Who guides the guides?
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OVERLOOKING the staircase in a large and rather grand house in Weybridge, Surrey, is a portrait of William Glass. For the house is now the headquarters of Glass's Guide Service, publisher of the ubiquitous monthly trade handbooks on used vehicle prices and, it was the sternlooking William Glass who founded the business back in 1933.
His first guide was for car prices and although that celebrated its half century last year its commercial vehicle stablemate did not arrive until 1951. Since then, Glass's Guide to Commercial Vehicle Values has enjoyed 33 years of uninterrupted monopoly. That is, until last month, when Procter Nolan and Partners of Skipton in North Yorkshire launched its CAP Red Book.
CAP is the acronym for current average prices and the Red Book covering commercial vehicles joins the CAP Black Book on car prices which was introduced four years ago.
The compilers of the Red Book say that they are not trying to force Mr Glass's portrait down off the wall, but would like to make him look over his shoulder. They say that commercial vehicle dealers want a more comprehensive guide to prices than Glass's and that is what they have aimed at with their first edition last month.
Back at Glass's, commercial vehicle editor John Ovington pointed out that the commercial vehicle guide is very much number two to the company's car guide. The commercial guide sells 20,000 copies a month; John Ovington estimated that 45,000 commercial dealers sub scribe while the remaining copies are for car dealers who need the commercial vehicle edition for the prices of the carderived and light vans.
John Ovington likened the monthly task of compiling the guide to the completion of a jig saw — the information on prices comes from a number of sources. Dealers and fleet owners are encouraged to write and make returns on the vehicles bought and sold and there are people working in the field who are trusted and paid by Glass's to provide information.
Glass's people also work through the used vehicle co lumns in national and local papers, noting the asking prices while John Ovington and his as sistant get out and about as much as possible to visit the dealers and auctions. This they find particularly valuable because they can see the actual vehicles and so relate their condition to price.
Using this information, Glass's will update the prices in the previous month's edition; they do not build in an automatic proportional decrease in prices.
John Ovington said that if there is no information that month on a particular model its price will not be altered. In practice, at least 50 per cent of the values in the guide change.
John Ovington welcomes any feedback from dealers who feel that prices are inaccurate and said he is perfectly willing to make changes. And if a sub scriber needs a value that is not listed, Glass's will give an opinion over the telephone.
At the back of Glass's there is a section on used motor caravan prices. John Ovington justifies its inclusion on the basis that they are all conversions of commercial chassis.
The main body of Glass's contains the true commercial vehicle prices, starting with a section on vans and lorries up to 16 tons gvw and followed by two very much shorter sections on tippers (four, six and eightwheelers) and tractive units.
Looking at the vehicles listed in this main body of Glass's it is immediately apparent that it is by no means comprehensive.
John Ovington explained how he decides which vehicles are included and which are not: "We use the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders registration figures to find out which models are selling in significant numbers. Today's new vehicles are tomorrow's old ones so by watching the sale of new ones we know how many will be changing hands in the future and the need for a guide to their values."
Following this principle Glass's has just included the Ford P100 and Bedford Astravan in the latest editions. Heavier commercials will be considered for inclusion when they have sold upwards of 100 units in a year.
"We like to have some actual information about the values before we put them into the guide," explained John Ovington.
The vast number of commer
cial vehicle variants available by virtue of engine, wheelbase and body options means that the compilation of a commercial vehicle price guide is far more complex than a car guide.
Glass's takes care to choose the most popular combinations of engine, wheelbase, etc, and leaves the dealer's salesman to make the necessary price adjustments to suit the particular vehicle.
Using this selection method Glass's hopes to cover the vast majority of the used vehicles on the market despite including a far smaller proportion of the models actually produced.
It aims at good coverage of the van and lighter end of the market but as vehicles get heavier and sales volumes decline Glass's becomes weaker by virtue of its selection policy. For instance, in the January edition, tractive unit values account for just 11 pages whereas even motor caravans cover 18 pages.
Currently, Glass's quotes values back to 1976. Values of vans will begin to appear once the model is one year old, reflecting the speed with which lighter vehicles come onto the used market. Models in the 3.516 ton range appear in the guide after two years while it is up to three years for the tractive units.
Against each value in the guide Glass's has an assumed mileage based on the vehicle's age and a typical annual mileage. John Ovington uses seven different mileage rates to suit the class of vehicle, ranging from 48,000 miles a year for a tractive unit to just 8,000 miles a year for a Land Rover. Glass's introduction stresses that the retail price quoted is for vehicles in an average condition (loosely defined) after preparation for sale. Once again dealers must make the appropriate adjustments to the price to take account of condition and mileage.
This answers a common criticism about the guide and the people who use it. Too often, it is alleged that salesmen will value a customer's vehicle without even bothering to look at it, leaving the customer the impression that the guide is all-powerful.
John Ovington admits that this does occasionally happen but feels it is more prevalent in the car world and that insurance companies and finance houses in particular are sometimes guilty of this misuse. He would prefer the salesman to inspect the actual vehicle, assess its value and then use the guide to check his opinion.
The only six or eight-wheelers covered in Glass's are tippers. Again, this is a selective assumption which is extended by the decision to quote their values on the basis that they have a steel, end-tipping body. The 3,5-16 ton gvw vehicles in Glass's are valued with a dropside body fitted.
In order to adjust the values for other types of body the commercial vehicle dealer needs to be more knowledgeable than his car counterpart. He must also take into account regional price differences; Glass's can only quote a national average.
Until recently, Glass's was aimed purely at the motor trade dealers but lately this policy has been eased and commercial vehicle fleet operators are now welcome subscribers as well. John Ovington said that he would have been deluding himself if he thought that fleet operators could not have seen the guide in the past and he knows that the operators who dispose of their own vehicles need it just as much as the dealer.
Glass's commercial vehicle guide is published on the 15th of each month. Two weeks before it on the first of the month the CAP Red Book appears. The first edition last month showed a fresh approach based around the CAP premise that the commercial dealers want a guide that shows more information and covers a wider range of vehicles. The guide is more obviously angled towards the commercial vehicle market; there are no motor caravans.
Comparing January editions, the CAP Red Book has 240 pages of used commercial vehicle values whereas Glass's, excluding the motor caravans, has 116.
John Ovington would doubtless question the need for the inclusion of many of the lesspopular models but even the Red Book shows signs of pruning to keep it down to a manageable size. In some cases alternative wheelbase options are mentioned but not priced while in the mass of Ford DSeries options for instance, the more popular D1414 is valued while the less powerful D1411 is only mentioned as an alternative.
The Red Book is arranged differently from Glass's with a first section covering vans up to 3.5 tonnes gvw with either panel van, dropside or minibus bodywork. Then comes a blue-tinted section specifically covering Luton vans up to 3.5 tonnes gvw, with a note that box-bodied versions should be valued similarly.
Vehicles from 3.5 tonnes to 38 tonnes come in the third and largest section of the book and it is here that it really overshadows Glass's in the range of models valued. For example, the Bedford TK and TL variants account for six pages in Glass's; it is 13 pages in the Red Book. The CAP Red Book compilers obtain their information in much the same way as Glass's. Red Book commercial vehicle editor Dorothy Bebb and national sales manager Wally Hill both emphasised the role of the auctions these days and said how important it is to attend these and see the vehicles as they go through and the prices they fetch — a point echoed by John Ovington at Glass's.
The dealers are still important but Dorothy Bebb observed that an allowance has to be made for a dealer's natural leaning towards his own franchise.
Looking at the CAP Red Book it is apparent that its compilers are more willing to make an educated guess at a vehicle's value if they have no factual information about prices — something that Glass's is not inclined to do. For instance, the Red Book lists a value for a used ERF M16 16tonner although the model was introduced only in June last year and surely cannot be on the secondhand market already? Nino is listed, Mack and White are not, Ebro soon, maybe.
The amount of price information on each model is also greater in the Red Book. For vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes gvw three mileage examples are quoted plus a rule of thumb guide to adjust prices up or down by half a per cent per thousand miles.
In the tractive unit entries, prices for the day cab and sleeper are included where applicable, as are many of the engine options. A nice touch is the use of kilometres rather than miles in the 3.5-tonne-plus section to tie in with the use of kmcalibrated tachographs.
Instead of a single trade price as in Glass's, the Red Book lists three trade prices to represent clean, average and rough condition which are all broadly defined in the introduction.
One dilemma faced by both guides' publishers is how to list the vehicles from those manufacturers who insist on changing their name or identity. Is a Dodge Commando to be found under D for Dodge or K for Karrier? Where do you find Renault? Is Fiat under Fiat or lveco?
In these cases the CAP Red Book has chosen to ignore the existence of Karrier and lists Re nault and Dodge under their individual names. In the 3.5-tonne plus section Fiat is under the lveco heading but with a useful cross-reference from Fiat.
Glass's has faithfully followed the manufacturers' wishes (but without the cross-references) and has, for example, noted the recent change from Datsun to Nissan; used models are listed as Datsun (Nissan) while in the new price section it is carefully transposed to read Nissan (Datsun).
Now for the $64,000 question: Do both guides agree on the values they quote? Yes and no. Because of their different presentation, direct comparison is not as simple as one might think.
Broadly speaking, the two are fairly close on their van prices where the options are simpler and where high sales mean that plenty of used price information is available. Very often there is £100 or so variance, which is explained by a different mileage being quoted.
Moving up to the middleweights the differences are more marked, but not as far as I could see, consistently in one direction. Comparison is even more difficult here because of the wide choice of body types — Glass's opts for the dropside while CAP Red Book usually lists three types from a choice of platform, boxyan, tipper or dropside.
The variation can be considerable. Take the case of a Leyland Boxer 14.25 tons gvw with the 16ft 9in wheelbase option and a dropside body. According to the Red Book a realistic retail price for a 1981 (W-reg) example with 105,000km (65,000 miles) on the clock is £5,025. Glass's suggest a retail price for the same vehicle with a similar mileage would be £4,150. In the tractive units there are again some anomalies, even allowing for the fact that the Red Book works on a lower annual mileage; for example, for a 1980 unit, the Red Book quotes 225,000km (1 40,00 0 miles) whereas Glass's works on 296,000km (184,000 miles).
Some of the Volvo tractive unit prices are notably at odds, A 1981 (W-reg) F7-32 unit with sleeper cab and 175,000km (109,000 miles) on the clock is given in the Red Book a realistic retail price of £14,300. In Glass's the same model is assumed to have a slightly higher mileage (218,000km, equal to 134,000 miles) but a much lower retail price of £11,350.
Leyland Marathon and Lynx tractive unit prices stand out as being much lower in the Red Book but here Dorothy Bebb freely admits that she took bad advice on these and got it wrong in their first edition — it would be corrected in this month's.
Some other prices, she said, needed "fine tuning" but considering this was the first month that was not surprising. Like Glass's, she and her assistants on the Red Book welcome comments and information from the trade.
According to national sales manager Wally Hill the first edition of the Red Book has been well-received. It costs more than Glass's (£45 for a year's subscription compared with £38 for Glass's) and is aimed at fleet operators just as much as the dealers. "We are sure that the Red Book is a serious rival to Glass's on the commercial side. We are not trying to knock Glass's off its pedestal. We would be perfectly happy if dealers used both. It's another tool which must be helpful. But it should be used as a guide, not a bible,"