trade vet

Yeh !.....old Volvo estates,except no matter what they were like,older punters could not buy them quick enough.

You will be an unknown quantity to them,so you won’t get much.However,if you do quality business with a reasonably low rejection rate,you can renegotiate at a later stage based on set targets.If you become really good,the prime lenders will queue up to offer you better deals.Although the ‘golden chucky commission ‘days are gone,to give you an idea,I recall we were able to finance say £3750 ( no deposit) and with the dreaded PPI we would receive £400 advanced commission plus 3% in volume bonus later on.Now you finance £10k and you don’t get anywhere near that.....also you have to read the rates and terms contract with a magnifying glass before signing.

What a spoil sport,they would have washed and leathered it off when they returned it !

Hi R and K I hope you are taking notice from the guys on here. Having looked at your website again,I see you describe yourselves as ‘car enthusiasts ‘ ,so in other words you may have little experience.It takes years to learn this business and be successfull so you may be better off by employing a full time pro.Also,having looked at your competition on AT,you may need to consider that there are any amount of independent dealers doing Mercs,Audi’s and BM’s. nearby.Worse still,a lot of these have recorded a loss in their last set of accounts.If you want to maker any money,you could be better off doing for example,bread and butter estate cars which are easy to buy and also attract’ aged over 50 punters ‘ who are easy to deal with. 7 seaters are also a good bet.Please don’t be offended by my comments,I am a ‘hard boiled motor dealer’ and this business has never been harder.

Out of interest ( or probably not ),not only are company car users taxed on their availibility for potential private use and emissions etc.If their company car also carries a private number plate which is owned by their company,they should also declare it as a ‘benefit in kind’ and tax is due based on its open market valuation.I would imagine 1 VW is a valuable plate,so if you were a top rate tax payer you could be heavily penalised for having it on your company car.....On the other hand,it is probably down as a staff pool car which could technically circumvent the tax charge....

Hi there I just think that you have not found your ‘niche ‘ yet.Every pitch is different,when I have moved pitch and I have had a few, I have had to change the type of stuff that I thought would sell.You have to resist trying to sell the stuff that you like,when you find what makes the phone ring,just go with that.You are located in a good catchment area with good auctions nearby and you should be able to buy whatever.I would say get 20 cars with £1000 margin and you will find out what the punters want.Forget £50k Range Rovers and similar heavy stuff,the average punter for them goes to a main dealer......Good Luck.

Really ! He did say the Fiesta was the right money.

Max,it’s a Fiesta,it’s not a Dacia,get it bought !

Hi Grant I am halfway through reading the Yugo story,it should be a movie......Now I see Tesla putting out bullshit excuses for all their production problems ....you just wonder.

Grant has already said he is located in the heart of Essex in the Brentwood /Billericay area where apparently you can sell £20k Mercs from the door.It must be the equivalent of North Cheshire in the south east.

Grant ...Are you sure you have been in the trade ?......As an exercise can you name a few non franchised dealers in your catchment area that you aspire to.

Weird manual A6?,you haven’t had any traumatics then,I get a headache thinking about them !

‘Old fashioned margins’,great expression,thank you.This site is similar,the retail park includes ASDA and M and S down to Poundland.

In stock for 3 months,don’t panic,maybe knock £200/£300 off,but prices will rise by Feb.It happens to us all,when the financial crash hit in 2008,we all were taking huge hits on a lot of stock in order to get them away.

Thank you guys.While the site is good ,with proper signage,I think buying in stock at the door will work ( it did years ago with poor signage when it was a less busy location) but it may not generate enough.We are going to need a good searchable website name and I am not ‘tech savvy’.Also,if it does work and we can buy plenty,we will need to trade most of them.That is not easy,how would we do that,maybe just show traders the purchase invoice.Again,I would be gratefull for any suggestions.Thank you.

What,Police come out and record it as a crime ! We had a coach parked near us which went up in flames and it was on our CCTV.I was told by a retired inspector,that for the Police to come out and take action,there would need to be video of an MP on the coach with a little boy with trousers around his ankles !

I have not been in the front line in this job for a few years now.However seeing all the negative stuff about the likes of Dealer Auctions and also extortionate auction buyers fees in general,it has given me an idea.We have a good corner site coming off lease and since it was last used for car sales,there is now a big shopping centre next to it and the passing trade is huge.I am toying with the idea of reopening this site as a car buying and trading operation.When I go to the US,I have often seen stand alone car buying sites,so I would be interested to hear what you guys think,good idea or not.....Thank you.

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