In Wheel Time Podcast: Your Go-To Automotive Talk Show Oct 14, 2025

Inside Trader Interactive: How real-time registrations and marketplace behavior reshape dealer strategy

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Concept

Petit Le Mans

Petit Le Mans is a big car race that takes place in Atlanta. It's known for being a long race where different types of sports cars compete against each other.

Concept

Formula One

Formula One is a type of car racing where specially designed cars race on tracks. It's very popular and has many races throughout the year.

Concept

NHRA

NHRA stands for the National Hot Rod Association, which organizes drag racing events where cars race in a straight line to see who is the fastest.

Concept

Texas Motorplex

Texas Motorplex is a place in Texas where cars race in a straight line. It's famous for drag racing events.

Concept

SEMA

SEMA is a big car show in Las Vegas where companies show off parts and accessories for cars. It's a place for car lovers to see the latest upgrades and modifications.

Concept

A moving assembly line is a way to make things faster by moving parts along a line where workers can put them together one step at a time. This method helps make products, like cars, much more quickly and cheaply.

Car

Ford Model T

The Ford Model T was a very important car in history because it was the first car made in large numbers, making it cheaper and easier for people to buy. It was built using a new method that made making cars faster.

Brand

General Motors

General Motors, or GM, is a big company that makes cars and trucks. They own several car brands, including Chevrolet and Cadillac.

Brand

Chevrolet

Chevrolet, often called Chevy, is a well-known car brand in America that makes many types of vehicles, like cars and trucks. It's part of a larger company called General Motors.

Brand

Chrysler

Chrysler is a car brand that makes different types of vehicles, including family cars and vans.

Concept

OPEC oil embargo

The OPEC oil embargo was when some oil-producing countries stopped selling oil, which caused gas prices to rise and affected many people's ability to buy cars.

Term

horsepower

Horsepower is a way to measure how powerful an engine is. When cars have less horsepower, they usually aren't as fast or powerful.

Car

smart car

The smart car is a small car made for city driving. It's designed to be easy to park and use less fuel.

Concept

electric vehicle infrastructure

Electric vehicle infrastructure means all the places where you can charge electric cars, like charging stations on the road or at home. It's important for people who drive electric cars to have enough places to charge them.

Car

Ford F150

The Ford F-150 is a big truck that many people use for work and everyday driving. It's known for being tough and reliable, which is why so many people like to buy it. Recently, a fire at a factory that makes parts for this truck is causing problems for Ford, which is important to know if you're interested in buying one.

Car

Ford F150 Lightning

The Ford F-150 Lightning is an electric truck that runs on batteries instead of gasoline, making it better for the environment. It still has the same strong features as the regular F-150, but with a focus on being more eco-friendly. Right now, production is temporarily stopped because of a fire at a factory that makes parts for it, which is something to keep in mind if you're thinking about getting one.

LIVE

Welcome to another In-Wheel Time Podcast.

This is your place for all things automotive, the award-winning In-Wheel Time car talk show

just ahead what manufacturers and dealers need to do to survive in this rapidly changing

automotive marketplace.

Mr. Mars has this week in Auto History, Jeff has the racing calendar and I'll get you caught

up on the stories making automotive news headlines all just ahead.

Howdy, along with Mike out of this world Mars over there in Neaterville, we always need

more Jeff Zeekin sitting next to me along with vacationing engineer David Ainsley up

in the UP of Michigan.

He ate their chatter in a pair.

Yeah, about an hour ago, it was 55 degrees up here.

I'm Don Armstrong, glad you could join us on this Saturday.

Long underwear with him.

Yeah, no kidding.

Well, it's not quite long underwear with him.

Not quite.

He's buttoning up the cabin for its winter hibernation because it won't be long now,

believe it or not, even though we're roasting in 90 degrees heat down here in Houston, Texas.

He's going to have drifts of four feet next week.

Yeah, and a lake, was it Lake Huron?

I think it's Lake Huron that's going to be frozen solid.

So he's pulling up the waterline out of the lake and buttoning up the cabin this weekend.

So he'll be back with us next weekend actually for our big remote broadcast.

At the Bears.

At the Bears over at the Spring Branch, the former site of the Spring Branch High School

over there.

Museum of all the good stuff.

Yeah, all the stuff.

Dub Bears.

All right.

Our next guest this morning is Shannon Pinto.

He's the vice president of Statistical Surveys at Trader Interactive.

Shannon, good morning to you and thanks for joining us.

Good morning guys.

Really appreciate you taking the time today.

Well, you know, you you look like a stat guy.

Let me ask you this.

Do you keep up with stats and football like professional football?

Not as much as I do on the on the powers boards or the another another

sides of the of the business here.

Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, what's a stat guy?

Always a stat guy across the board, in my opinion.

But what do I know?

You know, I've got a kind of a stats

daughter, astrophysicist and all that.

So I can kind of relate and I hear where you're coming from.

And certainly lots of respect for you.

So tell me about Trader Interactive.

What what what do you guys do?

Yes, a Trader Interactive is the is the leading marketplace for non

automotive listings.

We have a marketplace for RVs.

We have a marketplace for power sports, specifically cycle trader,

equipment, boat, boat, marine.

The division that I look at under Trader Interactive is statistical surveys.

And what we do is we pull together information from all over the US

and Canada and from the DMVs, and we're able to really understand

what the registrations are across the country and package it up.

And we're able to kind of give dealers, OEM, suppliers, banks,

what's happening in the industry that they can make better decisions.

Give me an example, for instance, let's let's use

an 18 foot ski boat run about open bow, you know,

ski well in the middle of it.

Give me give me an example of something like that.

Is that is that a big seller?

Well, it's hard for me to say right now is I haven't looked at that.

But, you know, we can we can get into at the zip code level exactly

what is selling for that type of boat across the country.

Right. So you think about if you want to use that information for marketing,

if you want to use that for planning, if you want to use it for whatever you want.

The dealer side of things on the manufacturer side of things.

If you want to look at leasing or, you know,

what kind of investment options you want with banking

and things like that, all that information is there for you.

So with your particular example, I'd have to go to look at the information,

but we have it across the country, but down to a zip code level as well.

Would you look at it from that type of description?

Or would you need something more along like a brand name,

like a ski nateek or or or something more generic like Don was talking about?

No, we can we can look at it down to a make and model level, right?

And we can go down to the length of the boat.

If you're looking at an RV as an example,

we can get down pretty granular in terms of, you know,

it does it have slide outs, does it have how many people does it sleep?

So all that information we can kind of get

and compile that and put it out there for people.

So you guys are kind of like the Kelly Blue Book of power sports.

Well, you know, yeah, kind of, you know,

KBB has their their their need for things like that.

But we are giving a lot more information compared to Kelly Blue Books,

right, in terms of registrations and things like that,

in terms of what's happening in the market.

And then what's interesting with the Trader Interactive piece is

we know exactly what people are searching for

and what are they clicking on?

How are they interacting with that

that inventory on the marketplace?

And we can combine both those things with the statistical surveys registration

to give a really interesting round of view of what's happening in the market.

So you make your money from, let's say, for instance,

a water sports outlet here in Houston,

maybe down at the Bay or Lake Connor or something like that.

So if I really want to narrow my inventory down

to what is actually selling in my zip code,

you supply that information to me.

We can. We can.

And look, some some dealers look at multiple states.

You know, they might want to expand in there.

It might be in bordering states.

So we can give them that information to make better decisions.

Like what what are what are people buying?

What are they looking for?

What are they not looking for?

Do you have it in your inventory mix?

You take that up, you know, a couple of layers up

and we can do the same thing for a manufacturer nationally,

but also getting down to a zip code level as well.

Are you pretty powerful stuff?

Are you here in Houston?

No, that's the size based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Oh, OK. And and Trader and Active is in Virginia Beach.

The reason I say that is we have the auto boat of show here in Houston once a year in January

and they combine the auto shows with all the the marine folks.

So they divide the the venue up half and half.

You could you get statistics or maybe support that type of venue

with with your your analytical stuff?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

I mean, we again, we service a bunch of different verticals outside of automotive

and, you know, getting a sense in terms of what's happening now

in terms of listings and what are people looking for and what are they searching?

All that information can be can be generated and provided.

So I'm going to I'm going to show my ignorance here because

I'm not really too familiar with, let's just say a dealer

that sells multiple models, brands of boats

and mainly recreational stuff.

I'm not talking about the great big commercial stuff,

but I'm talking about recreational stuff.

And so I've got an inventory and I buy from manufacturers,

probably a half a dozen of them.

So I can really pick and choose from the manufacturers

what I want to carry based on what is selling in my general area of Texas.

Makes sense. Absolutely.

And that's where we we work with dealers to go in

eyes wide open to really understand what's happening in your in your market, right?

Is new selling well, is pre-owned selling?

Well, how do you want to diversify your inventory?

How do you want to market them?

Because we're also able to understand the demographic profile

of who is purchasing things in your particular area.

So you combine that inventory strategy with a marketing plan.

You can really speak to the audience in terms of who is buying what and where and when.

So do you do you have, for instance, like like an auto trader,

they mainly focus on automotive.

Do you have a publication, whether it's online or in paper,

that that you guys supply this information to?

Yeah, I mean, we because that surveys is part of Trader Interactive.

We're tightly coupled with our marketplace.

So we have cycle trader, we got RV trader, we got boat mark.

You know, so we're able to really share information

with both sides of the business to really get a rounded view.

And if you're a dealer, you can understand what's happening in real time with consumers.

And if you also have that surveys, you also know what are people buying in the market as well.

So how, when you say real time, how real real time are we talking about?

Because I'm thinking like Jeff said, the automotive show comes up at the end of January.

So if I'm a big RV dealer in Houston,

because you can't buy a car at the automotive show, you can look at them,

you can set it up and all that, but you can buy a boat and you can buy an RV if you want.

So if I'm that RV dealer and I'm going,

can I come to you and pull data so I can decide what inventory I want to take?

Is it that real?

Yes, absolutely.

Because, you know, with the, with the, on our marketplace,

an RV trader or cycle trader or boat mark, people are looking at stuff right now.

So we, we get a stream of everything that's happening in real time, right?

When someone asks for it, we don't want to give them, you know, minute by minute,

because it's not very useful.

We want to aggregate that, put it in some sort of like, this is what's happening in a week,

in a month and, you know, quarter a year, 30 days, 40, yeah, absolutely.

So that's absolutely something that we can provide our customers in terms of,

hey, what do you want to take over to the show?

What's actually resonating with consumers right now?

And that way they're not taking a bunch of stuff that they don't need.

Or they can't sell.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I mean, the interesting thing with the, with the internet now, and you know,

and this is very relevant to automotive, people are doing a lot of their research

before they come to the shows.

They're coming at the shows pretty much to, to pull the trigger on things.

Yeah, put your hands on it so you got a feel for it.

You know what you're looking for.

Exactly.

So, you know, the type of research people are doing is also very different.

So making sure that you have, you know, a stock of what people are looking

for is extremely important as well.

So as a consumer, do I have to pay you to access your information?

Well, on the stats survey side, we're only available for like businesses,

like what I was saying, banks, manufacturers.

Now on, on the marketplace side, consumers can go in there like a dealer

and sell their, their units, right?

If they want to sell an RV, if they want to sell a boat, if they want to sell a

motorcycle, an ATV, whatever it is, there is an opportunity for them to push their,

you know, their unit that they're not, they don't want any more to other dealers

or, or other private citizens to, to purchase as well.

So does that transaction become part of your data that you're watching for a certain area?

We don't get any of the private information.

We only get the dealer information.

So if the dealer sells it to a, to a private citizen, such as myself, that's

all registered in, in the DMVs and, and that information we, we do get access to.

Interesting.

Does the information that you supply to the dealers, let's say for instance,

that the boat was in an accident and it got repaired.

Do you happen to make note of that?

Yeah, it's, it's funny that you're saying, saying that we actually are starting to put

that information on our websites, kind of like Carfax where we have a different version of it.

That's actually being applied to each of the listings on the, on the marine side.

We're looking to open that up for other areas that we also do business with.

Interesting.

So, yeah, go ahead, Mike.

Well, I'm just kind of wondering, I'm envisioning the RVs, the motorcycles,

the, the jet skis, cars, all that stuff.

Do you get into other areas or is it kind of based on the fact that you can get your

information from the DMV or a database type thing?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I mean, the DMV information is just very base information, right?

I know where something was, was registered.

I know when, I know what it is, but it's very basic.

So we kind of get that basic information and we supplement it with all sorts of other sources.

We got information directly from the manufacturers, we got it from dealers, we got it from banks.

So we compile all that and kind of give a really rounded view of what's happening in the market.

So it's just not one source that we're depending on.

We are actually gathering it from many different bits of information to kind of get a good view.

So could, could a company, let's say in wheel time,

that was interested in knowing who is selling cars, where's the hot cars in the Houston market area?

Could somebody like us come to you and say, hey, we want these zip codes or this

market area of Houston.

We want to know like who's selling the most cars or the top three cars.

Yeah, so obviously we don't do cars, but anything if you want to know for RVs, we can

definitely tell you who are the top selling dealers in Houston.

And because we're, we're collecting and know who is selling that, we also know what they're selling,

you know, we, and because we're been in business for, for decades since the 60s,

we have data, you know, on the RV side for the last two to three decades in terms of who's selling

what and when and how and stuff like that.

Very interesting.

Well, listen, it's great to talk to you.

We sure appreciate you taking the time to explain all that.

All of us car freaks wonder about that sometimes are going, well, let's see,

there is this little travel trailer I've been looking at.

So you would have that information and probably your dealer would also have that information.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we try to tell dealers to use it as much as they can, go in with all eyes open and make

a decision that that's based on data.

Well, you know, hunting season's coming up down here in Texas and we're kind of looking for

a little two-man travel trailer so we could take the wife out there in the hill country.

Yeah, up to the deer camp.

Two men.

Yeah.

Well, there's that.

But Shannon, thank you.

We appreciate your time, man.

Thanks folks.

Really appreciate it.

Yeah, you bet.

That is very interesting.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, just ahead, Jeff has the racing calendar and Mr.

Mars has this week in auto history and I'm going to bring you some of the stories

making automotive news headlines this week and we got some goodies for you.

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About this episode

Shannon Pinto from Trader Interactive discusses how real-time registration data and marketplace behavior are transforming dealer strategies in the automotive and recreational vehicle sectors. He explains how Trader Interactive compiles extensive data from DMVs and consumer interactions to help dealers make informed decisions about inventory and marketing. The conversation highlights the importance of understanding consumer preferences and market trends, especially as the industry adapts to changing consumer behaviors and technological advancements.

Chevrolet Chrysler electric vehicle infrastructure Formula One General Motors horsepower moving assembly line NHRA OPEC oil embargo Petit Le Mans

Ford F-150 Ford F-150 Lightning Ford Model T

Original notes

Shoppers are researching harder and buying faster, and the old guesswork about what to stock is getting expensive. We sit down with Shannon Pinto, VP of Statistical Surveys at Trader Interactive, to pull back the curtain on how real DMV registrations and real-time marketplace behavior from RV Trader, Cycle Trader, and Boatline turn into a clear picture of demand—down to the ZIP code, make, model, and even RV configurations like slide-outs and sleeping capacity. If you run an RV, marine, or powersports dealership, this is a tactical map for smarter inventory, sharper marketing, and better show results.

Shannon explains how their team blends DMV records with first-party search and click data to show what’s actually selling and what shoppers are hunting for right now. We walk through concrete use cases: choosing which units to haul to a combined auto and boat show, balancing new versus pre-owned mix by neighborhood, and targeting local demographics with creative that speaks to real buyers. We also talk access and privacy—why Statistical Surveys serves businesses, how private info stays protected, and how a Carfax-like history layer is rolling out for marine listings to help reduce risk for buyers and sellers.

Beyond the interview, we round out the episode with racing highlights, a tour through pivotal auto history moments—from early EV experiments and Ford’s moving assembly line to OPEC’s shock and Tesla’s supercharger buildout—and timely industry news, including supply chain impacts to aluminum-bodied trucks and a major lending investigation.

The throughline is simple: when you align registrations (what sold) with marketplace intent (what’s about to sell), you make better calls, faster. Subscribe, share this with a dealer friend who needs fewer hunches and more signal, and leave a review telling us the one metric you’d check first.

Be sure to subscribe for more In Wheel Time Car Talk!

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