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Tesla surpasses BMW to become the 4th most valuable car company in the world

The short answer is that most car salespeople don’t earn a whole hell of a lot of money. Dealership salespeople average about 10 car sales per month, and earn an average of about $40k per year. If you do the math, that’s about $330 per car.

However, that’s not the whole story. There’s a vast discrepancy between great salespeople (who sell 20+ cars a month) and bad salespeople (who might struggle to sell 8 cars in a month). A salesperson who moves 20 cars a month is probably going to earn $6-$8k, while a salesperson who can only move 8 cars a month is likely to earn minimum wage.

There’s also the fact that the $330 per car average includes both new and used vehicle sales. New vehicle sales rarely pay $300+ commissions, while used cars can sometimes pay $1,000 commissions.

To sum up, I’d guess the average is close to $250 a car.

If you want to learn more, here’s how commission structures are setup at your average volume brand dealership:*

1. Almost all dealerships set a minimum commission amount, which is the least amount of money you can earn when selling a car. It can range from $75 to $200, depending on the dealership.

A car sale that results in the minimum commission is called a “mini” in the car business, and salespeople hate minis. For the most part, new vehicle sales are all minis. Unless you’re selling a hot model for sticker, you’re not likely to make more than $75 to $150 when you sell a new car.

2. Most dealers pay their salespeople a 25% commission rate, which is based on gross profit minus a “pack” fee. Pack is usually a few hundred dollars ($800) but can also be a percentage.

Example: You sell a used car for $3000 over cost. The commission rate is 25% after pack, and pack is $800.

$3000 gross profit – $800 Pack * 25% = $550 commission

According to the NADA, the average used car gross profit as of May 2013 was about $2400. However, this figure likely includes profits that salespeople never see…in addition to pack, most dealers charge ‘management fees’ and ‘inspection fees’ to their own inventory. That way they reduce commissions for salespeople and management even further.

I’d guess used car commissions industry-wide average about $300 per car.

3. Salespeople have a relatively low quota (8-12 units per month, depending on store and market). Salespeople who fall below the quota are hard to keep around, partially because they usually suck, and partially because they’re negative people who don’t make good money and consequently drag everyone’s energy down.

If you’re at quota, you get to keep your job. If you don’t, you’re at risk of being fired.

4. Salespeople who exceed their quota 20% or more often see an increase in their base commission rate.

If, for example, your quota is 8 cars and you sell 11, you may see all your commissions for the month increased from 25% to 30%. If you sell 15, you may see your commission go from 30% to 35%.

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The Science Behind Why You Can’t Read in the Car

For many of us, carsickness is the bane of every automotive experience: It’s always there, preventing us from navigating with our phone or even reading a book to pass the time without the sudden onset of a headache, cold sweats, and crippling nausea. It’s like being hungover, but without the fun drinking part that precedes it.

What exactly is going on here? Why do some of us fall violently ill just by glancing at a book in a moving car, while others can read through an entire road trip without any problem at all? Here’s the scientific lowdown on what makes carsickness tick, as well as what you can do to prevent (or at least minimize) its wickedly brutal effects.

The Motion Sickness Mystery

These days, the prevailing belief is that motion sickness arises from a disagreement between your eyes’ visual input and your inner ear’s sense of acceleration and/or movement. For instance, if you’re in a plane that starts to bank sharply to the left, your inner ear tells you you’re moving even though your eyes tell you you’re clearly sitting still in your seat. The same holds true for reading a book in a car, and anyone who’s ever gotten motion sickness in a movie theater knows the opposite can be just as uncomfortable.

It’s not that simple, though (why would it be?): The scientific community still isn’t 100-percent convinced that sensory disagreement alone is responsible for the motion sickness people experience in cars (or boats, or planes), nor are they sure why nearly one third of us are more sensitive to it than others, or why women seem to get it more than men — there simply isn’t a consensus, and since nobody’s funneling millions of dollars into motion sickness research, definitive answers don’t seem close at hand.

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Toddler Looks Delighted As Firefighters Try To Free Him From Locked Car

Firefighters in Cornwall, England rescued a 14-month-old from a car he had locked himself inside of on Friday.

The best part? The toddler looks delighted by the entire situation.

Kirsty Green, 27, left her son Brandon in the backseat of her car to load her recently purchased groceries into the trunk, per Metro. However, she accidentally left her car keys in the trunk along with the groceries.

Before she could get into her car to pop the trunk and retrieve her keys, Brandon activated the car’s central locking system, shutting himself in.

Green began to panic, and staff from the grocery store called for rescue.

A crew from Bude Community Fire Station soon showed up and attempted to free the toddler from the car using hand tools. But when a crew member noticed a two-pence coin in Brandon’s mouth, they decided to take quicker action, per the Independent.

Firefighters smashed a rear window, climbed through and returned the boy to his mother, uninjured.

Despite the stressful ordeal, Green seems to have taken a cue from her son and has a good sense of humor about the whole thing.

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Xiaomi’s latest all- rounder budget phone knocks it out of the park

Just about every segment of the travel industry is rife with rip-offs, but the folks who rent cars have risen gouging to an art form. The worst rip-offs are the extras that you often need for your trip and can’t obtain through alternative sources. Other bad ones include unconscionably high prices for options that you can avoid and various fees that are added onto base rates rather than included as they should be.

Fortunately, there are work-arounds that will allow you to bypass most of these rip-offs. But you have to be careful — car-rental providers want to overcharge you whenever they can. Here are seven ways to beat them at their own game.

Overpriced Insurance

Is rental-car collision insurance overpriced? Yes. Here’s how much: A car-rental company once informed travel agents that it could offer clients an unbeatable rate — $0 per day — provided only that the clients bought insurance.

Even though rental companies sometimes call their policies “insurance,” technically, they’re not. The policy is really a waiver of the company’s right to collect damages from you if you damage the rental. By whatever name, however, the price is outrageously high, at up to $30 per day in many cases. You know it’s overpriced when you can buy equivalent coverage from third-party sources — proprietors that make a profit — for less than $10 per day or get it free through your credit card.

Work-Around: Your regular auto insurance may cover you in a rented car, at least within the U.S., although many such policies do not pay for the full list of charges that rental companies add to a collision bill. You’re better off using the free coverage automatically provided on rentals charged to most AmEx, Diners Club, Discover, and Visa credit (not debit) cards, and many MasterCards. Except for Diners Club, however, most credit-card coverage is secondary for rentals in the U.S., which means you’ll first have to make your claim via your regular insurance; to avoid this situation, you can buy less expensive third-party collision coverage from the big online travel agencies (OTAs) such as Expedia and Priceline or independent sellers such as Protect Your Bubble, or you can convert your AmEx coverage to primary for about $25 per rental.

Fueling Gouges

Most rental companies give you three options for fuel: (1) Buy a full tank when you rent the car, (2) have the rental company refuel it when you return it, or (3) return it with a full tank. The first two options are complete rip-offs.

When you buy the full tank, the price may be close to the going rates locally, but that’s not the gouge. The gouge is that you get no credit for whatever fuel remains in the tank when you return the car. Instead, you donate it to the rental company. So unless Avis, Hertz, or Enterprise is your favorite charity, this option is a nonstarter.

When a rental company fills the car, it typically charges two to three times the local price per gallon (or liter). Last month, a reader reported being asked to pay €368 (about $500) to fill a tank that was at the three-quarters mark when returned. The reader assumed this was some sort of misprint, but the agent wouldn’t budge. (The reader got back in the car and drove to a gas station for a fill.)

Work-Around: The obvious work-around is to take the third option and fill up the tank just before you return the car. This means checking out available filling stations near the airport when you first rent your car so you’ll know where to get a refill. Be sure to get a receipt to prove that you filled the tank.