Estimated read time: 5 minutes

Meet the Dealership Keeping $25K Aftermarket Upfits In-House and Generating $260K a Month in Online Part Sales

Most dealerships sell the vehicle and wave goodbye to the profit.

Not intentionally, of course. It’s just how the business has operated for years.

Picture this: Fleet customer orders 50 trucks. Dealer delivers the vehicles. Then those trucks disappear across town to get outfitted somewhere else with racks, lighting, liners, wiring, accessories, storage systems, and whatever else the job requires.

The dealership keeps the vehicle sale. Everybody else gets the rest.

Kelly Marsden, Parts Manager at River City Ford looked at that process and thought it was completely backwards.

Today, River City Ford does things very differently. The dealership now operates a dedicated aftermarket upfitting facility capable of handling roughly 150 vehicles, regularly captures $5,000-$25,000 in additional revenue PER fleet vehicle, and has simultaneously built a national eCommerce operation generating $260,000 per month in online parts sales.

It started with Kelly asking a fairly simple question: 

Why are we letting all this revenue leave the dealership?

The $500K Opportunity Most Dealers Hand Away

For most dealerships, fleet upfitting sounds like something reserved for specialty commercial shops.

Kelly saw something else.

“The back racks, the beacons, the lights, seat covers, running boards, box liners. All the stuff fleet companies consistently need,” he explained.

River City Ford was watching fleet companies buy dozens of vehicles at a time, then immediately spend another $5,000-$25,000 per truck somewhere else.

A 50-unit fleet order could easily represent:

• $250,000 in aftermarket accessory and installation revenue
• $500,000 at average build levels
• Sometimes well over $1 million on larger projects

And the dealership was basically saying: “Here are your keys. Good luck.”

Kelly hated that. “We had to stop this,” he said. “Why aren’t we delivering these vehicles fully completed?”

That realization became the foundation for an entirely new revenue stream.

The revenue didn’t end with the vehicle sale

Kelly realized the dealership already owned the most important thing: the customer relationship.

The dangerous part wasn’t just losing accessory revenue. It was losing everything that came after.

“If we let them go somewhere else to do this upfitting, we may never see them again,” Kelly explained.

Because the moment a fleet customer starts building relationships with outside upfitters, those same vendors often influence:

• maintenance
• oil changes
• repair work
• future accessory purchases
• long-term service relationships

The dealership loses the downstream fixed ops revenue along with the original upfit opportunity.

So River City Ford decided to become the one-stop shop instead.

Start Small. Figure It Out. Build From There.

Kelly worked closely with the sales department to better understand what customers actually needed after delivery. Early on, some work was subcontracted while the dealership learned the process and identified which services made sense to bring in-house.

Then came the harder part:
getting technicians onboard.

Because aftermarket installs are different.

Lighting systems.
Complex wiring.
Accessory integrations.
Custom builds.
Tight timelines.

Once the dealership got buy-in from the technicians, occasional upfitting transformed into a legit, growing operation.

And customers responded quickly. Really quickly.

Soon fleet companies started asking River City Ford to upfit non-Ford vehicles too.

At one point, Kelly joked they had more RAM trucks sitting on their lot than the RAM dealership down the street.

“A truck’s a truck,” he said. “Send it.”

The Side Hustle Turned Into Infrastructure

Eventually, the volume outgrew the dealership.

That’s usually a pretty good sign.

River City Ford expanded into a dedicated off-site facility with secured space for approximately 150 vehicles. 

And importantly, much of the work is now pre-sold before the vehicles even arrive.

Fleet customers no longer need to coordinate:

• multiple vendors
• separate invoices
• transportation logistics
• installation schedules
• quality control across different shops

They simply pick up completed vehicles ready for deployment. That convenience became one of River City Ford’s biggest competitive advantages.

Kelly understood something many dealerships miss: Fleet customers will absolutely pay for simplicity.

Especially when it saves them time. Especially when it eliminates headaches. Especially when they trust the quality of the work.

“I’m not going to be the cheapest,” Kelly explained. “But I’ll sell you on the value.”

Meanwhile, Kelly Was Building a Second Revenue Engine

At the exact same time River City Ford was growing its upfitting business, Kelly was also aggressively building the dealership’s online parts operation.

Because he understood another uncomfortable truth about the modern parts department: Local demand has limits.

And once those channels flatten out, growth gets harder. The internet doesn’t have that problem.

So while many dealerships ignore the online parts opportunity, River City Ford treated it like an obvious next step.

That decision changed the business.

Today, River City Ford generates approximately:

• $260,000 per month in online parts revenue
• 20X return on marketing spend
• 109% ROI on marketing
• $44,000 monthly shipping profit
• 30% average shipping profit margin

Not annually. Monthly.

And this didn’t start with massive headcount or overhead. Initially, Kelly was packing orders himself at his desk.

River City Ford’s Online Parts Performance

The Modern Parts Department Doesn’t Look Like It Used To

What makes Kelly’s story interesting isn’t just the revenue.

It’s the combination.

Most dealerships eventually pick a lane to grow part sales:

• wholesale
• counter
• service
• online
• fleet
• accessories

River City Ford built multiple scalable revenue channels at the same time.

The dealership now operates:

• a national eCommerce business (that brings in over $3M a year)
• a large-scale fleet upfitting operation (that started with just one vehicle)
• marketplace (eBay and Amazon) sales channels
• aftermarket installation services
• shipping profit programs
• fleet retention strategies

The online business expands demand nationally. 

The aftermarket upfitting operation strengthens local fleet relationships. 

The service department retains long-term maintenance revenue. 

The parts department increases inventory movement.

The dealership keeps more gross inside the building.

Kelly didn’t grow the business by doing what most dealerships do. He grew it by questioning why the industry accepted those limitations in the first place.

Not bad for a business many dealerships still treat like an afterthought.