The UK’s local authorities have never won
renown for their speed of decision making, but it seems like they
are keen to lease more waste management vehicles – even if current
uncertainty has seen them extend contract terms and postpone some
new leases for the time being.
Northampton-based Specialist Fleet Services
(SFS), headed by managing director Bob Sweetland, has seen a
significant increase in contract hire deals for refuse trucks over
the last year.
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In contrast, very few of the nation’s buses
are leased. Simon Craven of transport services behemoth Arriva,
which provides around a billion bus journeys annually in Europe,
said that the company purchased virtually all of its vehicles
outright, with only a few “experimental” routes or services being
run using leased vehicles.
By and large, the UK’s bus operators tend to
follow this strategy. With buses being relatively cheap due to low
levels of specialisation and simple to maintain and keep roadworthy
compared to more specialised commercials, there is no huge
advantage in passing on their RV risk to a leasing company.
Waste management is a different story. With
refuse collection vehicles incorporating a vast array of moving
parts, electronics and customised features, their values make
outright purchase prohibitive. Additionally, these assets
deteriorate much more quickly than buses – making transferral of
risk via contract hire an attractive option.
Sweetland commented that even authorities that
leased little else would be likely to acquire their refuse and
sweeper fleets through contract hire, for these reasons.
Traditionally, specialist vehicle knowledge in
local authorities would come from long-serving staff who had
started their careers on the workshop floor and gradually
progressed to transport manager positions. However, due to changes
in the employment patterns of local authorities, executive staff
with fleet responsibilities are being drawn more and more from
management backgrounds – meaning less commercial vehicle know-how
at the top.
As part of this, Sweetland said that SFS had
seen an increasing trend towards the outsourcing of workshop
functions, with four out of five of the company’s workshops having
been taken over from local authorities, the latest being a facility
in the town of Leek in the Staffordshire Moorlands. Currently,
negotiations are underway to transfer a further three local
authority sites to SFS.
