Jobber price

Jobber price is the wholesale tier a parts catalog quotes to trade accounts. It sits under the published list price that a retail customer would see and above the net cost a shop with a real account discount ends up paying. The word comes from the old three-step supply chain, where the jobber was the local parts store between the warehouse distributor and the shop.

Where does jobber price sit on the ladder?

Between two other numbers that both get called cost. At the top is list, the published retail figure the Federal Trade Commission's Guides Against Deceptive Pricing warns is often not the price at which a substantial number of sales are made. Under list is jobber, which is the trade price a shop without a negotiated deal would pay at the counter. Under jobber is the shop's net, which is jobber less whatever discount the account carries. Some catalogs print all three tiers on the same screen and some show one, and which one you are looking at is the first question to answer before quoting anything.

The number on the invoice is the only one that pays bills. Everything above it is a reference point that helps a counter person and a shop talk about the same part without arguing.

Is jobber the same as cost?

For a shop buying at counter price with no account, yes. For most shops, no. A negotiated discount off jobber is standard on the lines a shop buys volume in, and the discount changes by product line inside the same supplier. Brakes might buy well and electrical badly at the same store.

Volume is the ordinary reason a supplier prices two shops differently, and the antitrust rule that governs price differences names it out loud. The Federal Trade Commission's guide to Robinson-Patman lists as a defense that "the price difference is justified by different costs incurred by the seller," and it puts volume discounts in that bracket by name. Read your account discount as a document about how you buy. It moves when your buying moves, so the way to widen it is to walk in with the spend that earns it.

That variance is why a single blanket markup produces strange results. A part bought deep under jobber and sold at a flat multiplier leaves money on the counter, and a part bought at jobber and sold at the same multiplier prices the shop out of the job. The parts matrix exists to handle exactly that spread, and it only works when the cost feeding it is the number on the invoice.

What does jobber price do to parts margin?

It sets the ceiling on the honest version of the story. Parts margin measures the gap between what the shop paid and what the customer paid, so pricing off a catalog tier instead of the paid cost inflates or deflates every report that touches it.

The failure looks like this. A shop pulls jobber from the catalog, applies its matrix, quotes the customer, then buys the part on an account that discounts it further. The margin report says one thing and the checking account says another, and nobody can find the leak because each individual ticket looks fine. Reconcile a month of parts invoices against the estimates that generated them and the gap shows up in an afternoon.

The error runs the other way too, and that one lands on the customer. A price file moves, the part costs more than the catalog tier said when the estimate went out, and somebody adds the difference to the invoice. California forbids it in plain words: no charge may be made "for work done or parts supplied in excess of the estimated price" without the customer's consent, and that consent has to be taken after the shortfall is known and before the part goes on the vehicle. Requote at authorization and the call takes forty seconds. Skip it and the shop is choosing between eating the difference and defending a number the customer never approved.

Why do two suppliers quote different jobber prices?

Because they publish different price files, carry different line cards and land the freight differently. A price advantage on the tier can vanish once a hot-shot delivery charge lands on the invoice, and a part that supersedes on one catalog and not the other is a different physical part with the same interchange number.

The counter conversation that settles it is short. Ask for the landed price on the part number in front of you, on your account, today. Everything else is a starting position.

How should a shop use the number?

As a sanity check on a quote and nothing more. When a supplier quotes above jobber on a part a shop buys regularly, something is wrong with the account setup or the part number. When a quote comes in far under it, check that the interchange is right before anybody commits, because a price that good is often a different part.

Beyond that, keep it off the estimate. A service writer defending a parts price to a customer talks about the part and what it costs the shop to put it on the vehicle. The tier structure behind it belongs in the back office.

It does belong in the annual supplier conversation. A shop walking into that meeting with its own spend by product line, and the tier each line is buying at, is negotiating from a document. A shop walking in with an impression that parts feel expensive gets whatever the rep was going to offer anyway.

Back to the glossary, or read how an estimate gets priced.