Increasing The Search Radius

[savaytse66]

Thanks for all the tips guys. I'm having a little more luck, but unless I'm missing something, searching for or knowing if a truck is a short or standard bed is problematic on these sites. And putting "standard" as a keyword doesn't get you very far! That's the nice thing about the GMC site. You can eliminate all of the short beds right off the bat. That's why I was hoping to expand the search radius there. That's been my biggest hang-up during my search both on my own and with dealers. The market is saturated with short beds (which I just don't understand for the life of me, but that's for another thread), and most of the time you cannot tell by the description. The GMC site also shows trucks "in transit", which is how I came across the last two I found that are hopefuls.

 

Oh well. I'll keep using the tools at hand and see what I can come up with. Thanks again!

[calgator73]

I use cars.com to locate them then use the zip code in gm military discount

 

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[doverarjim]

When I was looking I went to the GM web site and built a truck that I was looking for and then I got a pop up asking if I needed help locating the truck that I had built and told them yes and they did a nation wide search, their information was about 48 hours old so some of the trucks had been sold but it gave me the lead that I needed to find my truck.

[wurgs]

 

Yeah, that's what I've found. It's not worth a trade for them at larger distances.

My dealer did a trade with another about 700 miles away to find the truck I want. It's just amazing to me how many dealers I read about here don't want to do any work to keep their clients happy.

[ember1205]

My dealer did a trade with another about 700 miles away to find the truck I want. It's just amazing to me how many dealers I read about here don't want to do any work to keep their clients happy.

 

Many of the dealers will do the work, but the customer doesn't want to spend the money. So, the dealers don't bother to do things like trade with a dealer that's 700 miles away.

 

Think about the trade for your truck... Best case scenario is that BOTH dealers hire a runner to drive "their" vehicle half way, meet the other person, swap the vehicles, and return. That's at least a 12 hour day for each guy, and expense incurred by BOTH dealerships (food, tolls, gas, wages, etc.). How many customers will accept and extra $300-$400 of expense for a vehicle that's located that way? What about using a truck to do the swap? That's more like $1000 expense.

 

Walk into a dealership and tell them you want a vehicle that's 500 miles away. They don't want to discuss it. Tell them you completely understand that it costs money to do the swap, and you expect the cost to be passed on to you. Their whole tone will change.

[wurgs]

At most dealers maybe but there are always some that will go the extra mile to make a sale. My dealer wasn't going to charge me extra unless he had to go out 1000 miles or more. He said they make dealer trades almost every week and have great relationships with other dealerships. I wasn't loyal to any dealership until I bought my wifes Terrain there 3 years ago, I won't go anywhere else from now on.

[ember1205]

He may not actively charge you a fee, but he also won't be able to discount as deeply as if it were right there on his lot.

[Spurshot]

For anyone serious about traveling and paying to get what they want, the fastest and easiest solution is GM Customer Service. Call them. You get a real person that is eager to help you locate a vehicle. You can call over and over again with tweaks to the search criteria or search area. I've used them on my last two purchases. I found other methods to be more difficult and less comprehensive.

[lefty421]

Just be aware that dealer swaps are not a sure thing and things can go wrong too.

 

When I was shopping for my truck, I wanted a very specific config that was pretty hard to find. None locally, and the closest one was 5+ hours away at a dealer in a neighboring state.

 

I negotiated a price with my local dealer for this truck and I signed a purchase agreement on the truck with the assumption that they would just do a dealer swap for the truck.

 

The next day they called and apologized but said that the deal was off because the other dealer was refusing to do the dealer swap for the truck I wanted. The other dealer told my local dealer that they had interest in the truck from other people and they felt that they had a good chance of selling the truck themselves and therefore, they didn't want to do a dealer swap for the truck.

 

In the end, I ended up calling them and renegotiated a new deal for the same truck with them directly. I ended up saving an additional $2K over what I had negotiated with my local dealer originally, so it all worked out in the end.