No lease for one-off Daf
Page 16
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• An Essex-based haulier is baffled by Leyland Daf Truck Finance's rejection of a lease application for one of Dafs own drawbar trucks.
Countrywide Express boss Glen Pether went to Harris Commercials in Grays in March and ordered the truck, opting for a five-year operating lease.
"I paid £1,000 deposit, the cab has been painted at a cost of 1450 and it has even had the hitch put on it," he says.
Under the terms of an operating lease agreement, customers pay Leyland Daf Truck Finance instalments; at the end of the agreement the operator returns the vehicle to the company. But Leyland Daf Truck Finance has said that he can only take part in its lease purchase scheme.
Pether says: "What they are really saying is that Leyland Daf will not back their own product's residual values."
But Tony Pain, marketing
director at Leyland Daf Trucks, says the truck—an FAR95 XF six-wheeler drawbar—is a type which represents just 1% of the UK truck market. "It is not a standard drawbar by any means," says Pain. "It's difficult to predict its residual value in the long term, the underwriters declined an operating lease; it was a combination of these situations. I have offered lase purchase, and the vehicle will be delivered to the customer."