Are dealer “freight” fees legit?

Have no problem marking freight up. But just do some homework when a dealer tries to charge $ 800 for freight. Or $ 700 for set up. I'm sure plenty pay for it but not all are that easy to get over on. 

   Selling the bike with the fees inclusive is tough these days, that was how I always did it because it felt it was bullshit to add all these fees on top of the bike price. Include them in now, get it over with. You say the bike is $8000, but then add on $500 for the ECU, how the hell is that helping anyone? 

  The problem I ran into more and more was the other dealers pricing the bike low, then adding the fees on after you start wring the deal up. More often than not the OTD price was more than at my dealership with my higher quoted price. A few of the smart customers would see this, walk and and come to my shop to buy the unit and save money. Sadly, fewer and fewer people can figure this out today.

look at the destination charge on a new full size van. 1800$ for a Transit. A dealer can't absorb that unless they are marking up the msrp.

Shipping costs are a lot more for vans than motorcycles. 

The old saying goes, if you don’t like the prices, start a place yourself and keep it alive. Tune usually changes pretty quick.  

Freight by design is to be added into the invoice of the unit, it’s up to the dealer if they want to return that charge back to the customer. Some do some don’t, some also add on extra $ on top of the fright thinking the average customer won’t go on the manufacturer website and look up the freight for that model. Lot of crooks out there.

They might have to. Trucking rates hv been crashed for quite a while.  If bikes went on load boards . You would get the bike delivered for 60 bucks.  LTL co.s with real cargo insurance etc deliver your bikes.  I doubt they charge 800.  These bikes hv seen numerous insides of trailers & different warehouses b4 you get it.  I would be great full the bike made the journey. 

The destination fee that the manufacturer charges the dealers varies by model and is listed on the manufacturer’s website.  Side by sides cost far more to ship for obvious reasons.  If a dealer charges more for freight than what is listed on the manufacturer’s website, they are making additional profit.  If a dealer doesn’t charge freight, the dealer is truly eating the cost of the freight, because I assure you that they paid for it when the bike was invoiced.

MSRP is what the manufacture suggest the bike gets sold for.  This originally included the fees.  Somehow, somewhere along the way, we've gotten to the point where dealers are getting 12, 13, 14k for bikes with msrp at 9600.  People have, and will continue to pay for them, but eventually the way we are going, if we haven't gotten there yet, the average person will simply be priced out of the sport, similar to most forms of racing. 

Supply and demand.

I don’t think that MSRP has ever been meant to be inclusive of ‘fees’, as every area could have significantly different fees required by their local and state governments. Things like ‘prep’ have always seemed to be separate from MSRP, but I’ve only been paying attention since around ‘77 or ‘78. 
 

The ‘market adjustment’ is the item that seems to be the newest and most arbitrary, like the old automotive ‘second sticker’. Those are the ones that are the hardest to justify from a rational standpoint, and have mostly been a tool to make some buyers believe that they are getting a ‘discount’ when the salesperson drops them lower. Until the higher demand that began in 2020, of course, then people actually started paying those quite a bit more than in the past. 

MSRP does not and never has included fees. 

How in the world is this ever being downvoted?  Dealership simps?

If in the middle of these 9 or 10 pages I’ve commented before I claim old age.

What blows my mind is how much less Beta Dealer Fees are than Jap or Austrian.  At least the Beta dealer I bought my 300 RX from was.  I’m of the opinion Jap and Austrian fees, all of them are inflated both ends, factory and dealer.  I don’t mind paying for something if I’m getting something but I struggle being over charged.