AI Operations Automation for Equipment Dealers
Backlot: the AI ops manager that clears your back lot
For equipment and machinery dealers with 5 to 100 people. Installed on the systems you already run. $9,500 once. You own it.
Live map
Status
- 01System typeoverlay
- 02Replacementnot required
- 03Next stepscan
Reference sheet
Your dealership runs on five jobs nobody was hired to do
A unit comes in on trade. The details live in photos on someone’s phone for two weeks before it gets entered, priced, and listed. That is capital parked in the dark.
A buyer asks for a quote. Someone has to pull specs, check numbers, and type it up between everything else they do. It takes hours. Some quotes never go out at all, and the deal goes to whoever answered first.
Three units sit on the lot 90 days longer than they should. Not because nobody wanted them. Because nobody was watching. A service request lands in a shared inbox and waits two days for a first reply. Your DMS, QuickBooks, and your spreadsheets all hold a different version of the truth, and somebody retypes data between them every week.
None of these is a full-time job, so nobody owns them. They land on you, your desk manager, and your best salesperson, in the gaps between the work they were actually hired to do. That is the job Backlot takes.
Five modules. You pick the worst three.
Every dealership bleeds in different places. At onboarding you pick the three modules that hurt most. The install is scoped around those three, and the other two can be added later without redoing anything.
Intake automation. Photos and specs go in, a clean inventory record comes out: entered in your system, spec sheet built, listing copy drafted for MachineryTrader, your website, and Facebook Marketplace. A trade-in becomes a listed unit in hours, not weeks. Want to feel it first? Run one of your units through the free listing generator. That is this module, by hand.
Automated quoting. A request comes in, the system pulls specs and prices from your real sales data, and a quote goes out the same hour. I built this exact module for an equipment dealer: specs in, a real-number quote out, nobody typing.
Daily ops brief. One short email or text every morning: deals that stalled, units aging past your threshold, service requests still waiting, money sitting on the lot. The numbers you would pull yourself if you had a spare hour every morning.
System glue. Your DMS, QuickBooks, and your sheets stop disagreeing. When a unit sells, every system finds out. Nobody retypes anything on a Friday afternoon.
Inbound triage. Service requests and sales inquiries get read, sorted, and routed to the right person with a first response on the way before anyone opens the inbox.
Built from real dealer work, not a slide deck
The quoting module exists because an equipment dealer paid me to build it: requests come in, the system reads their actual sales data, and an estimated quote goes out without a human in the loop. The intake module comes from a dealer build where units arrived as photos and left as clean records.
And the full assistant pattern is how my own company runs today. My business sends me a morning brief, watches my pipelines, flags what is stuck, and drafts what needs drafting. I am not selling you a theory. I am installing the system I already live on, shaped to a dealership.
Backlot versus the other ways to fix this
| Backlot | Hire an admin | Dealer software suite | Keep absorbing it | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year-one cost | $9,500 plus optional $6k care plan | $38k-50k plus benefits | $12k-60k per year, forever | Your hours, your missed deals |
| Works nights and weekends | Yes | No | It is software, you still do the work | You already do |
| Uses the systems you have | Yes | Yes | No, you migrate to theirs | Yes |
| Cancel and keep using it | Yes | No | No | n/a |
The install: two weeks, three modules, your keys
Week one is connection and build. We pick your three modules on a 30-minute call, I connect to the systems you already run, and the modules get built against your real data: your inventory, your quote history, your inbox. You see each one working on actual units and actual requests before we move on.
Week two is tuning and handoff. Your team uses it on live work while I adjust thresholds, formats, and routing to match how your shop actually runs. At handoff you hold every credential. The system is yours, on your accounts, with a one-page runbook for the common stuff. If you take the care plan, I keep maintenance access you can revoke any time.
Pricing and the payback math
Standard install: $9,500 fixed, plus an optional $500 per month care plan for monitoring, fixes, and tuning. Expanded tier: $15,000 plus $750 per month, which adds an AI phone line that answers and routes your calls plus deeper ERP integration. Start standard and upgrade within 90 days and the full $9,500 credits toward the expanded tier.
The payback is not complicated. If faster quotes win you one deal a month you were losing to a faster competitor, the install pays for itself in the first quarter. If intake gets your average trade-in listed ten days sooner, that is ten days of capital working instead of parked. The daily brief catching one stalled deal a month before it dies covers the care plan on its own.
Want to see where your dealership bleeds first? Run one of your units through the free listing generator and see the intake module work on your own inventory. Or run the free 90-second AI Operations X-Ray and get a ranked report of the five highest-leverage fixes for your operation. Or reach out directly and tell me which of the five jobs above is eating your week. I answer those personally.
Related
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
- 01What is Backlot in one sentence?
- Backlot is an AI operations manager installed on the systems your dealership already uses. It turns photos and specs into listed inventory, sends quotes out in minutes instead of days, and briefs you every morning on stuck deals, aging units, and service requests nobody answered.
- 02Which dealers is this for?
- Equipment and machinery dealers with 5 to 100 people: construction equipment, ag and tractor, forklift and material handling, trailer, and industrial machinery dealers. If your day includes quotes typed by hand, units sitting unlisted, and an inbox full of service requests, this was built for your lot.
- 03What systems does it connect to?
- Whatever you already run. Your DMS or inventory system, QuickBooks, your CRM, spreadsheets, and your email inbox. Backlot reads from and writes to the tools you have. You do not switch software, and your team does not learn a new system.
- 04Does my team have to learn new software?
- No. Backlot works through the channels your team already uses: email, text, and the systems you already run. The morning brief lands in your inbox or phone. Quotes come back the same way requests come in. There is no new login for your sales guys to ignore.
- 05Where does my data live?
- On accounts you own. The install runs on infrastructure under your name, with your credentials. Your customer data stays in your systems. At handoff you hold every key. Nothing routes through Moore IQ after the install is done.
- 06What happens if I cancel the care plan?
- The system keeps running. The $500 per month care plan covers monitoring, fixes when a connected system changes its API, and tuning as your processes shift. Cancel any time with 30 days notice and you keep everything. There is no kill switch on my end.
- 07Why not just hire another office admin?
- An admin costs $38,000 to $50,000 a year plus turnover, and they still cannot watch every aging unit and stuck deal at once. Backlot costs $9,500 once. It does not call in sick, it does not quit during your busy season, and it works the same at 6 a.m. on a Saturday as it does on a Tuesday.
- 08How is this priced?
- Standard install is $9,500 fixed plus an optional $500 per month care plan. The expanded tier is $15,000 plus $750 per month and adds an AI phone line that answers and routes calls, plus deeper ERP integration. If you start standard and upgrade within 90 days, the full $9,500 credits toward the expanded tier.
Next step
Want this mapped for your business?
Run the 90-second AI Operations X-Ray. Free, no credit card.