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ERF split welcome
Page 54
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• ERF dealers have given a warm welcome to owner MAN's move to restructure the company. It is to be split into separate manufacturing and marketing divisions, with marketing controlled by MAN's UK offshoot (CM 18-24 Oct).
"I'm feeling quite positive about it, and looking forward to the future," says Steve Bradley, managing director of Merseyside distributor Penis and Keaton.
"The two opera Lions were always
going to move closer together anyway," says Gary Mullaney, dealer principal at distributor Aquila, based at Aldridge in the West Midlands. "It's a positive step and the team in charge is made up of sensible people.
"I'm slightly disappointed that we'll be losing the ECL 7.5-tonner, but we've got a lot of other new products coming and we'll need to focus on them. We'll have more than enough products to sell."
A new ECS/ECX family is due to be launched in the second half of 2002; it will be based heavily on MAN technology. That could spell the end of ERF's composite cab, but customers will still be able to specify a Cummins engine.
"The light truck market is an alien area to me anyway and I wasn't sure how I was going to handle it," says Bradley.
He and Mullaney say that hauliers have kept faith with ERF in the aftermath of the discovery of problems with the firm's balance sheet and the question mark that this placed over the future of the business.
"The response we got from customers was muted, although I did receive a few calls," says Mullaney. "Any cut-backs in orders we've suffered are due to the present climate of economic uncertainty, not what's happening at ERF and MAN."
"We had fewer phone calls about it than might have been expected, and in fact our order intake has been very good over the past few weeks," says Bradley.
One or two ERF parts and service outlets were already servicing MANs, and vice versa, before the restructuring, and that trend looks set to accelerate. "We're setting up a new site at Oswestry in Shropshire, and I'd certainly like to service MANs there alongside ERFs," says Mullaney.
There are no plans to sell MANs and FRFs from the same locations, although Mullaney wouldn't be entirely surprised if that happened in the long-term. "After all, we see dual franchising in the car market," he points out.
Aquila has recently picked up an order for 8o trucks from a wellknown rental company; he believes this is a reflection of what's happening in the industry. Operators may be cautious about acquiring new vehicles, but they are willing to hire them.