Lot and porter tracking for dealership service departments
Nobody walks the lot looking for a car again.
LotFlow keeps a live list of which vehicle is on which lot, takes move requests from
your techs and advisers, and logs every porter move — from the lot to the tech bay,
to wash, and out to the customer. When someone asks where a car is, you answer from
the screen instead of from memory. Your own porters and your porter company's crew
work the same list, on the same account.
Try it yourself — it's a sample dealership, and you can sign in right now.
Login
demo@sampledealership.test
/
demo1234.
Every car, person and request on that board is made up, the login is shared, and
anything you do there only touches that sample store. Phone alerts are not part of
the demo.
Built and running inside one dealership's service department, and in pilot there
now. That's the whole reference list so far.
Example move log — stock 4C-118Illustration
7:42aBack lot → Bay 12
Porter: M. Alvarez · asked by adviser D. Moore
9:05aBay 12 → Wash
Porter: M. Alvarez
11:03aWash → Delivery lane
Porter: J. Ruiz · keys to customer
Sample entries written for this page — not a real store's cars or people. If a tech
or an adviser asks for a road test or a fuel run, that entry lands on the same log —
but most cars never need one.
No logos. No testimonials.
LotFlow is in pilot with one dealership service department, and we won't pad this page
with names, quotes or numbers we haven't earned. When a store agrees to be named,
you'll see it here.
"Where's the car?" is a question your service manager should never have to guess at.
In most service departments the answer lives in one person's head, a radio call, and a
whiteboard somebody wiped this morning.
The car is on the lot — nobody knows which part of it
A porter parks it, the adviser walks three rows looking for it, and the customer
sits at the drive wondering why their car isn't done. Ten minutes here, fifteen
there, every single day.
Move requests live on sticky notes and shouted across the shop
The tech needs the next car in Bay 12. The adviser wants one pulled up front. Wash
wants its turn. Nothing lands in one place, so whoever shouted loudest gets served
first.
When a car comes back different, there's nothing to check
A scratch, a missing floor mat, a tank that was fuller yesterday. Nobody can say
which porter had it, when, or where it sat in between. It becomes an argument
instead of a record.
What LotFlow keeps track of
Three things, done properly: where the cars are, what people are asking for, and who
moved what.
1
Which car sits on which lot
Every vehicle in service is on a named lot — front line, back lot, overflow,
delivery lane. Look up a stock number, plate, VIN or customer name and see the lot
it's parked on and who put it there.
2
Requests from techs and advisers
An adviser asks for 4C-118 in Bay 12 by nine. A tech asks for the next write-up.
Both land in one queue your porters work from, with who asked and when they asked.
3
Every porter move, logged
No move is invisible. Who took the car, where it came from, where it went, and what
time it got there. That's the record you show when someone asks what happened to
their car.
One car's day: lot, tech, wash, delivery — every stop on the record
This is the whole idea. A vehicle only ever moves because a person moved it, so every
move gets an entry: which car, from where, to where, who had the keys, and what time.
1
Lot
It starts parked on a named lot, with the stock number, plate and the porter who
parked it.
2
Tech bay
A request from a tech or adviser goes in, a porter takes the car in, and the bay and
time in are on the log.
3
Wash
Wash and detail queue, in and out, with the porter who took it and how long it sat.
4
Delivery
To the delivery lane and to the customer. The last move of that car's day, still on
the record.
Most cars never leave that path. A road test or a fuel run only happens when a tech or
an adviser asks for one — and when it does, it lands on the same log, same car, same
porter, same timestamps.
Miss a stop and the log shows a gap — which is exactly how you find out a car went
somewhere nobody wrote down.
Drawings · sample data · not screenshots
Two screens, and that's most of the job
The board is what a manager or a porter opens on a phone: how the day has gone, and
what is still waiting. New request is what an adviser or a tech fills in when a car
needs to move. Everything else in the product hangs off these two.
Cedar Valley Chevrolet
M. Okafor
12 open
Service manager · sign out
BoardNew requestWhere is itHistory
187 cars moved today
· 141 requests done, 44 logged to a lot, 2 cancelled, avg 14 min per request
(2 waiting for a porter, 10 working)
Tech needs car 62Pick up from lot 2Deliver to lot 21Customer pickup now 19Bring car up 4Test drive 5Car wash 26Get gas 2
P. Reyes 34 · M. Alvarez 29 · J. Ruiz 26 · T. Novak 24 · K. Sandoval 18 · D. Ibarra 10
OpenMineDone today
HIGH PRIORITY
#3127 · Customer pickup now
now
4471RO 61820 Tahoe …B7C1D9
Adv D. MooreM. Alvarez on it
Parked: Front Line
“Customer is in the lounge, pulling it up now.” D. Moore, 4 min ago
#3128 · Tech needs car
now
8261RO 61824 XC60 …A1B2C3
Adv D. MooreNobody yet
Parked: Back Lot · silver XC60
#3129 · Car wash
now
3394
By J. RuizNobody yet
Parked: Service Drive
Board. The day's shape at the top —
cars moved, the split, average time per request, a count for every request type, and
a count for every porter. Below it, what is still waiting.
Cedar Valley Chevrolet
D. Moore
12 open
Advisor · sign out
BoardNew requestWhere is itHistory
What needs to happen
Tech needs car
Pick up from lot
Deliver to lot
Customer pickup now
Bring car up
Test drive
Car wash
Get gas
Which car
8261
RO # (optional)
Tag or RO is enough. Add the rest only if it helps find the car.
Add model, last 6 of VIN, advisor
Note
Tech is waiting in Bay 12 — keys at the desk.
Send: Tech needs car
New request. Eight things you can
ask for, one form. Tag or RO number is enough — the car gets found from that.
Both screens above are drawings, not screenshots
The store is called Cedar Valley Chevrolet,
and it does not exist. Every car, every tag number, every count and every name on this
page was written for this page. No real dealership's data, customer's vehicle or
porter's name appears anywhere above — we won't put one dealer's board on the open
internet to sell to another.
What is real is the shape of it: the four tabs, the eight request buttons and
their wording, the day summary and its arithmetic, the tag-or-RO rule. Those are the
product as it stands today, so a dealer who takes a demo sees the same words in the
same places. The numbers are plausible and they are samples.
If you would rather use the board than look at a drawing of it,
open the sample board
and sign in with
demo@sampledealership.test
/
demo1234.
That one is the product itself rather than a picture of it — a sample dealership
whose cars, people and requests are all invented, behind a shared sample login.
Everything you do there stays in that sample store, and phone alerts are not part of
it.
Built for the people who run the lot
A service department runs on two crews. There's your own staff — the service manager,
the advisers, the porters — and at most stores there's also the porter or valet
company you contract to move the cars. LotFlow puts both of them in one account.
The store is the customer and writes the
cheque. The porter company's people sign in to your store and work the same
board.
✓Your people and your contractor, one list.
Your advisers raise requests, your own porters claim them — and so do the porter
company's crew, from their own logins, in the same store. Nobody texts the
morning's cars to anybody.
✓The contractor gets access, not a spreadsheet.
They see the same cars, work the same queue and their moves land on the same log
as your own staff's. Their porters are named on every card they take, which is the
part that settles "who had it last".
✓A single rooftop service department.
One store, one lot map, a handful of porters. That's what the pilot runs on today.
✓Stores with several lots.
Front line, back lot, overflow, delivery lane — each one named, so "back lot" means
the same thing to everybody on the radio.
✓Groups with more than one store.
Not yet — running several rooftops under one login isn't built. Tell us what you
run and we'll be honest about where that stands.
What's built today, and what isn't
You're looking at a product in pilot, not a finished platform. Here's the plain
version.
No email, anywhere
LotFlow doesn't send email. Not to you, not to your customers. When you send the
request form, it's stored and a person reads it and follows up with you directly.
It doesn't talk to your DMS
There's no write-back to your DMS today. LotFlow covers the part the DMS doesn't:
where the car physically is and who moved it. If a DMS feed matters to you, say so
on the request form.
One rooftop at a time today
The pilot runs on a single store. Running several rooftops under one login is the
next thing being built — if you run more than one store, tell us and we'll be
straight about where that stands.
Priced per store, per month
$399 a month for one store, unlimited users: your own staff and the porter
company's crew are all included, with no per-user charge and nothing to cancel.
A pilot runs 30 days free.
How a pilot runs
A pilot is one store running LotFlow alongside whatever you use today — the
whiteboard stays up, the radio stays on — so you can see the difference without
betting the department on it.
1
Tell us about your lot
Fill in the form. How many lots, how many porters, how many cars a day, and
what you'd fix first. It's read by a person, not a robot.
2
We set your store up
Your lot names, your porters, your advisers. You keep running the department
the way you run it, and the moves start landing on the log.
3
Two weeks in, we read the log together
Where cars actually sat, how long they waited, what the porters stopped
radioing about. You decide whether it stays.
What we'll tell you up front: it's sold per
store, per month at $399 — one store, unlimited users, month to month. A pilot is
free for 30 days, with no card and nothing to cancel. There's no email automation,
and one store at a time is what's working today. A pilot is a conversation, not a
contract.
Request a pilot demo
Tell us about your store and we'll follow up with you directly. A person reads every
one of these.
The request form lives on our pilot site — this button opens it there, in the same
tab.
No autoresponder and no drip emails — LotFlow has no email integration at all, so
nothing is sent to you automatically. Your request is stored where a person reads
it, and we follow up ourselves.
Would rather look first? Open the sample board
and sign in with the shared sample login printed at the top of this page.