Getting Started
What Is Vehicle Fair Trade? Wholesale Bidding, Explained
Vehicle Fair Trade is wholesale bidding software for car dealers. You appraise a trade, send it to your own wholesalers by text, and the offers come back to one place.
Vehicle Fair Trade (VFT) is a tool for appraising a used vehicle and collecting competing wholesale offers on it. You build one evaluation, send it to your entire buyer list at once, and the bids return to a single view. It is not an auction. It is your own wholesalers, competing on your vehicle.
What Vehicle Fair Trade is
Vehicle Fair Trade replaces a manual appraisal process. The older workflow required filling a paper sheet, re-entering it into a form, printing it, photographing the printout, and texting that photo to wholesalers one at a time. VFT handles the entire process in one evaluation: decode the VIN, retrieve a book value, confirm the factory build, add photos, and send it out.
The platform has been in daily use since March 2022, with approximately 4,760 evaluations and 29,000 texts processed to date.
How it works, start to finish
- Appraise the vehicle. The VIN decode, book value, and window sticker pre-fill most fields.
- Send it to your wholesalers in a single batch.
- The offers come back, and the amounts are extracted from the replies automatically.
- You select the winning offer.
Approximately 83% of evaluations receive at least one offer, and the median time to the first offer is about 55 minutes. The buyers compete rather than being chased individually.
It is not an auction
Most wholesale software is designed for buying at auction. VFT works in the other direction: you sell your trade to the wholesalers you already know, on your own terms, without a lane, a transport fee, or a buy/sell margin. There is no auction block and no middleman fee. Your buyer list competes by text.
What you get
The toolkit, with a guide for each component:
- Canadian Black Book values for a market starting number.
- OEM window stickers to confirm the factory build.
- Photo upload so buyers price the actual vehicle.
- SMS conversations to send the vehicle and collect offers.
- AI bid extraction to keep the bids organized.
- Carfax reports to surface the history up front.
- Comparables for comparable listings.
- Dealer statistics to track activity over time.
Which components you get depends on your plan.
What it costs
Pricing is flat and monthly, with no sales call required. A free tier with no card and no trial period is available for the basics, and three paid plans add more of the toolkit as your needs grow. The plans and features breakdown shows exactly what is included in each. The prices are listed on the main site.
Who it is for
VFT is built for dealers who wholesale their trades. It keeps the appraisal accurate, gets it in front of wholesalers quickly, and keeps the salesperson and the wholesaler separate.
If you retail every trade and never wholesale, the core of the platform will not apply to your operation. The tool also relies on accurate damage assessment during the walk-around, so dependable inspections are a prerequisite.
FAQ
What is Vehicle Fair Trade in one sentence?
Software for appraising a used vehicle and collecting competing wholesale offers on it from your own buyers, by text.
Is it an auction?
No. You send your trade to the wholesalers you choose, and they bid. There is no lane, no transport fee, and no buy/sell fee to a middleman.
Do I need to install anything?
No. It runs in the browser, and the wholesalers receive a text. They do not need an account or an app.
Is there a free version?
Yes. A free tier with no card is available. Paid plans add more of the toolkit; see the plans and features guide.
How long has it been around?
It has been in daily use since March 2022, with approximately 4,760 evaluations and 29,000 texts processed to date.