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Dealers go overseas for the right stock
Page 71
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DEMAND IS NOW so high for powerful tractors with top-ofthe-range sleeper cabs that UK dealers are increasingly raiding other European markets in a bid to obtain them.
"We're after post-2000 Scania 460,530, and 580 units," says Tim Hodgson, sales manager at Eye, Suffolk, independent dealership Roy Humphrey. "They're not easy to get hold of Scania is managing to keep a lot of these vehicles within its own network — and we'll go anywhere to get them.That includes Holland and the Republic of Ireland as well as places in the UK such as Aberdeen and Stranraer, and we're paying good money for the trucks we need."
Dealers lucky enough to get hold of such desirable commodities are proving increasingly unwilling to take older tractors in part-exchange. An older tractor can be one that was first registered no more than five or six years ago, says Tim Robinson. sales manager responsible for used sales at Hull MAN/ERF dealership Torridon Commercial Vehicles.
"There used to be certain operators who would buy units up to 10 years old, sandblast the chassis, patch them up, and put them to work," he says.-For the most part, however, they've either disappeared, or are buying newer trucks on contract hire, and the vehicles they would have bought are being exported.
"So if you've got a decent tractor to sell, you've got to give hauliers offering old trucks in part-exchange a reality check. You may have to make it clear that you don't want them. There's no point in pretending that a truck is worth £10,000 when it will fetch only £6,000, and you don't need it anyway."
For most dealers the holiday season means their phones aren't ringing quite as much they were as a few weeks ago.
"I would say that we're seeing a 4-5% drop in business at present compared with previous months, although I suspect it's down nearer 10-15% industrywide," according to Graham Smith, MD ofThomas Hardie Used Vehicle Sales at Middlewich in Cheshire.
"We're still getting used vehicles away, but not in the volumes that we were," says Alan Perrins, used sales manager at Stoke-onTrent MAN/ERF dealership, Beech's Garage. "It's not steaming along in the way that it has been."