Category Archives: Van Hire News

News and special offers from other UK van hire and rental companies.

Long-Term Van Hire – A Good Alternative To Leasing?

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The traditional way for companies to operate vans has been to purchase them outright (or on finance) or to lease them from specialist leasing companies.

However, both of these approaches require medium-term financial commitment. Given the current economic uncertainty affecting many European economist (including the UK’s), many business owners are shying away from new commitments of this kind, especially given that finance is harder to arrange than it used to be.

At the same time, businesses are anxious to meet existing demand and exploit new opportunities – which may require additional or replacement vans.

Long-Term Van Hire – A Better Solution

If your business requires vans with few modifications from stock, the best solution might be a long-term van rental. Companies such as Europcar offer Month+ hire schemes aimed at providing you with long-term use with no onwards commitment.

Europcar will invoice you monthly and you can change – or return – your van at any time, without penalties.

You can either book for a set period – perhaps 4 weeks – and renew at the end of every four weeks, or you can book for several months ahead – to cover the busy Christmas period, for example.

To get a Month+ quote from Europcar, simply enter your requirements into the booking engine and choose the van (or car) you are interested in.

Automatic Van Hire in the UK – Is It Available?

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Vans and other commercial vehicles have traditionally had manual gearboxes, meaning that drivers who can only drive automatics have been unable to drive rental vans. The good news is that automatic van hire should become more common in the next few years.

At present, there are still very few van rental companies in the UK that will guarantee to provide you with an automatic van – we only have one company in the vanrental.co.uk database, Bucks Vehicle Hire in High Wycombe, that offers this service. Other hire companies may sometimes have automatic vans on their fleets but they do not guarantee to provide an automatic – not much use if you can only drive automatics.

The Technical Stuff – Automated Manual Transmission

Most vans are now available with automatic gearboxes, albeit at extra cost (hence why most hire companies don’t provide them).

These automatics use a relatively new technology that has improved hugely over the last few years. This new breed of automatics is known as Automated Manual Transmission (AMT) and they work by using a conventional [manual] gearbox combined with an automated clutch and gearshift.

This means that drivers just have to put the gearbox into Drive or Reverse and then use the accelerator – there is no clutch and although it is possible to manually select gears, it is not necessary.

Automatic vans usually offer slightly better fuel economy than their manual equivalents – although this can depend on the driver and how the van is used.

Many drivers are sceptical when they first try an automatic van, but most, in my experience, are rapidly converted. I suspect that automatic vans will become much more common over the next 5-10 years, perhaps even becoming the standard choice, as is happening in the HGV market.

If your van rental company offers an automatic van hire service and you’d like to advertise on vanrental.co.uk, please contact us for more details.

Westfield Stratford City – London’s Olympic Shopping Centre Opens

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A new, giant, shopping centre has opened in Stratford, East London. Billed as the gateway to the Olympics, the Westfield Stratford City shopping centre will be the physical gateway to the London 2012 Olympic Park and it is estimated that 75% of the expected 10 million visitors heading into the athletics venues will pass through the shopping centre – a whopping 7.5 million people.

It seems a strange way to enter the world’s premier sporting competition, although I suppose that it this one way to try and ensure that the London Olympics is one of the rare Games that turns a profit: funnel all the spectators through Europe’s largest urban shopping centre.

Stratford will be at the heart of London’s Olympic venues, hosting the majority of athletics events. It is expected that London van hire companies will experience a peak in demand during the 2012 Games – shortages are quite likely, so advanced booking is essential for business and private van rental customers.

A similar rush in demand is likely for minibus hire firms all over the UK – so booking ahead is essential if you are planning group trips by minibus to the 2012 Olympics.

Northgate Shrinks Van Rental Fleet – Summer Demand Insufficient

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The peak months for the van hire market are generally thought to be from late spring through to late summer. However, new figures released by Darlington-based Northgate plc, one of Britain’s largest van rental firms, suggest that the expected summer peak in demand has not materialised this year.

Northgate’s fleet utilisation rose from 89% in April to a peak of 91% in August. However, to achieve this improvement in utilisation, the company reduced its fleet size by 4,700 vehicles between April and the end of August. Northgate’s fleet now stands at 56,500 vehicles.

That’s an 8% cut in fleet size to achieve a 2% rise in utilisation – suggesting a fall in demand of 6%. Not great for the busiest time of the year.

In an interim management statement, Northgate said that vehicles on hire have fallen from 53,800 at 30 April 2011 to 51,400 at the end of August, a fall of 2,400 units, in line with the fall noted in the four months to August 2010.

Northgate, which serves business van users more than retail customers, is seen by the financial markets as a useful guide to the health of the van rental sector. This news is not surprising but does reflect ongoing challenging trading conditions for the van rental sector.

One good piece of news is that second-hand van values appear to be holding up, at least for good stock. Northgate reported that despite the increased number of vehicle disposals this year, residual values per vehicle remained at a similar level to the previous financial year.

Van Rental Location Guide: 2012 London Olympics

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As promised in my recent article about the London 2012 Olympic Route Network, this article will provide a guide to the venues being used for London 2012 Olympic events.

These fall into two categories – in London and out of London.

London Olympic Venues

London venues will be at the heart of the Olympic games and will undoubtedly draw the largest numbers of visitors – often to areas that are already busy with tourists for much of the year.

Knowing where the busy venues are and planning your van rental requirements well ahead of time will be essential if your business (or personal) activities are to remain on schedule and not be disrupted by poor van availability or traffic chaos. Here’s a list of London venues and nearby London van hire locations:

Olympic Venues Outside London

Away from London, the Olympic venues are more widely spread out. Here’s the run down:

For full details of all London 2012 venues, visit the official website.

Back To University? Save On Van Hire With VanRental.co.uk

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Student hat and degree scrollIt’s that time of year again when thousands of students across the UK need to move themselves – and their belongings – back to their university accommodation for the start of the new academic year.

Very often, this involves parents hiring a van and shuttling their children’s belongings back to their university accommodation.

Although some companies do cater for younger drivers (see our Student Van Hire page), van hire is not generally available for drivers under the age of 21. In addition, one-way van hire is usually considerably more expensive than returning the hire van to the original rental branch.

All of this means that parents are often called upon to hire a van, drive it to the university, and then drive it back again.

If your child is about to head back to university and you’ve got a transport headache, here are a few suggestions:

  • Why not share the cost of a hire van with one of your child’s friends who’s heading in the same direction?
  • Check out our exclusive Sixt van hire discount  – hire a large panel van for just £29 per day until 15th October 2011 (selected locations).
  • If your child’s university is a long way from home, why not consider self storage for bulky items next year? Self storage pioneer Big Yellow has stores in 74 UK locations and even provides free van hire for local moves! What’s left for the summer should easily fit in your car.
If you are worried about driving a van, don’t be. Modern vans are surprisingly easy to drive and the majority of your journey will probably be on motorway and A-roads, meaning that you don’t have to worry about width too much. Take a look at our van driving tips for more help.

Van Hire Shortage Likely During London Olympics

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The London 2012 Olympics are less than a year away now and van hire companies throughout London and the South East are expecting to experience a peak in demand for daily van rental before, during and after the games.

Business demand is likely to be especially high, as businesses such as couriers, catering suppliers, companies supporting the Olympic infrastructure (think electricity, television, catering, hospitality, athlete and staff transport), shops and restaurants all experience additional demand for their services.

In addition to this, business will have to deal with the disruption and limited access resulting from the Olympic Route Network (ORN). vanrental.co.uk understand that the ORN will be a network of lane closures on roads linking Olympic venues – the closed lanes will be used to ensure that athletes and games personnel can make their way between locations efficiently and to a reliable schedule. It will, of course, have the opposite effect on local businesses and deliveries…

The ORN is another reason to expect an increase in demand for van hire – some businesses may have to reschedule their delivery activities into non-Olympic hours – meaning additional vans will be required at certain times of day. For example, some businesses might decide to carry out all delivery operations at night, rather than distributing them evenly throughout the day.

You can full details of the ORN and travel advice for businesses here, on the London 2012 website.

Tips For Businesses

If your business operates in London or the south-east, then you need to start planning your van hire requirements now. If you believe you will need additional van capacity then vanrental.co.uk would strongly advise that you book vans well in advance.

You may have to run the risk of having too much capacity – but having an empty rental van for one day will probably have less impact on your bottom line than being short of a van for one day…

Tips For Individuals

Demand for van hire traditionally peaks during summer months anyway – both individuals and businesses often find they need additional van hire in July and August. It is a popular time to move house and for other sporting, musical and DIY activities that all require hire vans.

Although the Olympics will not cause individual demand for van hire to increase, high business demand for hire vans will mean that individual renters will need to plan further ahead than usual if they do not wish to be disappointed.

What’s Next? In an upcoming post, we will list all of the Olympic locations in London and the South East. Olympic events are taking place over a wide area and the impact of these on van rental companies and other local businesses will be high, even outside London.

Charity Cyclists Hire Van After Train Won’t Take Bikes

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When I wrote about the upcoming Tour of Britain recently, I forgot about a more obvious use for van hire in the cycling world – one-way van hire after one-way bike rides. Although a more obvious solution for getting home after a long journey is a train, taking bicycles on a train can require careful planning, especially if you are in a group – as Sunderland charity cyclist Fraser Kennedy recently found out.

Fraser had just finished the ultimate one-way bike ride in the UK; Land’s End to John O’Groats. Having done all the legwork and raised £2,500 for charity, he was looking forward to a relaxing journey home by rail.

Unfortunately, ScotRail had other plans and refused to allow several members of his party on board because they had not made cycle reservations. ScotRail apparently requires bike reservations on long-distance journeys, including all journeys between Wick, Thurso and Inverness.

The end result for poor old Fraser was that he had to find a van hire company in Inverness who could rent him a van (one way) to complete his journey back to Sunderland, resulting in a lot of extra cost and frustration.

The moral of the story is that Britain’s railways do not welcome cyclists in the way they did when all trains had guard vans. If you want to travel any distance by rail in the UK, make sure you plan it carefully and make the appropriate reservations along the way.

Band Van Hire News: Tiger Tours Now Offering Mini Splitters

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Band van hire specialist Tiger Tours has a new type of splitter van – the mini splitter. This is basically a crew cab Mercedes Vito with a properly boarded-off load compartment that ensures the security of your backline and the safety of your passengers, in the event of any emergency braking.

Being a Merc (even though it’s a van), the Vito is a very pleasant place to spend time and will use less fuel and be easier to park than its bigger brothers.

If your tour group is no larger than six (including the driver) and you don’t have a large backline, then one of these could be ideal. Rental rates start from just £70 +VAT per day – contact Tiger Tours for more details.

8 Top Reason To Hire A Van

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Whether you are a private individual or a business, there are plenty of good reasons to hire a van instead of buying or leasing one (or using an unsuitable car):

Here are our top 10 reasons to rent a van:

  1. Less wear and tear on your own car – why scuff up the interior of a decent car for the sake of a £40 van rental?
  2. Easier to load than a car if you’re moving large objects – large, flat floor and wide-opening doors.
  3. Gives you the opportunity to try a vehicle before buying it – can’t decide between a Transit and a Trafic or a Combo and a Caddy? (sorry, I couldn’t resist it…)
  4. Many rental companies will now collect you from your home or workplace and take you to their branch to collect the van – so you don’t need your own transport at all.
  5. You need a van for a few months, you aren’t sure how long: Long-term van rental is often very competitively priced and avoids the commitment of a lease or contract purchase plan. Many hire companies (like Europcar) offer long-term hire, but consider services like Norflex, too.
  6. Your van broke down / was pranged yesterday and you have a busy schedule today: Hired vans are the perfect way to provide cover at short notice for fleet vehicles while they are repaired or serviced.
  7. Hiring a van can be cheaper than paying for delivery of an item or using a ‘man & van’ service.
  8. You are a small business that need to make deliveries – but not every day. Idle vans cost nearly as much as busy vans to run – so think carefully about whether you actually need a dedicated, full-time van. Many hire companies will be very flexible to met the need of regular business customers.

I’m sure there are loads more reasons than this – if you have any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment below.