International Puts 400,000 Parts Online, Selling All-Makes Beside Its Own OEM

Buyers open an account, attach it to one of the 600-plus International and IC Bus dealer locations in North America, then search by VIN, vehicle, SKU or category. The site shows live stock and delivery timing across three sources at once — the selected dealer, the 10 parts distribution centers International runs in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and its digital channels. That network moves 6.6 million parts a year out of 2.7 million square feet of warehouse, against a stated target of filling 95% of orders within 24 hours.

Orders ship to the dealer or straight to the yard. National fleets get an API to wire the catalog into their own purchasing systems, and the site keeps order history for reorders. "Find the part, see where it is, know when you'll have it – all without picking up the phone," said Jordan Birch, vice president of parts at International. "That's what keeps trucks earning."

Fleetrite is not new. International has sold the all-makes brand since 1969, and it now spans more than 100 product lines and roughly 10,000 active part numbers covering trucks, tractors, trailers and buses regardless of who built them. What is new is the shop window. Putting Fleetrite next to OEM parts in one searchable catalog, with prices visible before you commit, aims the dealer counter at work it used to lose outright — the Freightliner or Peterbilt sitting in a mixed fleet that nobody was going to phone an International dealer about.

The warranty is the lever. Fleetrite carries an 18-month parts-and-labor warranty, but only when the part is installed at an International or IC Bus dealer. Order it online and fit it in your own bay and you have bought the part, not the coverage.

Two things to check first. The price on screen is your selected dealer's price, so pick the dealer before you judge whether the number is competitive, and reprice if you run trucks within reach of more than one. And VIN search solves fitment for International units only — it does nothing for the rest of a mixed fleet. For a Volvo, Kenworth or Freightliner, confirm the Fleetrite number actually supersedes the OEM number you are replacing; running both part numbers through an interchange lookup takes a minute and catches the near-miss supersessions that send rebadged all-makes parts back in the box.

For anyone weighing whether to route all-makes work through a dealer at all, the comparison worth running this week is per-unit: dealer price plus the 18-month installed warranty, against your current distributor price plus your own labor. On a brake drum or an oil filter the warranty rarely pays for itself. On an alternator, an air compressor or an EGR cooler it can. Pull the specs and fitment for the model years you run and start that math with the units whose components you are already replacing twice.