Reconsidering the van thing now!!!
This week has been a bugger for us. Of a combined business and personal fleet we’ve had 1 artic off the road without a driver, one van spending most of the week in the workshop with a brake fault, the other one off the road Friday so the driver could change his own rear pads, both motorbikes were lamed, the BMW got a new shock on the drive yesterday while the Yam is in tomorrow for a new exhaust, my car had an expired MOT without us noticing, (I know, shocking. I can tell you off the top of my head the last and next time any of the liveried vehicles needs to go to the workshop but I cant keep track of my own car’s MOT. Its been added to the fleet maintenance planner now) Mother’s car is in getting new injectors and my brothers car was in Lancashire with mother who works away all week herself and cant get there without wheels, (that was new to the fleet last week as his Land Rover went in for a checkup and went off to the great carpark in the sky the next day, not worth doing all the necessary work on it). In the next week or so, one of the vans needs a service too!
I got back to the yard on Friday at 15:30 and had no choice but to drop the trailer and take the tractor unit to the office to do some paperwork!
The reason I relate all this to you, rather than the horrifying thought that of a fleet of 9 vehicles only one has managed to get through the last two weeks without seeing a technician at all, is that I am rethinking the whole van ownership thing. Enterprise will rent you a van for about 25-50 a day including motor insurance, have it for less than 28 days in a row and you get unlimited mileage, all maintenance and the flexability to have a luton with tail lift this week and a bloody corsavan next week, then a flatbed the week after etc.
We’ve bumped the rates up with our regular clients gently and are now averaging 85-95ppm on the vans per loaded mile. Which given that the artics are currently averaging £1.50 for all miles loaded or empty to me isn’t that bad.
The other thing to consider is that our HR company informed us last week that vans fall under domestic hours regulations in the UK so 10 hours driving in 11 hours worked. We’ve got some logbooks in now and are keeping the drivers to that.
That being said, last week, (before we found out we were being naughty on the hours) the two Movano’s out-earned Angel between them and have regularly been turning in more than Gentleman Jack has been earning, though we have been struggling to keep a driver in that one for a full week.