Toyota Motor Sales USA (toyota,com) is the U.S. distributor of cars and trucks built by Toyota (i.e., it is asubsidiary of Toyota). The company buys the cars at the Toyota factories in Japan and elsewhere, takes ownership of the vehicles, and then sells them to Toyota dealers across the United States. An averagevehicle costs $8/day to keep while in transit. Because it used to take 9 to 10 days in transit, the financialcharge was $72 to $80 per car. For 2 million cars per year, the cost to the company was $144 to $160million per year. This was too much.