trade vet

Nice one Nick.They probably found out it would not tow their caravan.

Someone will come up with Range Anxiety pills,the new legal high for raves and E car owners.Service managers could include them with their service packages.....I am watching the pitch this week,it is still pissing down,DMS down,so no trade and ....plenty of people bringing in rough cars to bid on,great fun not !

These days auctioneers/ managers are generally nice straight people.It used to be the auctioneers you had to keep in with ( know what I mean Harry ) but they now often have vendors reps watching over them,so few quick knocks,their hands are tied.They also must get above Cap Clean for a lot of fleet stuff because that is what they guarantee to a lot of the vendors.Nowadays,I think you may be better off keeping in with the provisional office guys.

You will definateley get the runaround,don’t give up.I see you are a WAV expert,great knowledge to have,huge profits compared to common car dealers.I find that you can never go wrong with a WAV !

I have had plenty of loans,overdrafts but never a stocking loan.All I know is when the job goes backwards,it appears to be the stocking loans that cause the damage to the guys who go tits up.Just lately a seemingly ‘doing well dealer’ near us who came from nothing a few years ago had his stock lifted by the lender.Rumours were that he got into a mess by putting cars on his stocking loan which weren’t his.Also,I don’t know if it is true but someone told me that BCA stocking costs 9% plus added charges !

Hi KB Warriors Good first post.I agree there are many problems ahead for electric cars.Where is all the lithium for the batteries going to come from.Also the health issues associated with lithium and its disposal.I see charging time is now down to 30 mins at specialist charging stations but I don’t think that is a full charge.The technology is years away for electric cars to be popular but maybe not with hybrids.I tend to agree with Stalker,as diesels become in short supply,they will go up in value and will be in demand especially in rural areas.As for Tesla,they are yet to turn a profit and are burning through billions of dollars.

Rory,you don’t want to know !

OK James,I have had instances where you do good finance deals with good commission and then the personal loan dept of the finance company hijack the deal.They would tell your punter that they can do a home improvement loan at a low rate which would include their car loan so they are quids in.Then all your commission gets clawed back !

Be carefull,If that was ‘prime’ the chances are it could be settled early.

Courtesy !,the average employee these days doesn’t have that.They often don’t care about their jobs and know little about who they are working for.However,ask them a question and they have a ready made bullshit reply.I seem to come across this every day and get very annoyed.

I totally agree,I would imagine you might be able to network some good dealer group contacts for stock etc.aswell as loads of other stuff that could improve your business.I am sure there will be plenty of good people there,I was just referring to the bullshitters.There appears to be more and more of them about.Just lately I had this guy telling me that for 2 grand per month he could radically improve our SEO and we could then buy a lot more stock at the door.The small print on the extended contract said that no results were guaranteed.....he was told to Foxtrot Oscar.

I think they might all be tied up organising their exhibition at the moment.You might have to send them more proof that you are a pro car dealer.I don’t think the forum can be a priority,as we probably don’t generate much income for them.We have to be kept at ‘arms length’.Can you imagine if a few of us tried to get into the exhibition,they would probably have us sign some legal undertaking not to ask any relevant motor trade questions to any of the digital bullshitters promoting themselves. I did not get where I am today without knowing a ‘digital bullshitter’ when I see one....CJ would have said that.

So to whom would the punters make their claim.I seem to recall Gordon Brown promoted diesel by reducing the fuel duty and road tax.Sales of diesels subsequently rocketed.

I think If I lived down their I would be more worried about knife crime,moped robberies and lack of police and possible terrorist attacks rather than clean diesels destroying the planet.

Hi Met You could be missing out if you are in North London.The Trade Centre have plenty of ex fleet ULEZ blue tec stuff.They must be selling them.Even us up in Newcastle sold a ULEZ friendly blue efficient C Class diesel down your area and I think it was going to save the punter £27 per day in fees.Ours was ex fleet and apparently very cheap compared with London prices.

Unless the legislation has changed,you can’t do that.Maybe their local Trading Standards aren’t bothered.If this is a franchised dealer group,if I was trading in the same area as them,I would go one step further and do weekly payments.

Even I understand it AD,It costs ‘ nowt ‘ and it works,that is all I need to know.However,I have no idea how to access it and I don’t want to hear about the many timewasters it attracts. Meanwhile AT ( who we have now ditched ) are up to £6 per share valuing them at £5.5B ! Full year results next week,profits up again I suspect when everyone else is going backwards....Enough is enough !

Ha Ha,There is a lot of good stuff not attracting bids.I bought a few very cheap ( I thought ) Lex at the local block the other week.When I went to pay for them later,one of the supermarket buyers was going through the unsolds and probably picking similar stuff up a lot cheaper. !

VAT bill love it,all these guys who tell you they only work for ‘ 2 grand a bonnet ‘ etc and you ask them what their last VAT bill was and they go quiet .

Are you sure Victor,I may be wrong but from what I am reading the proposed Nottingham clean air zone effecting only buses,taxis and heavy goods vehicles has now been rubber stamped by government.

I thought Nottingham and also Derby have rejected lowe emission zones ?

Don’t panic Captain Manwaring...6 Diesels standing £40k,if you are nervous about them,just chop them and you will attract some good swappers that you can retail.The worst you will get back is £30k but you will do better than that.The worst I can recall was the 70’s oil crisis when the price of petrol at the pumps skyrocketed.This resulted in the finance companies refusing to finance anything over 2 litres.Smaller cars shot up in value and big stuff did the opposite.We bought the big stuff and marked it up cheap and did very well.Some people say ‘you have to swim upstream to make money ‘ or be a contrarian investor.....BTW both my pitch and my old one which is a lot bigger are sitting on about 70 diesels !

Foxtrot Oscar Victor ( no offence) I have traded through 3 day a week,quadrupling of oil,Falklands,miners strikes,several financial meltdowns like when mortgages went to 15%,this period is minor compared to some of those but it will ‘separate the wheat from the chaff’ in our job. You just have to move with the market,for instance in 08 we took a big hit on stock and moved down to bread and butter stuff like mid range estate cars and it worked.Alternativeley in recessions top end stuff will drop considerably but will then become in reach of cash punters who would normally not buy them.......Rant over !

You are very fortunate that you can still buy direct from franchise dealers,that fizzled out many years ago for most of us.I much prefer ex fleet stuff although I rarely buy it these days as we only have a small pitch and I am very part time.We now just buy from the local BCA and at the door,I don’t even buy online anymore.If I was starting out again it would definately not be in this business.