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'Oldies' can turn
Page 51
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out to be dgoldies'
Even with proper maintenance programmes and comprehensive service histories, high-mileage trucks can be difficult to sell. Dealers, however, should persevere.
Words: Steve Banner
HIGH-MILEAGE tractor units are nothing to be scared of if you are a buyer, especially if they are accompanied by a full maintenance and service history, says Stuart Wolstenholme, used sales manager at the Middleton, Manchester branch of Scania dealership West Pennine Trucks.
"I recently jumped into a 2002-registered Scania 6x2 tractor unit that had covered 1.2m km and it drove as well as a 2005 or even younger model," he says. "In fact, it performed so well that I checked it hadn't had a new tachograph fitted; but it hadn't."
While some people might think a truck that has covered 600,000km is highmileage, the reality is that it still has lots of life left in it if it has been regularly serviced, argues Paul Prewett, general manager, used sales, at Scania dealership TruckEast.
"Six-hundred-thousand-kilometres on a four-year-old truck is nothing," he contends. "Examples that have clocked up 1.2m km to 1.3m km can still work perfectly well."
The message that high-mileage oldies can still be goldies remains a difficult one to sell to operators, though.
Even if a comprehensive maintenance history can be produced, the more miles a truck has done, the more likely buyers will shy away from it, but that could change. •