trade vet

That sounds good to me,if it includes all the other stuff,road risks,customer liability,loss of profits,robbery etc.Our guys are paying a lot more with Aviva and we have never had a claim in 40 years !

I have lost deals when punters have wanted to pay by C/Card because I have asked them if they knew what interest rate they were paying ! As for cash,that has its problems also,apart from the bank charges.Back in the day when cigarette and tobacco smuggling was rife.we had punters swapping cars every 3 months and insisting on paying cash.You would regularly be banking £20/£30k in cash at a time,so I had the bright idea of saving bank charges by paying the cash into my building society and then getting them to give me a cheque to pay into the bank.I was then warned that HMRC would tax me at the higher rate on drawings from the company into my building society account.For security reasons,we then used 3 different Nat West branches when banking big dollops of cash.This caused us problems years later when HMRC were fishing through our records because one of the NatWest branches was in our local airport,so the HMRC dickheads thought this was suspicious......Da..Da...Da.!

Considering the time of year,the type of stock,the business model etc ,I am struggling to recall a better performance than that.The best I ever did was 37 from a trading estate unit,but it was mainly bread and butter stuff and we had about 5 staff and it was in springtime.....can anyone else come near to Arfur !

Absolutely,have you not noticed,I always go off on a tangent.I was about to go on about getting the right stock to attract ‘good chucky’,good swappers etc,...but I better not ! Thank you S and B.

Not when they are repeat punters.When they pitch up,their swapper is usually OK and you get it in right,easy punters to deal with.

Swappers,this is what I do,right or wrong.What you have got to do is weigh up the type of punter.If you sense they could be hard work,hit them with a price.Sometimes it can be a good idea to find out if they have had any offers from main dealers.If they have,you know you have a chance as some amateur in a crimplene blazer has probably undervalued.With nice punters who might have a cheapie,I always tell them how good it is “ the sum of the parts are worth more than the car” etc.They then uasually tell you how much they want.However,you must be carefull with ‘middle of the road ‘ swappers e.g. yours is £6k and the swapper is £3500,these are the ones you can get stuck with.....I had never heard the term ‘retail back’ before,but we have been doing that for years......At the end of the day,it has always been a great feeling to do a deal and get a good swapper in ‘right’.

Main dealer with the firey name ? If it is the one I am thinking of,I thought it was common knowledge that they swapped parts off their auction stuff !

Hi Justina A few years ago,our guy would buy some similar quality older stuff for good money out of a PLC dealer section.They were never what they seemed and weren’t worth the bother money wise.One non sale day,he was at the auction and he catches a guy with a code reader working on the same dealers entries ! We complained and the auction totally denied colluding with their vendor to misrepresent their entries......Happy new year everyone

Another good one !

Dead right !

Hi Grant The guys on here don’t mind helping with general stuff about running your business but you have to do your own valuations. Anyway,you say you are doing £1500-£5000 stuff,so why get involved with a £20k Merc,you will never retail that off your pitch.

Keep them coming !

How good is that.......I remember late 90s ,we were doing 30 per week but in that December we did 40 for the month which I thought was good.We had 13 staff,stock of 150 in total inc in paint and workshops,those awaiting collection,etc and also spending £2000 per week in AT mag.Doing 9 on your own this week with I imagine ,lumpy stuff is incredible.

Andy,have you got many bad or poor reviews.If you haven’t,that could be the problem.There was some psychologist expert recently saying that businesses have to have some bad reviews for their credibility.I don’t understand that,but I imagine there will be experts who can quickly identify the overall style of reviews and decide that many of them may not be genuine.

Has anyone had any unusual or amusing occurrences in 2017 which they might recall in future years.I have one that comes to mind although it is not connected to our job. Up until springtime ,the big warehouse next to us had been empty for a good while.Then some guys arrive with vans and set up a furniture restoration business.Furniture is seen being unloaded and signs erected and you think good look to them.While a friend of mine in the furniture trade said they had no chance of making it work in a 12000 sq ft warehouse.We have a Council tip 100 yds away and in August,on the odd warm day,one or two customers were complaining about the smell which we are immune to.Then one Sunday morning,the Police raid next door,which turned out to be a huge cannabis operation unbeknown to us and only 15yds away.We went in to have a look and there was 5 or 6 beds in there and they must have spent a lot of money subdividing it into small rooms.The seargent had said it was the biggest he had seen in 20 years ! Interestingly they must have been tipped off about the raid,as they had fled during the night and taken the produce with them........so no arrests,it makes you wonder.

Arfur,I can sense the groans from those snowed in around the country !

British Leyland Kingfisher Blue !

Wonderfull past glories,I can recall the younger guys at the block with similar stories of huge margins and we just didn’t believe them or had no idea what they were talking about.Years later,we started putting bigger Chinese alloys on German stuff and having accumulated a lot of the originals,our guy decided to try them on eBay.I think we got wagons coming over from Poland to collect them......I see my prediction that trade would be good this week has failed,the 7 day weather forecast wasn’t bad !

Hi Rory Apoligies in advance for this reply - You are right of course about how easy it is to put stuff on line.But selling has to be harder because of the choice available. It also appears to me that a lot of the punters do not have savings anymore,but only plenty of plastic card debt and the rest.If you could forgive me for harping back to the golden age when punters would rely on their local newspaper,this was how we did it.When I was 17,my friend and I were doorsteppers,we only bought something called an Austin A60 and they were plentyfull and cost about £40.We would sell these instantly for £85 ( providing you could deliver them ).We were one of many doing this,all cash,no comebacks,little prep.We were earning more than top level footballers,lawyers ,doctors and dentists to think of a few......I did warn you !

Reminds me of the time my brother in law unexpectantly turned up in his recent purchase having previously bought from us ( which was usually less than cost etc).He explained how it was very cheap and explained how he had spotted it on line and checked it out.He then flew down country,met the seller who ran a small repair garage who had owned and serviced it for 2 or 3 years etc.He paid by debit card,got a bill of sale from the seller and drove home very happy.Several weeks later of course he is on the motorway loaded up and with the family and they were suddenly hemmed in by several Police cars.It turned out the garage guy did not own the car,it had been in for repair and the real owner had left the docs in the glove box !

I think it is now harder to ‘do a few’ and not declare them compared with bygone days when your local paper had full pages of ‘private ads’.What I don’t like are those ( often of foreign descent)who set up as a car sales business which is owned by some off the shelf Ltd company,then operate for 18 months,pay little or no PAYE or VAT then dissolve the company.The business then carries on using the same name but is then owned by a new Ltd company etc and supposedly a different person.HMRC apparently do not have the resources to stamp out this sort of thing,so they just make excuses to chase soft targets using creative assessments.....

So you are a new starter as a motor trader.....welcome to the jungle ! Just keep asking about stuff on here and you will get plenty of good advice.

The threshold was £55k then ! The basic rules have not changed. You will get a lot of ( free)help from the pros on here,but I think we need to know what you did previously ‘in the trade’.You had given me the impression that you had previously been a retailer but you appear like a new starter to me- but that is OK.

Excuse me Grant,but did you not say that you had been in the trade before ?

That looks good,if it includes business rates,they must be about £100 per week for 3400sq ft