this article, we cover a few tips to…
August 29, 2022
There is a scene that is attributed to Law School professors dating back to the 1930’s, telling students to “look to your left and then look to your right. By the end of this year, one of the two will no longer be in Law School”. In other words, if you don’t put in all…
August 9, 2022
Fuel dealers have been facing some unprecedented conditions this summer which have a real potential to strain cash availability during the 2022-23 heating season should they persist. The primary factors impacting the industry of late include: Historically high commodity costs Basis blowout Rising tank & equipment costs Supply chain issues (difficulty building equipment inventory) Slowing…
April 14, 2020
The world has changed and it will never be the same. We will be facing more uncertainty over the next few years than ever in our lifetime. The COVID-19 pandemic is not only a health crisis of gigantic proportion—it’s also an imminent restructuring of the global economic order. We are in an essential industry, selling…
March 27, 2020
In recent weeks, fuel dealers had been lamenting the impact on earnings from an unusually placid winter stretch, with hopes buoyed in some respect by very favorable commodity prices. But seemingly overnight, the COVID-19 scourge which was critically impacting other parts of the world suddenly became very real. Now a pandemic, the virus impact has…
March 16, 2020
As uncertainty surrounding the myriad of potential impacts as the result of COVID-19 keeps growing, politicians, regulators, medical professionals, clerical leaders, and economists face the ever-daunting task of answering some of the unanswerable questions: How many will be infected? Can we truly segment those who are at greater risk? Will the expected mortality rate fall?…
August 14, 2019
Have you ever gotten in your car and decided to just drive to a destination without a plan on how to get there? What streets would you take? Would you need to stop for gas? Would you need your GPS? These are just a few of the many items that you would need to consider…