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A report out this week shows a drop in leased vehicles of 10% this year. The reasons are fairly obvious with larger companies making redundancies and having to make better use of resources, fewer vehicles are now required.. One van can now do the job of two and one salesman can cover a larger area as a result of decreases in sales and customers. Having said that Read more »

Warnings about stone chips have been issued as we move into winter. With local authorities operating on reduced budgets more roads will remain unrepaired as frost causes pot holes to appear. So when the roads start to get gritted, causing the usual stone chips on windscreens, drivers have been warned to have the chip repaired rather than run the risk of hitting a pot hole which can often result in an instant crack. Don’t forget Read more »

Lex Autolease have carried out a study on 21,000 vehicles used for business with some startling results. Driver negligence has not only pushed up maintenance and repair bills but also resulted in fines for drivers and even loss of licences. The biggest cost burdens have been misfuelling, windscreen damage, illegal tyres and vehicle downtime. Average cost to replace a windscreen is Read more »

This month is Tyre Safety Month! I know I probably didn’t need to mention this as you probably knew already but what it has done is highlight the fact that 80% of cars have tyres that are incorrectly inflated. Incorrectly inflated tyres can affect the handling characteristics of cars and even more dangerously fully laden vans. Vans become far less stable when they carry heavy loads and tyres are incorrectly inflated. The recommendation is that Read more »

It has been estimated that there are in excess of 1 million businesses in the UK considered to be running ‘small fleets’ of company vehicles (25 or less). It would seem that the vast majority of these businesses don’t see themselves as running a ‘fleet’ of vehicles but they should be aware that the same rules and regulations regarding duty of care, health and safety and the Corporate Manslaughter Act along with Read more »

Finally, it’s happened, a company has brought out an insurance policy to cover the ever growing end of contract refurbishment charges for cars and vans that will be returned to the leasing company at the end of the lease. The cost of the policy will range between £290 and £350 for a standard family sized car and it will cover vehicle damage over and above fair wear and tear up to £1,500. This may seem like Read more »

Bad news! The dopey Chancellor has listened to all the anecdotal evidence and decided that the scrappage scheme should be extended, which has already helped nearly 300,000 people with old bangers to get into new cars, but done nothing to help ordinary people and small businesses that are struggling to finance their new car as the funders are running out of money. Whilst manufacturers continue to Read more »

 Contract hire is still by far the most popular method used to finance vehicles according to members of the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association. Contract hire of cars has remained pretty static over the last 5 years, consistently hovering around 1.3 million mark. LCV’s (vans) have dropped slightly over the years from 180,000 to 176,000. Contract purchase and personal contract purchase have both dipped over the last year. So it seems that businesses and consumers continue to understand the benefits of contract hire, long may it continue. By Graham Hill

 Now here’s an interesting piece of information (not that all I provide isn’t interesting), but have you ever been on the forecourt of a fuel station and the damned mobile has gone off which you have then sneakily answered or checked out the text message, believing to be out of vision of the person on the till? Then been screamed at through the pump loudspeaker for putting everyone’s life at risk and dying of embarrassment in the process. Yep, we’ve all been there. Well Texaco have launched Read more »

 If you are a regular reader of my articles you will know that I don’t regard those expert advisors that write in the media about car finance very highly. In fact I regard most as being daft as a house brick. But whilst an article that appeared in the Independent didn’t really change my views there were a couple of points over which I had to agree, as painful as it was! The reporter suggested that the scrappage scheme cash may run out by mid October which is a feeling shared and hoped for by Read more »