Today’s an exciting one—we’re officially announcing the release of my seventh book, Invested: The New Science, Strategy and System of Used Vehicle Investment Management, at the NADA Show this month in New Orleans.
My work on Invested, along with co-author Lance Helgeson, 
began about a year ago after we hosted vAuto’s Access: Innovation event in Chicago. While there, we talked about how the used vehicle market is returning to the levels of price and value efficiency that we saw in the years immediately preceding the pandemic. I’m sure many readers felt this reality in their financials for 2024—you probably sold more used vehicles than you did in 2023, but the net profit those vehicles delivered to the bottom line of your used vehicle department likely looks more like it did in 2019.
Invested examines some of the root causes of this dynamic, which we discovered by applying predictive data science to help us understand where common inventory management practices may fall short and how they might be improved. The data science revealed a few surprises, two of which I’ll share here:
- Dealers often manage used vehicles as merchandise, not investments. We came to this conclusion after using data science to help us know a) the investment potential of every used vehicle is unique and b) dealers often treat every vehicle the same, despite the inherent differences in each vehicle’s ROI potential. This “sameness” manifests as dealers apply the same mark-ups as they price vehicles and they often give distressed inventory too much time to find a buyer, resulting in less-than-optimal ROI outcomes. At the same time, dealers tend to short-sell their best investments, which is something the best financial advisors and investment portfolio managers avoid.
- Individual beliefs and biases play an outsize role in used vehicle decision-making. Invested reveals how the absence of a dealer-established investment strategy, across acquisition, appraising and pricing decisions, gives decision-makers a lot of latitude to do what they think is right for each vehicle. The book details how such latitude tends to serve the best interests of the individual, not the bottom line of the used vehicle department or the dealership.
I devote the bulk of Invested to helping dealers understand how they can turn the power of predictive data science to their advantage. In short, the book serves as the operations manual for dealers to establish and execute their preferred investment management strategy. The book also details how the vAuto team and I have built and enhanced our ProfitTime GPS solution to help dealers execute this strategy, and measure/monitor its effectiveness in real time, with every acquisition, appraising and pricing decision.
My work on the book, and the success I’ve seen with dealers who’ve fully adopted an investment management strategy to guide their used vehicle departments, leaves me convinced that this new approach will serve as a kind of Great Divide: If you’re on the investment management path in used vehicles, you trust the predictive data science that drives it and you follow the principles, you’ll sell more and make more than tradition-minded dealers, who’ll remain trapped in today’s ROI spiral.
Stop by vAuto’s booth at NADA (#2506) where you can pick up your copy of Invested and chart your own new way forward. See you in New Orleans!
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