Tag Archives: van rental

Llanelli Van Hire: Europcar Opens New Branch In Llanelli

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Europcar has opened a new van rental branch in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire. The Llanelli station is the 12th Europcar location in Wales and is one of a number of new and expanded branches the company has opened in the UK this year.

Europcar’s Llanelli branch is open from 8am-6pm Monday-Friday and 8am-1pm on Saturdays. It has not joined the list of Europcar branches which are open on Sundays.

Ken McCall, Europcar UK Managing Director, said:

With a range of attractions in the area including historical buildings, the Millennium Coastal Park and Wetlands & Wildlife Trust nature reserve, providing access to cars and vans for a wide variety of business and personal trips means Llanelli residents and visitors have the widest possible choice and flexibility to get on the road as quickly and cost-effectively as possible .

Find out more about van hire in Lllanelli here.

Up To 20% OFF Europcar Van Hire – EXCLUSIVE

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Save up to 20% on Europcar Van Hire – exclusive to vanrental.co.uk!

That’s right, you can save up to 20% on all Europcar UK van hire using our exclusive voucher code:

  • Promo Code: 51153325 EXPIRED
  • Valid for boookings made by 30/11/2011 for rentals until 16/12/2011
  • Extended: Valid for boookings made by 15/12/2011 for rentals until 16/12/2011

Europcar 20% off van hire discount - click here

This discount is exclusive to vanrental.co.uk and is available at all Europcar UK locations for all types of van.

Terms & Conditions apply:

  • Offer valid for bookings made by 15/12/2011 for hires until 16/12/2011.
  • Rates vary according to location and time of hire.
  • UK hires include unlimited mileage, Damage Liability Waiver, road tax and VAT but excludes fuel.
  • Damage Liability Waiver is subject to a £600 excess.
  • Subject to availability and driver qualification.
  • Europcar standard terms and conditions apply.

New: Self Storage Tips & Advice on VanRental.co.uk

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vanrental.co.uk has just published a new guide to self storage.

The market for self storage has grown steadily in recent years. Many people now find that they simply have too much stuff to keep it all in their homes.

Sky-high city housing prices, difficulties with housing chains and temporary stays in rented accommodation have all helped grow the market for self storage across the UK, particularly in London, the south east and in major cities.

Van rental customers are often also in need of storage facilities, so we have produced a Self Storage Guide to help you understand how self storage works.

The principles are simple – you get a storage room that is all yours for a fixed weekly or monthly fee.

Most companies provide a wide range of size choices – from cupboard-sized up to an area the size of a garage, or even bigger. It all depends what you need. Most self storage companies provide quotes by email, some have prices on their website.

To find out more about self storage, click here.

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.