When only way to get them in is through the front

They deserve it but good as they must be, I have seen the remains of a couple of bad days at the transporter. They seem to bend a little differently than in a car crash. There was a Pontiac dealer in our town who didn't use a floor plan with GM. They must have loved him whenever one went down, not their insurance I guess.

Dealers have to have a floor plan with someone, either the automaker's captive finance company, or the dealer's bank, so that the automakers are assured of payment when the drafts are sent. Dealers can choose to pay off the drafts immediately or leave the vehicles on the floor plan.

Who pays for damages or losses depends on when the damage occurs. Once the trucking company accepts the vehicle to deliver to the dealer, the trucking company is responsible for damages or losses until someone from the dealership signs for it. Once the dealer has signed for the vehicle, they are responsible for any damage until it is sold.

I defer to your knowledge vis a vis liability issues, but his staff claimed he was self financed and didn't use an outside source. How that would mesh with GM's requirements, I don't know. It wasn't a big dealership, but he did move new cars through the store. I even bought a '78 from him.

When a dealer says that they are self-financed or that they don't pay finance charges, what they really mean is that they pay off the drafts on the day that they hit their bank. Automaker franchise agreements require the dealer to have a line of credit sufficient to cover their inventory and to immediately transfer funds to the automaker when vehicles are drafted/invoiced, but dealers are free to pay off the drafts immediately as well.