CTR profits surge ahead
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• Europe's largest trailer ren tal company, Central Trailer Rentco, boosted its turnover by 54% to 276.2tri and profits by 35% to 28.1m in the 12 months to April this year.
The figures, which do not indude the acquisition of Trailerent in May, helped parent company Tiphook to nearly double its profits for the year to £33.1m, on turnover up from £108.7m to £174.7m.
Rodney Stoyel, managing director of Central Trailer Rentco, says the company's trailer fleet now stands at 26,000 units throughout Europe: 17.5% more than last year. He claims that trailer utilisation is at least as high as this time last year with many hauliers opting to rent rather than buy in the present industrial downturn.
On the Cent.'-Par,t Stoyel sees a greater readiness among hauliers to consider
trailer rental when bidding for long-term contracts, and says the German market is particularly strong. He predicts CTR'. German rental fleet will grow by 77% this year to 4,000 units. Only this week, CTR opened its first branch in Potsdam, Berlin, which will control 500 trailers for rent throughout Eastern Europe.
Tiphook chairman Robert Montague predicts that the demand for trailer rental in Europe will double over the next five years. CTR currently claims to have one third of all rental trailers in Europe, and Montague predicts that the company will experience strongest growth in the 10 Western European countries in which it already operates.
He believes the Eastern European market is likely to grow at a slower rate, but predicts that CTR's fleet could grow to 3,000 waits over the next few years. El Montague says the position of 'I'railerent is constantly under review, but there are no current plans to merge the business into CTR.