VCCA Home Forums GENERAL DISCUSSION General Discussions Some dealership parts operation history.

I will begin starting in 1950. At that time the dealer could return 2% of the yearly parts purchases. You would get three pads with numbers listed. All numbers had to be current (in the current parts book). For this region the green pad parts was for parts stocked in the Milwaukee warehouse. Very fast moving items. A yellow pad for the Chicago warehouse and a red for the Flint warehouse. Most of those part numbers were marked with an "S" meaning scarp as they were too slow moving to be restocked.
We returned all of the return parts to the Milwaukee warehouse. (it closed in the early '70's.)
Items with accessory numbers were not returnable. To get rid of certain left over accessories I would break-up the parts for things like bumper gurads and put a number found in the Flint pad and marked with an "S".
In the mid '60's the hoods (very expensive aluminum) 1963 Z11 cars was listed as "S". If I had a damaged new hood I couldn't get rid of I would used the Z11 number.
By the '70's you were alowed to return 4% of your purchases.

What a lot of parts managers missed is when an exsisting part (and number) was replaced with a new number. They would order the part under the new number and sell that part rather than using up the obsolete part number.

After WWII pre-war cars were still hot and dealers stocked a lot of parts for them. Then by the early '50's the market for replacement parts for these cars fell off in a hurry. Especially things like sheet metal and trim parts.

When I dug parts out of the area small town dealers there was a regular pattern in what they had in obsolete parts. Many had several 1934-1935 and 1936 heads as an example as well as 1938-1942 grilles, trims, bumper guards and other good items. Not uncomon to find a new 1936 short block. Another thing I found frequently is the 1941-1946 truck head lamp assemblies.

Obsolete accessories were also plentyful, stacked of the shelves for years, waiting to be found.
Those were exciting finds.

Very interesting article. It looked like as the price of parts went up the allowed return went up but probably not a the same percentage.

Chev Nut,
Thank you for posting this. It helps to know what Chevrolet and the dealer personnel were thinking at the time, and you were there! I love reading about this.

Gene ,how many of those obsolete accessory's did stash in you garage???