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the range
After acquiring a majority stake in the business, the new senior management at Mercedes-Benz dealer Road Range Commercials prepares to complete the work started by the previous board
Words: Steve Banner
USED TRUCKS
ROAD RANGE COMMERCIALS
Meet the dealer’s new senior management Tough economic times are not deterring Brian Kempson and Mike Jones from embarking on a bold new venture.
Back in December the duo, who together runs the Mercedes-Benz dealer for Merseyside and North Wales, Road Range Commercials, acquired a majority stake in the business from Robert Smith Group (RSG). If that wasn’t enough, the new owners have already signalled their commitment to complete a £1.5m project to construct a purpose-built dealership on Deeside.
Now MD and former dealer principal Kempson appears to be undaunted by the challenge. “I’ve worked in the motor industry for a quarter of a century, and for RSG for the last 13 years, and the possibility of acquiring Road Range if the opportunity came up is something we’d been thinking about for some time,” he says. “We’ve got a business model that works and we’re inding that the market is on the up.
“People will always want trucks and at present this part of the country is thriving. In fact, we’re bullish about the prospects for this year.” Rising interest from customers is partly a consequence of the requirement that some operators have to replace trucks that weren’t changed during the last recession, and are now more than ripe for disposal, says Kempson. The need for some operators to acquire vehicles that comply with the latest requirements of the London Low Emission Zone is contributing to demand too, he adds, despite Road Range’s distance from the capital, and the new Actros is generating plenty of enquiries.
Selling vehicles
“Existing Mercedes-Benz operators are excited about it, and it should help us to generate plenty of conquest business as well,” Kempson says.
Demand for vans is not picking up at the same pace as the demand for trucks, he admits, although it is starting to rise. “And the new small van Mercedes has in the pipeline should help us considerably,” he observes.
Despite all the talk about new vehicle activity, Kempson describes sales of second-hand trucks as one of Road Range’s key strengths. “Used has helped keep us going through some dificult times,” he comments.
Much of that is due to the quality of the dealership’s used sales staff, he believes. Wrapped up in that is the skill the irm has when it comes to buying in second-hand stock at the right price, plus a willingness to purchase in signiicant quantities.
“We’ll buy an entire leet if we think we can make a proit out of it,” he says. “In fact, we bought 50 trucks from one haulier a while back and sold the lot in no more than three months.
“The art of used vehicles lies in buying, not selling,” Kempson continues. It involves being able to take swift advantage of any opportunities that may present themselves, especially given that late-registered retailable used trucks are hard to come by at present.
“Road Range employees do not have to go through layer after layer of bureaucracy before action can be taken,” he comments.
The dealership sold a healthy 280 used trucks in 2011. Annual new truck sales total 150 – “that’s mainly to smallto medium-sized operators: we do very little leet” – and it sells 500 new and 200 used vans annually.
Kempson would like to boost sales of second-hand light commercials and is aiming to recruit a buyer who will concentrate on acquiring used van stock.
One source of second-hand trucks and vans is Road Range’s own 300-strong rental leet. Offering everything from a Vito to an Actros, it was set up some two-and-a-half years ago. “We established it as a means of generating used stock, but it’s a proit centre in its own right,” Kempson says. “We started the leet at a time when people were shifting to rental as a consequence of the recession, rather than committing themselves to acquisition.”
Help with the funding
He is not slow to point out, however, that Road Range can organise funding if acquisition is the customer’s chosen route. “In the current climate, some operators are inding it dificult to obtain inance from other sources,” he says.
Kempson’s philosophy can be encapsulated in a single sentence. “If you sit around and mope and complain that business is tough, then business will certainly be tough,” he states.
If, on the other hand, you get up and do something about it, then you won’t only survive: you just might manage to prosper too. ■
ROAD RANGE DEALERSHIPS
With its head office in Wavertree and branches in Bootle and Llandudno, Road Range moved into a somewhat-cramped temporary site in Zone 3 of the Deeside Industrial Park eight years ago and has been looking for a bigger and better-placed location for some time.
Scheduled to open in June, the new depot in Zone 2 is closer to the A55 than the current premises and will have ten full-length workshop bays. “There is more profit in aftersales than there is in selling vehicles,” Kempson remarks.
Deeside will be an Authorised Testing Facility (ATF) and comply with the Petroleum Regulations, which means it will be able to carry out work on fuel tankers: a significant potential advantage given its closeness to Ellesmere Port and the oil refinery at Stanlow. It will have a small showroom too, which is likely to aid light commercial sales.
“We’re leasing the site from RSG,” says Kempson. RSG chairman Talbot Smith provided financial support for the Kempson/Jones buy-out.
As for Road Range’s other locations, Llandudno is only four years old and is on a site once occupied by a bodyshop run by a Scania dealer. “Bootle is vans-only, and while Wavertree doesn’t need any work doing on it at present, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of it becoming an ATF within the next 18 months although that probably means 2013,” Kempson says.
Workshops require decent technicians of course, and recruiting them is a struggle, he says.
“They’re almost impossible to find,” he observes. “If you could locate three or four for me I’d hire them immediately.
“As a consequence we’re growing our own. We’ve always got eight to 10 apprentices on the go.”