Jobbers aren't like the grocery store. Their job is to deal with industrial customers - and source parts and deliver them to the site.
The companies that most of these guys buy from will not sell to you (I used to be a manager at a large bearing distributor and generally only sold to jobbers).
They operate a little bit differently around here. There was never enough large industry in the state to warrent the kind of distribution like you have in the larger cities, and most of that has long since gone the way of the buffalo.
These places around here are still stuck in rural small town 1950's catalog store mentality. They'll sell to you all right. They still think that they're the only game in town and that you have to deal with them and them alone and you have to put up with however they want to treat you, and they expect you to come in, pay them , up front , to have them order a part, at a minimum of 100% markup, plus pay the shipping expense on top of that , sight unseen, with no right of refusal..
That's about the only thing I miss about living in Ca. you need parts, swing into any industrial park and swing a dead cat and you're in business , you generally talk to people knowlegable in their product line, and you don't go broke in the process.
Around here it's two laps around the middle of the state and a whole lot of phone calls( and just about every single place you call in this state for a part, will lie and tell you they have it on the shelf, every time to get you in the door, then they all cry in their coffee at the chamber of commerce meetings about how everyone is mean to them and buys everthin' on the internet now
) and web sites to get things gathered up. Today I just put in over 260 miles running to town and running circles around the state capitol today chasing parts, that netted me a handful of body bolts, a nice JIC replacement line for the pain in the hind end fuel feed line to the injection pump a pump gasket , a pair of heated motorized mirrors and a davco filter wrench... and THAT was what I consider a productive parts run day around here.
You wouldn't believe how many "specialty supply houses " I was in today that netted me a wide variety of creative dumb looks and no parts..including the Ford dealer..as usual.
I'm beat.