Auto Parts Distribution
You stock 40,000 SKUs.You're still losing the sale to delivery speed.
The shop calls, needs a water pump for an '18 Altima, and your competitor gets it there seven minutes faster. Inventory breadth doesn't win anymore. Delivery speed does. But your branches run their own stock, their own routes, their own returns pile. We embed with your team, map every branch from purchasing to last-mile delivery, and deploy AI specialists that turn your distribution network into an actual network.
The Problem
Where the money
is going.
Cost
Inventory Breadth vs. Carrying Cost
You need 40,000+ SKUs to be the one-call shop. But 30% of those SKUs moved fewer than five units last year, and they're sitting on shelves across every branch. Meanwhile, your fast-movers stock out at 2 PM on a Tuesday because the reorder point was set in 2021. One branch sits on $18K in obsolete brake drums while the branch across town expedites the same caliper it had in overstock last month.
Process
Delivery Speed & Route Efficiency
Repair shops choose their supplier based on who gets the part on the lift fastest. Your drivers run planned routes, but hot-shot deliveries blow them up by 10 AM. One emergency run reshuffles the whole afternoon. Drivers know the shortcuts, but the routing system doesn't. You're running 30% more miles than you need to because nobody's optimizing across planned and hot-shot runs together.
Process
Returns & Core Processing
Core returns, warranty claims, wrong-part returns. They pile up at the counter, clog the back room, and delay credits for weeks. Your counter staff spends 20 minutes per return verifying part numbers, checking warranty eligibility, and arguing with the shop about whether the core is rebuildable. Multiply that across every branch, every day. The labor cost of returns processing is invisible because nobody tracks it.
Knowledge
Counter Staff Product Knowledge
Your best counter person knows that the '14 to '18 Silverado 1500 front hub assembly crosses three part numbers depending on whether it's 4WD with the RPO code Z71 package. Your newest hire doesn't. They call the wrong part, the driver runs it out, the shop sends it back, and you eat the delivery twice. Product knowledge lives in people's heads, not in a system anyone else can use.
How We Work
Three steps. Hands on.
We embed with your team, map your operation, find what no one could see, and deploy specialists that fix it. You get a dedicated team, not a login.
Map
We start with a structured discovery across every branch. Our team interviews branch managers, counter sales staff, delivery drivers, warehouse pickers, outside sales reps, and purchasing managers. We connect to your inventory and catalog systems, POS, delivery routing, and CRM. The result is your Blueprint: a complete, live map of how your distribution operation actually works, from purchasing and warehousing to counter sales and last-mile delivery.
Uncover
We analyze everything we mapped. Our platform finds the SKUs bleeding carrying cost with no turns, the delivery routes burning an extra hour per day, the returns bottleneck costing you 11 labor hours a week per branch. We validate every finding with your team before acting on it. Not a one-time audit. Always running, always finding more.
Execute
Every finding comes with a concrete plan and a deploy button. We build AI specialists that handle the fix end to end. Rebalance slow-mover inventory across branches, merge hot-shot and planned routes in real time, automate returns eligibility checks at the counter, surface cross-reference gaps before the wrong part goes out the door. You approve, they run. We stay with you to make sure they deliver.
Example Findings
What Yield typically finds.
Based on a typical mid-market company with $20M–$50M in annual revenue.
Cost
Dead Stock & Slow-Mover Carrying Cost
$203K/yr
Cost
Delivery Route Inefficiency
$68K/yr
Process
Returns Processing Labor
9 hrs/wk
Cost
Wrong-Part Deliveries & Redelivery Cost
$48K/yr
Knowledge
Undocumented Cross-Reference Knowledge
9 counter staff
In Practice
See it work.
From day one.
Week 1
Discovery
We talk to every branch.
AI-led conversations with every branch manager, counter person, driver, picker, and outside rep. Not surveys. Real conversations that capture the catalog workarounds, the delivery shortcuts, the inventory gut-calls, and the returns headaches no system records.
Month 1
Blueprint + First Savings
Your Blueprint is live. Agents are saving money.
A complete, verified map of how each branch operates, from purchasing and receiving through warehousing, counter sales, and delivery. The first cross-branch inventory opportunities are identified. AI specialists are already flagging dead stock, optimizing routes, and catching wrong-part lookups before they leave the counter.
Ongoing
Continuous Returns
Savings compound. Every quarter.
Yield keeps finding inefficiencies, deploying specialists, and compounding savings. Inventory rebalancing gets sharper as demand patterns shift with vehicle population changes. Routing adapts as new shops come on and delivery zones evolve. The platform pays for itself and keeps going.
FAQ
Common questions.
Our hot-shot delivery runs are killing us on fuel and driver overtime but we can't say no to the shop or they call the competitor — how do you handle that tradeoff?
During discovery we map every delivery run — planned routes, hot-shot dispatches, driver sequences, and the specific shops triggering emergency calls. The specialist merges hot-shot and planned routes in real time so an emergency run gets folded into the nearest driver's existing sequence instead of launching a dedicated trip. It also identifies shops that generate repeat hot-shots for the same SKUs and recommends pre-positioning those parts at the nearest branch. Your fill rate stays high. Your cost per delivery drops because you're running fewer standalone emergency runs.
We have slow-moving SKUs sitting at one branch for months while another branch expedites the same part from the warehouse — can you rebalance inventory across 20-plus locations without creating chaos?
We connect to your inventory and catalog systems — WHI, PartsEdge, or whatever you run — and build a specialist that monitors turns, on-hand quantities, and demand signals at every branch daily. When a part has sat untouched at one location for 60 days while another branch ordered it twice from the warehouse last month, the specialist flags the transfer opportunity with a cost comparison: the internal transfer cost versus the warehouse expedite price. Your purchasing team approves the transfers in batches. No branch loses a part they're about to need because the specialist checks local demand forecasts before recommending any move.
Our best counter staff carry decades of cross-reference knowledge in their heads and we lose it every time someone retires — can you actually capture that tribal knowledge?
We interview every counter person at every branch during discovery, specifically focused on the cross-reference shortcuts, fitment exceptions, and vehicle-specific gotchas they've learned over years. The specialist encodes that knowledge — like knowing that the '14 to '18 Silverado hub assembly crosses three part numbers depending on the RPO code — and surfaces it to every counter terminal when a lookup matches those conditions. When your veteran counter person retires, their knowledge doesn't walk out the door. It's already running across every branch.
We upgraded our electronic catalog and parts lookup system two years ago and wrong-part delivery rates barely changed — what was the root cause there and what would you do differently?
Catalog upgrades improve the data available to counter staff but don't change how they use it. Wrong-part deliveries usually happen because the counter person skips the VIN decode, relies on year-make-model alone, or doesn't check the vehicle-specific option codes that determine which part number actually fits. The specialist monitors lookup behavior at the counter — whether the VIN was entered, whether the fitment filter was applied, whether the selected part matches the vehicle's build data. It catches the mismatch before the driver leaves the branch, not after the shop calls back to complain. The root cause is workflow, not catalog quality.
Explore
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Regulated Industries
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See what Yield finds in
your branches.
30 days. Real results. Or walk away.