Tractor values fall as users flock to auctions
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• Traders have been hit by the seasonal summer lull, with customers going off on holiday with promises that they'll be back with their cheque books In the autumn. But the summer fall-off in sales may be worse than expected this year. say dealers, because of the combination of high fuel prices and the number of hauliers going to the wall.
"It's been quiet for the past three months, and the market Is swamped with unsold tractors," says independent trader Martin Byrne, of Northwichbased Martin Byrne Commercials in Cheshire. "Everybody is yelping about it."
The big Saturday sales organised by the auction companies seem to be hurting independent dealers.
It's end users who are doing the buying," Byrne says. "These sales are taking our retail business."
Not everything is disas trous, however. "Things are a bit better in the rigid market, but you can't give fridge trailers away at present," he says.
Don Mitchell, general manager of Leek-based independent Cross Commercials in Staffordshire, says that trade this summer is patchy. "We've been suffering and, although I half expected it, that doesn't make things any easier. Deals are as profitable as they were 12 months ago, but we weren't making much money then either."
Byrne and Mitchell agree that the value of alder tractors is plummeting. "I've seen Daf 85 Series tractors, 1995 on an M-plate, make as little as £3,000 at auction," says Byrne.
"It's so difficult to value anything with confidence," he adds. "Last year a valuation might hold for one or perhaps two months. This year you're lucky if it holds for a week." Mitchell says: "1-registration Iveca 4x2 tractors are getting to be worth nothing. Frankly the trade doesn't know what it's going to do with vehicles like that."
Byrne adds: "I've seen tired-looking 6x4 Mercedes tippers, ex-hire company and 1996 on a P-plate, make 124,500 at a sale. So it's obvious what sort of vehicles buyers are after."
Cross Commercials is capitalising on the continued interest in rigids by stretching tractors, adding a lift axle and re-bodying them.
"We've just done that to a 1996 FL10, which is going to a livestock haulier," says Mitchell.
''We've bodied an Ivaco for a fork-lift truck company and put a lift axle on it, and turned an ERF EMI and a Seddon Atkinson Strata into rigids too. What's more, we've turned an ex-Testo Scania 4x2 3201p tractor into a double-drive tipper."
The export trade has gone flat, but there are one or two bright spots, particularly in eastern Europe.
"We've just sold an exTarget Express mega cube drawbar to a customer in Lithuania," says Mitchell. "We're selling more and more vehicles in eastern Europe, and we're having no trouble at all getting paid."