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Chris Hart started Trucks2Go in July 2005 after a decade with Mercedes dealer Ciceley Commercials. While more of his time is taken up with traffic management, utility and rental issues, used trucks remains his primary focus.
"The job is hard work at the moment," he says, "take the export market to Kenya. With the VAT hiked up, the prices are as high as they have ever been." He is also seeing Euro-5 used truck values beginning to rise again, driven by many customers keen to avoid the Euro-6 level emissions. "If you have something that
is late-year Euro-5, there are people willing to buy it but these types of trucks are difficult to source," he says. It appears manufacturers have a tighter grip on the flow of late-year trucks entering the open
market, he says. Significant demand for vehicles is coming from the construction sector.
"In the building sector there is a demand for scaffold trucks, crane trucks, plant trucks, hook-lifts, tippers, block carriers, road sweepers, basically all the stuff you can't get. And there is a lot of the money in trucks from 2005 and 2006 for operators who work outside of London. For example, builders merchants will run four older trucks rather than buy a single new one, whereas those running into London are faced with no choice but to buy something newer," he says.
To a certain extent, Hart has been able to act as his own supplier with rolling stock from his 2Rent fleet. "That means you are self-sufficient, but I still buy from auction — in fact, I buy online. If we have a late-year vehicle, we might put it into the rental fleet first and then put it back on the forecourt; you might make more money from it than simply buying it and selling it," he says.