David Tingley is a former Western Canadian CDJR Dealer Principal with 30+ years in dealership operations. He started at the service advisor counter in 1984, worked through every department, and later led CDJR stores in both rural and metro markets.

In 2007, he founded n49 Labs to build and test dealer-owned visibility systems; search, video, and content architectures that dealers control. In 2014, he published the first Rig Ready RAM video series, years before “AI Overviews” became mainstream.

He writes The Contrarian Car Dealer: practical, dealer-first playbooks for the Generative Search era. His mission is to help small market CDJR stores become the local source Google’s AI Overview answers cite, using the website and staff they already have, not another vendor contract.

Focus areas:
• Dealer-owned visibility (GEO/SEO/GAS), not rented leads
• Provenance signals: real staff, real answers, real local proof
• RAM + fixed-ops authority systems built in-house, week by week

Based in Alberta, Canada.