Lozzo

You've obviously never sold oil wholesale, have you?

Dealers don't all get massive discounts on their oil for buying huge drums, it all boils down to litreage and whether or not they've been enticed by someone like me to have their workshops kitted out with all new equipment in exchange for an exclusive oil deal. Workshop equipment like tyre changers, balancers, benches, oil stations and ramps don't come cheap, and the oil company wants its money back somehow, so the oil company signs them up on long deals that depend on how many litres of oil a month/quarter/year they shift through the workshop and retail side of their business. Some of those guys are tied into contracts that can make £9 a litre of Rock Oil seem like a bargain. If they don't hit their litreage figures they pay through the nose per litre for the next however long it takes to get back on target.

Believe me, it's no cakewalk being a bike dealership trying to make ends meet in today's climate. I once kitted out a dealer's workshop from floor to ceiling with flooring, tiled walls, all the workshop equipment, benches, ramps, tyre machines, oil stations, extraction system, the whole shooting match. That dealer was tied into a deal that meant he was stuck using our brand of oil for 10 years, and having to shift huge quantities of it to meet the litreage figures or he'd be paying almost retail prices per barrel and almost double the going rate for his workshop fitting-out. They went bust within 2 years, but that was mainly down to bad management in other areas of the business - their workshop was actually about the only profitable side of the whole dealership. Naturally I went in there to pull all the equipment out, and we moved it into another dealership on a similar deal.