I have the benefit that I run a construction company and buy a lot of trucks so its fairly easy for me to establish a relationship for multiple purchases based on invoice pricing. I need to order another F150 work truck currently but am waiting in case I need to go Raptor shopping elsewhere and sweeten the deal with a 2 for to try to find a deal on a raptor somewhere.
My biggest question is how to pick a new dealer that has enough pull with Ford to get orders pulled and filled. This lottery for new trucks has me baffled. The guys getting orders from November and December already filled are the guys I want to be working with but need to find s dealer with that kind of pull in my area.
I would really like to visit with a rep to try to understand who has the pull in our area and why Menholt doesn't.
The Ford regional sales reps usually won't meet with the customer. Sales end is different than the service end in that aspect. The best thing you can do to try and find a good dealer is ask around with other companies you deal with that buy a decent amount of vehicles. Find out where and how satisfied they are. Then call and see what their allocation situation is. Right now your best chance of finding a Raptor deal is either by searching this forum for threads where people posted about Raptors available at good deals or just calling a bunch of dealers.
There is no easy way to determine how a dealers Raptor allocation gets pulled. But Ford is usually pretty fair about how they divvy out that allocation. Meaning say 1/4 of the way through a build year each dealer has 1/4 of their total number scheduled, 1/2 way through 1/2 scheduled and so on. That isn't precise but usually fairly close. The very large dealers with big allocation do tend to get some preferential treatment at times but not excessively.
Our 17' allocation is spoken for and I have a list of a few people interested in an 18'. If you don't find one and are willing to wait I wouldn't have anything available until 18'. PM me and I could put you on the list.
Here is the problem when you go to a dealership about a new product and they don't really know much or anything about it. This is just a job for most sales people. If it's not a product they get excited about they don't spend any extra time researching it. With that said the dealer is the last to get info on new product releases so if you don't have a salesman that's excited or interested in the product you're pretty much going to end helping teach them.
Being in and around performance stuff my entire life I dig for any info I can get well before Ford gives us any info. In turn I sell probably 90 % of all of our specialty and performance allocation we get.
I work for a dealership in Pa.