Dealership Workers Are Happy. The One-to-Three-Year Crowd Isn't Buying It Yet.
Eighty percent of dealership employees say they're satisfied at work. That number collapses to 64% for anyone with one to three years on the job, and that gap is where CDK's 2026 Workplace Study says the real retention story is hiding.
🚗 47 Vans on the Road, and That's Not Even the Impressive Part
🚙 Bozard rebuilt its BDC from 32 screens down to 9, and COO/GM Ed Roberts still thinks that's twice what's necessary. The flashy number gets the headline. The duplicate data entry nobody wanted to audit is usually where the real money's hiding.
The Leadership Trick Ed Roberts Uses Before He Ever Asks for a Hard Change
Here's a leadership metaphor simple enough to actually remember on a Tuesday, and sturdy enough to still be true on a Friday when everything's on fire. Ed Roberts calls it deposits and withdrawals, and once you hear it, you'll start seeing it everywhere.
Bozard Ford Just Put 47 Vans on the Road, and Somehow That's Not Even the Impressive Part
Bozard now runs 47 mobile service units, and according to COO/GM Ed Roberts, they're servicing more vehicles outside the dealership every month than a lot of stores manage to service inside theirs. That's not a typo. That's a whole second dealership's worth of service volume, just, you know, driving around.
🚗 Are Dealer-Quoted Monthly Payments the Next FTC Compliance Risk?
🚙 The FTC already sent warning letters to 97 dealerships in March, with a group potentially on the hook for close to $80 million in fines. Now there's a new gap on the radar, and this one's built into how nearly every store quotes a payment.
Ohio's Auto Dealers Association Figured Out How to Get 4,000 People to a Concert for Charity
Most dealer associations wait for a problem before a dealer picks up the phone. Ohio's approach is the opposite: build the relationship before there's ever a fire to put out. Zach Doran, president of the Ohio Auto Dealers Association, joined Auto Collabs to share how that philosophy actually plays out, and it breaks down into three moves worth stealing.
AI Search Traffic Converts Better Than Anything Else. OpenAI's Ad Business Might Ruin That.
OpenAI just hit $1 billion in annualized ad revenue in under 200 days. The more interesting number isn't OpenAI's, it's the one showing up in dealer data: AI-referred traffic is converting at rates regular web traffic has never touched.
JD Power Says the Best Car Tech Is the Tech You Never Notice
Automakers keep adding screens, sensors, and hands-free driving modes. Owners keep rating the plain stuff, ignition, climate control, higher. The gap between what gets built and what actually satisfies is the real story here.
🚗 Toyota and Honda May Get Stuck With the Bill for Trump's Canada Tariffs
🚙 Toyota exports the RAV4 from Canada, Honda the CR-V, both among America's best-selling SUVs. Toyota already absorbed $8.8 billion in tariff costs last year and is doubling down on U.S. production instead. Honda says it may not build its planned eighth North American plant at all without a USMCA extension.
What If Tier 2 Advertising Bought an Ice Cream Truck Instead?
Tier 2 co-op advertising was built for a world with a finite number of billboards, newspaper pages, and TV stations. That world is gone. This week on The Pushback, we asked the question most dealer principals think privately but rarely say out loud in a co-op meeting: if the scarcity that justified Tier 2 spending no longer exists, why does the spending still look the same?
Robots Just Broke Usain Bolt's Record. Most of Them Also Broke Themselves Doing It.
Humanoid robots surpassed the human 100-meter sprint record at this year's World Humanoid Robot Games. A number of them also couldn't figure out how to stop running once they crossed the finish line.
