Best way to sell fleet vehicles

[Dave A]

I've got three Opel Corsa utilty vehicles in good condition that I'm going to be selling as part of my fleet management plan.

They really should be good buys - full service history, 2005 vehicles in good condition with about 100-120 000 kms on the clock.

Has anyone got any ideas on handling this?

Options would seem to be trade-ins (I'v been offered R45 000 each already), or direct private sales where I'd expect to get a bit more. This extra potential has to be balanced against advertising and "sealing the deal."

What are good places to advertise?
Any other tips?

[wynn]

Why not keep them and hire them out daily, weekender, weekly, monthly, quarterly.
I am sure the income will almost meet the instalments on your new batch of vehicles.
There are a lot of business people out there that are battling to afford vehicles and hiring is probably the only way they can go.

Put a decent 'Tracker GPS' system in each vehicle so you can monitor there whereabouts and they can't disapear.
Do the maintainance properly.
Insure them yourself and clients pay double your insurance cost on a daily basis.
When they are returned drain any petrol left to your own vehicles leaving just enough to get to the garage and let the client fill them up every time he hires them.

[Dave A]

That's out-of-the-box thinking!

However, I understand the service industry and I know how to squeeze my ROI that way. I've got a hunch the vehicle hire business comes with its own specific challenges

Interesting idea though. Anyone want to start a Corsa utility hire business?

[Dave A]

Well, no shortage of buyers for these Corsa utilities. I think I could have sold five of them out of my Sunday Tribune ad alone.

Pricing fascinates me though. I'd run around getting offers from second hand dealers. Not one would go above R45 000.00 (the "official" trade price) and they were all telling me how difficult the market was, how I'd struggle to find buyers with the money and so on. Retail price is supposed to be R58 000.00 apparently, but "you know, the market's so bad there's no chance of getting that."

So what the heck, I advertise them for R50k each (that way I'm up R5k on what the dealers will give) and less than 24 hours later they're all gone. To a dealer nogal

Probably should have asked R55k

[Morticia]

You know what they say about the similarity between used car salesmen and politicians........

[wynn]

The used car salesman lies before he opens his mouth?

[Dave A]

Supply and demand is an interesting creature. Apparently this new shape Corsa utility model has become very popular, has a good reputation, and there simply isn't a lot of them on the second hand market yet.

I'll tell you what though - there was an absolute glut of luxury SUVs in this dealer's yard. They'd been spending a lot of time at the repo auctions by the looks of things.