Charging ahead
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Rental company MV Commercial opens a new site at Haydock, Lancashire, as it makes good on its recent deal with defunct TLS and looks to forge ahead
Words / Images: Kevin Swallow
Livingston-based rental company MV Commercial has opened a new depot at Haydock after its recent deal with former hire company TLS.
MV Commercial’s £4.5m deal with TLS for rolling stock and customers last year (CM 16 December 2010) – as latter exited the market – accelerated the need for a presence in the North-West to service new and existing customers.
Martin Shaw, rental director, explains: “In 2008, as the recession hit, we had to consolidate the business. We had access to a site in Bolton, but we took ourselves out of the NorthWest and tended to customers through third-party suppliers.” MV Commercial had a depot in Scotland and one in Leighton Buzzard, and 350 miles in between to cover. More than 60% of its customer base is between Birmingham and Carlisle. So the company approached Ballyvesey Holdings and struck a deal for access to a nine-bay workshop, ofices and vehicle storage at its Mercedes-Benz franchise Intercounty depot.
“We are now 45 minutes away from 75% of the customer base,” he says.
MV only employs four people on site. “To be perceived as a national player, as well as trying to grow the business, it was important to have access to a facility like this,” he says.
“The MV Commercial philosophy is to stick to what it’s good at. A lot of hire businesses want to own premises, workshops, almost becoming CV dealers. When you reach a certain level, you need that. However, we buy and sell trucks – that is our core business – so we need our people focusing on that, not running workshops or on mechanics’ productivity levels and all the variables with running workshops,” he says.
Now, he adds, the irm needs to look at developing the business. “We feel we can make a massive impact in this area; the next six months are about organic growth,” he says. Shaw adds that growth won’t be coming from chasing major leet deals with multi-national blue-chip businesses. “The typical MV business customer is small-to-medium sized enterprises that have 20 trucks or less.
“It’s easy to grow through national accounts; you can do 200 vehicles in one deal, but it’s a balance of risk and credit, and we have always found that, with businesses like ourselves targeting the big logistic operators, you end up working for them. So the MV business model is that a customer is not more than 10% of the business,” he says. ■