Beware vanishing trailer hire fleets
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by Rob Willock • Owner-drivers are being warned against renting trailers for unknown employers after several have been left facing ruin after their hired units disappeared.
Birmingham owner-driver Hugh Munn claims East Grinstead firm Ashdown Logistics asked him to use his account with CTR to hire a trailer. Now Ashdown's director Kevin Triggs and the trailer have disappeared and CTR is chasing Munn for the money. He faces a bill for up to £20,000. "If CTR follows up its demands I'll go bust," he says. It has since emerged that Triggs is being investigated over at least five more missing trailers.
One trailer rental company boss says: "I can't believe I got sucked in. Triggs had five trailers off me. I retrieved one and traced another three, but one's still miss ing with £30,000-worth of copper on board."
Kate Lilley and Syd Lyon of corporate investigators Coast to Coast (Europe) say that a growing proportion of their work involves the recovery of trailers stolen in rental scams.
A typical case starts when a director sets up a haulage company and persuades contracted drivers to hire trailers for the operation. The company sub-lets the trailers from the drivers, paying them the monthly rental fees.
But then the company folds, or its directors and the trailers disappear and the owner-drivers are left with the liability.
"We've come across the same people doing this, again and again, preying on naive drivers," says Lilley. She says that many of the stolen trailers end up being dumped or sold in Europe. And once they are ringed, they become very hard to identify."