Independent’s day
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Buyers can easily overlook independent dealers when they go shopping for new trucks – but they could be making a huge mistake
Words: Ian Norwell
It doesn’t have the appearance or location of a gritty industrial operation, but Kel-Berg Trailers and Trucks’ site, in the heart of Oxfordshire’s farming country, is doing business that would stack up well anywhere. The clue is in the name: it’s primarily a trailer and bodywork manufacturer and supplier but it also supplies three truck brands, meaning that customers who initially come to it for a trailer often end up taking a truck as well.
Kel-Berg started life in the LJK in 1978 as a toe-hold in this market for Danish entrepreneur Jens Larsen, MD of the LJK business, who runs a significantly larger operation in Denmark from where he controls the bodybuilding and trailer manufacturing at various European sites.
To be more centrally located in Britain, the business moved to its current Weston-on-the-Green site near Bicester in 1993.
The UK operation is small and efficient: it has Ronnie Verner as general manager. Specialist colleagues handle finance and used vehicle portfolios. Verner says: “We have the Hino franchise here, but we also sell Daf and MercedesBenz products too.” The latter brands largely treat Kel-Berg as a fleet customer, so the maths make sense.
Verner adds: “We started with Hino in January 2011 with just five chassis. We sold 39 in the first year and 50 in 2012, which was 41% of all Hino’s UK sales.” The contract hire business is also progressing well. There are 80 trucks on contract and year-to-date deliveries number another 162 – 80% of which are new.
Kel-Berg manufactures a wide range of its own-brand bodies in Germany and Denmark. Making artic tipping trailers, double-deck curtainsiders, draw-bars, skip and hook-loaders, it has more than 140 models. It also ships chassis to other specialist bodybuilders.
Verner reports that the mixer business is still strong too. “We use Spanish Baryval mixer bodies,” he says. “Chassis are shipped to their Zaragoza plant, and they return on the Santander-Southampton route. We’ve been doing them for over 10 years and put around 800 units into the market over that period. We carry a good spares inventory and customers like them.”
Funding
Finance manager Michael Addison says: “The Daf dealer who supplies us gives us fleet customer rates, but the agreement is that we only sell them on contract hire. This suits us because there’s a growing demand with more customers preferring to keep the capital costs off their balance sheet.” Kel-Berg sells Mercedes and Hino trucks without that restriction and it works well. Funding comes either from selected partners if the risk is assessed as higher, or from Kel-Berg’s own funds. “This puts us in a strong position when it comes to doing deals,” says Addison, who adds that the current split between internal and external funding is 50/50.
“We can offer an operating lease, good old-fashioned HP, contract hire – with or without R&M – or HP with R&M. Because we have our own funds, we can play pretty much any tune the customer wants to hear,” he says.
With vehicles coming back off contract and customers part-exchanging for new, Kel-Berg has recently set up a used operation to handle the traffic. Simon Hall, who started the Harwich site and has worked for the company for more than 20 years, has moved to handle the used truck business. “It’s always good to see our own vehicles back as we know the history and the spec is high,” he says.
One disposal route is export to Zambia, where Hall ▲ Top: Spanish mixer recently spent a month. “The market in Africa is body. Above: Kel-Berg fragmented, and they’re struggling with autos and SCR at skeletals the moment. It will come with time,” he says.
Kel-Berg is actively buying used trucks to sell, avoiding auctions where it would be competing against end-users. When we visited, Verner had his bags packed for Australia to look at setting up an operation there. He says: “We’ve already sold nine trucks in Australia and the prices that can be commanded there are really strong.” A five-bay workshop, with planning approval to double the facility, seems to indicate the business is in good shape. “I think it’s the combination of chassis choice, a wide range of bodies and trailers, and ready funds for the right deal that all adds up for a lot of customers. They can get all they need here,” says Verner. n