When used pays off
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While some franchised deal. ors show little interest in the used market, selling second-hand commercials is paying off at North West Trucks.
The Leyland Daf dealership, which is based at Huyton, on Merseyside, sells between 250 and 270 vehicles a year—not all of them late-registered, low-mileage, says sales manager Stuart Thornton.
"We do not have a cut-off date," he says. "We will sell older trucks if they are tidy and of good quality." Selling second-hand vehicles is profitable in its own right, and generates additional parts and workshop revenue for the company. Thornton and his colleagues sell to local operators where possible, and almost every vehicle wears a Leyland Daf badge. Anything else is traded out and disposed of, usually on the other side of the country.
Some vehicles are ex-contract, and the dealership will persuade new truck buyers to take a two-to-three-year acquisition package. "That way we can make sure we get a second bite of the cherry when they come back," Thornton says.
Typical buyers are owner-drivers, small haulage companies and some own-account operators. "Operators running more than 40 to 50 trucks usually buy new," says Thornton.
As well as reselling part-exchanges, North West boosts its used stock by buying actively in the marketplace.
"We deal with traders," he says. "In the past we have bought at auctions, but they tend not to have the quality of vehicle that we are looking for."
North West's love affair with the second-hand sector started in the mid1980s, when the old Leyland and Daf networks merged and the new operation took responsibility for a large chunk of Merseyside. It found itself with high overheads, but zero aftersales revenue, "so we flooded the area with used trucks, and got instant income from service and repairs", Thornton says.
North West is a keen supporter of Leyland Dal's Approved Used Trucks scheme (see below).
Although North West is based at Northwich in Cheshire, Huyton is its main centre of activity. The site is open round the clock, and represents [DV as well as Leyland Daf.
In both cases, most new customers are smallto medium-sized businesses—the firm sells a lot of LDV minibuses to schools—rather than big fleet owners. "Everybody operates trucks here, but nobody buys them here," says Thornton.