Tag Archives: van hire

Van Hire News: Thrifty Adds 800 Vans To Rental Fleet

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Thrifty Adds 800 Vans To UK Fleet

Thrifty Car and Van Rental is to add 6,000 new vehicles to its UK rental fleet, including 800 vans.

After the last two severe winters, the company is also expecting strong demand for 4×4 vehicles and is increasing the number of 4×4 pickup trucks on its fleet by 25%.

Thrifty has 85 branches in the UK.

Used Van Market Will Face Shortages Over Next Few Years

The UK used van market is likely to experience a shortage of good quality, low mileage vans over the next four years, according to a new report from British Car Auctions.

Since 2009, fewer new vans have been registered and many operators have been keeping vans in service for longer, resulting in second hand stock that is older and higher mileage. The BCA report estimates that there will be a shortfall of up to 275,000 vans on the used market between 2011 and 2015.

Rather than buying poor quality used vans, businesses in need of additional or replacement vans may be tempted to try the flexible hire services provided by large van rental companies, whose purchasing power means that they do have a large, young fleet of modern vans.

Van Hire In Cornwall: Permit Required For Household Waste Recycling Centres

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Anyone who lives in Cornwall and is planning to hire a van to take household waste to the tip needs to plan ahead. Cornwall Council is now operating a permit scheme to restrict access to household waste recycling centres by vans or vehicles with trailers of more than 1.8m internal length.

This means you cannot simply hire a van for the weekend and then take it to the tip – you will need to plan ahead and contact Cornwall Council to be issued with a permit, which allows 12 visits per year.

Cornwall Council has introduced the permit scheme to crack down on abuse of household tips by trade users, who pretend that their waste is domestic in order to avoid paying commercial rates for its disposal.

The scheme has already produced impressive results – Cornwall Council says that there has been a 15% fall in waste going through household waste sites since the permit requirement was introduced. This equates to a £600,000 saving – costs that were presumably previously being met by council tax payers.

Cornwall Council has issued 14,500 permits so far, including 9,200 for vans.

Cornwall Council has Household Waste Recycling Centres in the following loctions (click on the links for nearby van rental branches or click here to search for van hire in your area):

  • Bodmin
  • Bude
  • Liskeard (Connon Bridge)
  • Falmouth
  • Helston
  • Launceston
  • Newquay
  • Redruth
  • Saltash
  • St Austell
  • St Day (Redruth)
  • St Erth (Hayle)
  • Tintagel (Bowithick)
For more information on the permit scheme or to contact Cornwall Council, visit www.cornwall.gov.uk.

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.

Moving Abroad? A Place In The Sun Live 30/09/11-02/10/11

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Holiday villaIf you are thinking of moving abroad or buying a holiday home in the sun, you will have a lot of decisions to make and questions to answer before you can complete the deal and take possession of the keys to your dream home.

One way of speeding up this process is to get all the information you need in one place – and the best way to do this is to visit a large overseas property exhibition. A Place In The Sun Live is one of the UK’s biggest overseas property shows and it is taking place at the Birmingham NEC this weekend (30th September – 2nd October)

A wide range of exhibitors from all the popular overseas home markets will be at the show – Spain, Portugal, Florida, Turkey, Cyprus and more. Of course, the presenters of the A Place In The Sun television series – Jonnie Irwin, Jasmine Harman and Amanda Lamb – will also be there with advice and tips for overseas home buyers.

Remember: If you are planning to buy (or sell) a home in Europe, we have a number of unique resources on vanrental.co.uk that will help you arrange the move abroad:

  • Van Hire To Spain – our unique guide to the UK companies which offer one-way van hire between the UK and Spain
  • European Van Hire – many UK van rental companies allow you to take their vans across the Channel – find out more here
  • Book A Ferry – our ferry guide talks you through the information you will need to book your hire van on a ferry and shows you all the most UK-Europe ferry routes, including direct sailings to Spain and Ireland.
  • Finally, don’t forget to check out our guide to driving a van abroad.
To find out more about A Place In The Sun Live, visit the organiser’s website.

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.

Sixt Van Hire: Exclusive Discount Code & Autumn Special Offers

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vanrental.co.uk EXCLUSIVE Discount: Sixt Van Hire from just £29/Day

Don’t forget that we are currently running an exclusive Sixt discount code providing van hire from just £29 per day at selected locations. This deal is only available through vanrental.co.uk.

This deal applies to weekday hire (Mon-Thur) at the following locations and is valid until 15th October 2011:

This offer has now expired.

Bishops Stortford
Bristol South
Bromley
Cardiff
Edinburgh
Edinburgh Airport (EDI)
Epsom
Feltham / Hatton Cross
London Battersea – Vauxhall
London Bow
London Fulham / Chelsea
London Heathrow Airport (LHR)
London Ilford
London Kings Cross
London Shepherd’s Bush
London Stansted Airport (STN)
London Victoria Station
London Walthamstow
London Wembley
Manchester Airport (MAN)

Click on the banner below to get a quote using our exclusive discount code:
Sixt.co.uk

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.