Glossary · parts
Line card
A line card is the list of manufacturer brands a parts supplier is authorized to sell, which sets the limit on what a repair shop can order from that supplier no matter what a catalog search shows.
Also called
- At the counter
- lines, brand lines, product lines, carried lines, supplier line card, parts line card, distributor line card, jobber lines, carried brands
A line card is the list of manufacturer brands a supplier is authorized to sell. It is the boundary of what that account can buy, and it decides the parts side of a ticket more often than any pricing decision the shop makes.
What is on a line card?
Brands, grouped by part category. Filtration, friction, rotating electrical, chassis, cooling, belts and hoses, each with the manufacturers the supplier stocks or can pull from a warehouse. A good one marks which lines are on the local shelf and which come from a distribution center, because those are different promises about time.
The card also implies the terms. Lines a supplier stocks deep get delivered on the next run and returned without argument. Lines they order in carry longer waits and stiffer return rules, which is the part nobody reads until a $600 part has to go back.
Why does a line card decide the estimate?
Because a price is only real if the shop can buy at it. A catalog lookup returns every brand made for the application, and the shop can order the small slice of that list its suppliers carry. Quoting outside that slice puts a number on the estimate that no purchase order can match.
That gap shows up on the ticket as a part cost higher than quoted, which eats parts margin without anybody deciding to give it away. It shows up on the schedule as a promise time missed. Both trace back to the same moment, when somebody priced a brand no account at the shop can order.
A brand nobody carries then becomes a second phone call to a customer who already said yes once, or a number the shop absorbs to avoid making it. The estimate the customer approved is also a ceiling. California bars a charge "for work done or parts supplied in excess of the estimated price" without the customer's consent, and Florida makes it "unlawful for a motor vehicle repair shop to charge more than the written estimate plus $10 or 10 percent, whichever is greater, but not to exceed $50" without going back for authorization. Check your own state before anybody decides the gap is small enough to eat.
How does a shop use line cards?
To decide where each job goes. Most shops carry more than one account, and the useful exercise is mapping the job families they sell against the lines each supplier carries. Brakes go here. Filtration goes there. Steering and suspension go wherever the preferred brand lives.
Once that map exists, the ordering decision stops being a phone call and becomes a rule. It also makes the preferred-brand conversation concrete, because a shop that insists on one friction brand has just narrowed its supplier list to whoever carries it, and that constraint is worth knowing before a truck is on the lift.
What happens when a line gets dropped?
Prices and part numbers move under the shop's feet. A supplier that loses a line still shows the old part numbers in the shop's own history, so the number that worked last year comes back as no longer available or lands on a supersession into a brand the shop does not want.
The signal is usually a run of parts suddenly quoted from a second supplier at a different cost. Anyone reconciling supplier invoices monthly catches it. Anyone filing them catches it at year end, in a report that says parts margin fell and does not say why.
Where do line cards bite a diesel shop?
On the specialty lines. Injection, turbochargers, emissions components and heavy-duty cooling live on fewer cards than brake pads do, and a shop that assumes its general accounts cover them finds out on a truck that is already apart. Some of it exists only through the dealer.
Two habits help. Keep a written note of which supplier carries which diesel line, and confirm the part is on a shelf before the promise time gets made, since a card tells you a line is carried and says nothing about local stock. When the answer is a hot shot from three hours out, the customer deserves to hear it before the job starts.
How does the card decide OEM against aftermarket?
By whether anybody carries the aftermarket version at all. Late-model emissions and injection components often have thin coverage, so the choice between an OEM part and an aftermarket part is made for the shop by the cards it can buy from. On an older half-ton the same category offers four brands at four price points.
That is worth knowing at estimate time. A job with one available source has one price and one lead time, and quoting it as though three suppliers were bidding sets up a conversation the shop cannot win. Where several lines do compete, the jobber price between them can differ enough to matter on a long parts list.
The warranty question a customer asks next has a settled answer. Federal law says "No warrantor of a consumer product may condition his written or implied warranty of such product on the consumer's using" a part identified by brand or corporate name, unless that part is handed over free under the warranty. A manufacturer can still argue that a particular part caused a particular failure. It cannot say the coverage went away because the card sent you to an aftermarket line.
Back to the glossary, or read about the parts matrix that turns those costs into a price.
Questions shops ask
- Who publishes a line card?
- The supplier does, whether that is a warehouse distributor, a local jobber or a specialty house. Outside suppliers, manufacturer reps carry one for the brands they represent. Ask for the current version, because lines get added and dropped every year and the copy taped inside somebody's cabinet is usually two years stale.
- Why does a line card matter if I can just search a catalog?
- A catalog shows you a part exists. The line card tells you whether this supplier can sell it to you. Quoting a brand the supplier does not carry produces a price the shop cannot buy at, and the difference surfaces at the worst possible moment, after the customer has already approved the estimate.
- Can two suppliers carry the same line?
- Often, and their prices still differ, because each one buys at a different level and prices off a different schedule. That is why a shop with three accounts checks more than one before ordering anything expensive. Where the lines do not overlap, the choice of supplier decides the brand by itself.
- What does it mean when a supplier says they can get it?
- It usually means the part is not on their line card and they will buy it from somebody else for you. Expect a longer lead time and a thinner discount, and expect the warranty conversation to be more complicated if the part fails. On a job with a promise time, get the source in writing before you accept it.
- How does a line card affect what a shop charges?
- It sets the cost side of the ticket. The same water pump from two suppliers on two different lines can carry different cost, different list and different core, so the markup a shop applies lands on a different base. Shops that price from one supplier and buy from another end up with a parts margin that does not match the estimate.
- Does putting an aftermarket line on a customer's truck void the factory warranty?
- Not by itself. The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act bars a warrantor from conditioning its warranty on the owner using an article identified by brand, trade or corporate name unless that article is supplied free of charge. A manufacturer can still deny a claim for damage a specific part caused, which is a different argument and one it has to make on the facts.