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Rosy future for dealers
Page 55
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• Independently owned truck dealers have a rosy future. despite the pressures besetting them, according to Henry Dilloway, MD of Avonmouth ERF distributor SA Trucks.
"Our business is making a very healthy return on investment, even though Avonmouth is an expensive place to be based," he says. "We're a family km, and we find that family owned haulage companies like to deal with an operation like ours." However, the real profits are generated by parts and service, not by vehicle sales. The workshop is open 18 hours a day, and he plans to run it round the clock.
SA took over its present site a year ago. it's a three-acre depot with 2,400m7 of covered space and represents an investment of just over am," he says. "I don't know how we would have managed if we hadn't made the move."
Covering most of the West Country for ERF, as well as West and South Wales, SA is on target to sell 200 new trucks this year. Dilloway adds: "It was of course a run-out year for ERF, so we bought up a lot of stock in advance to ensure that we had something to sell. The ECT has been well received, although I'm quite surprised that we're selling so many with MAN engines.
"The fact that ERFs are now built in Germany rather than England isn't an issue as far as customers are concerned, and the quality is excellent."
SA has eight dealers under it. "We own two of them—one in Cornwall and one in Devon— and coverage is supplemented by a number of service and repair outlets," he reports.
So where do the initials SA come from? "We were Seddon Atkinson distributors prior to 1996." Dilloway explains. 'We were going to change the name when we changed franchises but ERF were happy for us to keep it because it's so well-known."