PartsNow.ai launched recently as a search tool for heavy-duty truck parts. It's effectively an AI agent with chat, photo-recognition and voice functionality to access a network of trusted distributors to source the right truck part -- whether you need an OEM or aftermarket option.
How one rep described it in a press release issued March 25: "You tell us what you need -- type it, say it, or even upload a photo of the broken part or the truck’s VIN -- and our AI identifies the exact component and sources it from our network of distributors. You buy directly from PartsNow, and we handle the rest.”
It's a collaboration between the TalkRev software company and PartsNow.ai President Steve Fultz, a trucking industry vet who runs Knoxville, Tennessee-headquartered Knox Trailers and the Post Onsite tank test/repair shop, longtime in the petroleum-haul equipment business. Fultz in 2025 also opened a parts facility focused on powered heavy-duty equipment due east in Crossville called KP Services Truck & Trailer Parts, which Fultz and company this year expanded into maintenance and repair.
Fultz met TalkRev CEO Manna Justin two decades ago, when Justin helped him sort out a big problem. Fultz was working with another business supporting churches, youth groups and bands, and had ordered a shipping container full of t-shirts, shipped all the way from India.
Turned out, they just "weren't what we had ordered," Fultz said, and Manna Justin's work way back then essentially resolved the issue for him.
The pair have kept up with each other ever since, Justin running a longtime software development company with teams in India and Spain, Fultz with his Knoxville businesses.
As Fultz watched TalkRev take off over the last few years with a voice-assisted service for golf-course reservations, "we started looking at how we could automate what I do selling parts," Fultz said.
He envisioned a user calling in with a VIN number of a particular trailer model, describing the problem/part needed, and AI handling the order details prior to pick and delivery.
PartsNow.ai is the result, currently offering access to ready inventory in Fultz's businesses' network but also capable of extending the search to the catalogs of partner distributors like VIPAR Heavy Duty and others supplying the Knox/Post companies.
Results? It's got potential, Fultz said, to take what might be a "ten-minute ordering process down to a three-minute" one, removing some of the cumbersome searching parts-counter pros might need to go through with a customer at initial search.
Take some of the stress, too, off second- and third-shift parts pros, he added, often enough working alone and in high demand.
Browse search options (with voice-assist in both English and Spanish available) at the company website.
Fultz noted the system's built on structured data from a host of different sources but includes parts data direct fom "vendors and manufacturers."
My own call into the service -- try it yourself at 865-486-4003 -- went well enough. I had diesel-exhaust-fluid filters on the brain after owner-operator Hec Hiltabrand's advice on not overlooking filter-service intervals during a panel discussion at the Mid-America Trucking Show.
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I told the congenial-sounding male voice that answered (complete with minimal ambient-shop-sounding noise in the background) I was looking for a DEF filter for a 2022 Volvo.
That's probably a VNL with the D13 engine? the voice came back.
Yes, that's right, I said. (Nice guess and correction of this human's nonspecific query.)
Let me check on that ...
Fultz's direct inventory didn't include any such filter, but the voice then offered to look for the part and get back in contact.
I didn't really need a DEF filter, of course, whether pump or filler-neck filter to the tank (the voice assistant didn't ask which one). I declined the offer, and thanked the "gentleman" for his time.
Had I taken him up on it, though, Justin noted, the system's designed then to search supplying distributors' inventories to locate the necessary parts, following up after to confirm, arrange payment, and ship to Fultz's KP locations or directly to the customer.
A successful order fulfilled through PartsNow.ai's voice agent will text you a link to the website for payment and shipping details. (Parts buyers can also use the website for text, chat and online lookup, with similar functionality.)
[Related: Nontraditional truck parts-sourcing strategies on the rise]
Overdrive's sister publication TPS, for dealer and aftermarket pros, published audience-survey results just this week indicating a relative few respondents signal "AI search" as their preferred parts lookup tool. Yet just more than 5% of respondents isn't nothing.
Harbor Truck Parts counterman Isaac Muñoz noted tools like Chat GPT already have a deep library that can be used like an online search would be. Distributors like Harbor often point to cross transparency among vendors on parts information potentially improving effectiveness of online resources, likewise increasing speed in parts' ultimately delivered to the customer.
As TPS editor Lucas Deal wrote, "Distributors believe manufacturers make cross referencing far more opaque than it should be."
Increasingly, adoption of AI agents like those TalkRev's developed might speed things up, too. Fultz noted that "we're in conversation with distributors" across the nation "to be able to do the pick, pack and ship themselves, so it doesn't have to run through one of our warehouses."
TPS's survey showed preferred parts lookup tools among maintenance/parts pros, but a lot of opinion there depends on the particular shops' partners. And you can probably expect some among distributors to adopt TalkRev and other AI-assist lookup systems, too, Manna Justin said. "Many want it for themselves."
Yet whether or not a distributor takes that leap, PartsNow.ai can be that e-commerce avenue to any end user, including the individual truck owner. "The platform currently features a catalog of more than 50,000 parts, with additional distributors coming soon," the company noted. For distributors without an e-commerce-type infrastructure "this model gives distributors a new sales channel."
PartsNow reps will be on-hand this week, April 14-16, at the M-PACT fuel-business trade show in Indianapolis.
Read more about the TPS survey, and the parts-search landscape how mechanics and parts pros see it, via this link. Which outlets do you most use for parts sourcing? Drop us a comment or get in touch directly with any insight.
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