Arabian knights
Page 24
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Middle Eastern money is everywhere these days. I learned last week that a commission from an Arab state has been buying hundreds of heavy tippers — mostly Scania and Volvo — in Denmark, where the building recession in particular has meant vehicles being laid up.
In fact, I gather the market for these used vehicles has been so buoyant that dealers have been buying them back from Danish operators to sell to the Arabs.
The Danish haulage world has been in rather an odd state for the past year, anyway. The trade in operators' licences has been so brisk that the authorities have not felt obliged to issue any new licences since April 1974. (There is a Government ceiling on the total number of licences current at any one time.) It is, apparently, quite legal to sell operators' licences in Denmark and the going rate is £100 per vehicle authorized which is very small beer compared with the sort of figures which licences fetch in Germany, for example.