Cut Days-to-Lot And Save Floorplan Costs

Getting a fresh auction buy to your lot should be fast and predictable, not hijacked by brokers and endless waiting games. That’s why smart dealers measure the days-to-lot for vehicles they’ve bought at auction. For every day a vehicle takes to reach the lot, there are calculable costs from floorplan interest to depreciation to auction holding fees and so on. 

If you’re still running your auction-to-lot transports through the “old way,” you’re leaving gross on the table every single day. Let’s break the cycle. Here’s the real playbook for getting your new inventory out of the auction penalty box and into recon fast. Plus, we’ll show you exactly how much it costs not to move quickly, with a plug-and-play calculator you can use with your team.

Typical Auction-to-Lot Bottlenecks

Every used car manager knows the pain of unpredictable pickup times. With traditional brokers, 14–16 days isn’t uncommon. There’s also the invisible broker markups. An average of 20–30% is skimmed off the top, but never spelled out on an invoice. Then, you got no-show carriers who vanish with no explanation. Not to mention the admin drag from multiple phone calls, endless vendor setup, billing disputes, paper-chasing for W-9s, and insurance docs.

And every day your vehicle sits at auction, your cost meter is running. It means racking up floorplan interest, depreciation, missed retail windows, and arbitration is ticking down.

It’s not just annoying. It’s expensive.

The AHX Auction-to-Lot Playbook

Here’s how the top stores are cutting auction-to-lot from weeks to days:

1. Post right away

The second you win the auction, post your vehicle on The Exchange. It gives you instant access to 5,500+ vetted carriers nationwide. Use the VIN and addresses to populate all the details in seconds. If you're using saved addresses for your drop-offs, it’s even faster. 

2. Price smartly

Set a market-smart price using AHX’s price guidance. Forget the haggling and hidden broker “advice.” Using our Quote Tool, you see the real rate that will move your vehicle now, not next week and not with a broker markup. If a vehicle needs to move faster, you can bump the rate and see instant traction

3. Keep recon up to date

Once a carrier books your shipment (average: 1 day or less), your lot manager gets real-time ETA and tracking. Live updates keep your recon team ready, not guessing. Vehicles land on your lot in 4 days on average from post to delivery.

4. Receive your vehicle without additional paperwork

No more phone-tag or vendor paperwork. The carrier delivers directly, and you get instant notification. AHX handles the payment, you get a single consolidated invoice, which means no checks and no hunting down carriers. Photo and digital BOL back up handoffs for ironclad documentation.

How Much Does Waiting Really Cost?

Every day your vehicles sit at auction is money out the door. Think about it: just a few extra days waiting on a broker for multiple loads can mean hundreds or even thousands in floorplan interest, lost retail windows, and plain old depreciation.

See the math for yourself

Here’s a simple example that illustrates the cost delay:

• Vehicle Value: $25,000
• Floorplan Rate: 9% APR
• Depreciation: $10/day
• Days Delayed: 7 days
• Number of Vehicles: 10

Formulas

• Interest = (Vehicle Value) × (Floorplan Rate ÷ 365) × Days Delayed
• Depreciation = Daily Depreciation × Days Delayed

Calculations

• Interest: ($25,000 × 0.09 ÷ 365) × 7 = $43.15 per vehicle
• Depreciation: $10 × 7 = $70 per vehicle
• Total Extra Cost per Vehicle: $43.15 (interest) + $70 (depreciation) = $113.15
• Total for 10 Vehicles: $113.15 × 10 = $1,131.50

Seven days of delay = over a grand, every cycle. Our simple example doesn’t include additional factors like auction holding costs or arbitration claims. Multiply that by auction volume, and you see why lag kills gross.

Calculate Your Real Cost

If you want to know where your gross profit is slipping away use our Lane Audit Spreadsheet, which goes beyond a floorplan cost calculator. In just 10 minutes, you can see what you could save by switching to a faster, more transparent model:

• The real holding cost of each VIN (including your own floorplan rate)
• Which lanes are your biggest profit drains due to slow delivery or inflated freight costs
• How much broker markups and delays are costing you, lane by lane
• What your savings would look like with AHX’s 4-day average transit and 15% lower freight

All you need to do is copy in your recent shipment data (purchase date, delivery date, origin, destination, cost, etc.), and the tool does the rest. No setup, no pivot tables, just answers.

Use it to show your GM, your finance director, or the next person who asks, “Why does it matter if we wait a few extra days?” You’ll see how even small delays stack up.

Brokers and load boards want you to believe that slow is normal. It isn’t.

Take back control, cut your auction-to-lot to days, not weeks, and watch your floorplan costs shrink.