The company I work for has been considering purchasing a forklift dealer for a bit now and we are now trying to see if it makes sense and if we can make this a reality. We have operations in several locations in US/Canada and own several hundred forklifts and other equipment. New and used equipment has always been purchased on a cash basis but like most companies we are always looking for ways to be more efficient.

The intent would be to use this as an avenue to bring down our operating costs in our core business but keep the dealer as a stand alone company as is. A major question we have is how do most of the bigger name brands handle territories and jurisdictions of sales? For instance, if we buy a dealer in state "x" the intent would be to buy all of our parts from this branch (or what's reasonably possible) and all new capital purchases to get them at a "true cost." Would our dealership in state "x" be able to make purchases and send them to the other states/locations without causing problems with the local dealer in the receiving area? Most of our fleet is composed of Hyster for the smaller forklifts and Hyster/Taylor for our large lift trucks.