05-14-2009, 02:39 PM
Josh, one thing to consider is what will $1500.00 buy, and can you sell $1500.00 worth of stuff in a reasonable amount of time with a decent profit? You may not be able to make a decent hourly wage, but you have to make enough to pay for the product and support your lifestyle. You might find yourself selling all of your stuff, buying 1500.00 worth of product that you can't sell in a timely manner. Before I retired, the parts manager at the Carrier-Transicold dealership I worked for figured that he needed to turn his entire parts inventory 3-4 times a year. The problem for a while was that you can't turn every single part that often, but some may turn 5 or even 6 times a year. He would want to discontinue any parts that didn't turn the requisite 3-4 times per year. Then when a customer brought in a trailer loaded with ice cream that needed one of those parts that he didn't want to stock, we had to cannibalize a new unit to get the part, or if the trailer was not loaded, we had to air freight the parts in to get the customer's unit running. We generally had a $30,000.00 per month air freight bill, and if the unit was under warranty, the dealership had to eat the air freight bill! The point of all of this rambling is presuming a 20% markup, can you sell $5400.00 gross each year, or can you sell $1800.00 in 3 months? If you can't do that sort of product sales, you probably can't afford to buy Walthers' minimum.