{"id":620,"date":"2009-01-21T20:08:43","date_gmt":"2009-01-21T20:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/?p=620"},"modified":"2009-01-22T20:33:17","modified_gmt":"2009-01-22T20:33:17","slug":"new-survey-highlights-big-opportunity-for-van-hire-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/620","title":{"rendered":"New Survey Highlights Big Opportunity for Van Hire Companies"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve already seen large van hire companies forecasting that they will do well<\/a> out of the economic downturn. They expect businesses to shun buying and leasing vans in favour of more flexible van rental<\/a> deals.<\/p>\n

[Update: Here’s another van rental company predicting the same<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Now it’s time to examine the current reality.<\/p>\n

A new survey of UK van owners by the Department for Transport<\/a> has found that just 12% of vans are leased or hired – with almost 90% owned outright by businesses or individuals. Of these, 59% are owned by businesses and 28% owned by private individuals (presumably including sole traders).<\/p>\n

Of the owned vehicles, 53% were purchased second hand and 46% new. That makes sense – intuitively it seems likely that most vans will have one or two secondhand owners after their new owner – but probably not more than this, on average.<\/p>\n

What does this mean for van hire companies?<\/strong><\/p>\n

While 12% may seem like a small proportion, it is a small slice of a very large pie. In 2007, there were 3.2 million licensed light goods vehicles (vans) in the UK. 12% of 3.2m is 384,000 – enough vans to keep a lot of lease and hire companies in business.<\/p>\n

The DfT report didn’t mention the split between short-term rental and leased vans, but it’s probably a reasonable assumption that lease or contract hire vehicles form the bulk of the 12%, with short-term rentals taking a minority share.<\/p>\n

I believe that the van hire companies are right in predicting strong business during the downturn – especially if they can provide the cost-effective, low risk flexibility that businesses will want and need.<\/p>\n

With credit in short supply in the UK, rental companies who are able to facilitate the removal of multi-year vehicle leases and finance deals from a company’s books by offering flexible short-term rental services should attract new customers.<\/p>\n

Companies who are lucky enough to own their vehicles outright might also be attracted by the possibility of reducing their fleet size and overheads and benefiting from increased liquidity instead – perhaps using this to fund areas of credit shortfall.<\/p>\n

I don’t believe anyone (me included) can really predict how the economy will pan out over the next couple of years. However,\u00a0 I do believe that flexibility and the ability to cost-effectively scale operations up and down will be an essential ingredient in the tool kits of businesses that survive.<\/p>\n

Van hire should be able to play a part in this for many UK businesses.<\/p>\n

What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new survey highlights the size of the opportunity facing van hire companies as the economic downturn bites harder. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[472,315,18,34,587],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}