Willie Paterson, CEO
At Asset Alliance Group, we pride ourselves on operating one of the most modern and comprehensive fleets on the market, and because of that procurement is the lifeblood of our business. It ensures our customers have exactly the vehicles they want and need at the right time and the right price.
We took a cautious approach to procurement in 2020 for obvious reasons, but I’m pleased to say we are now working on fleet upgrades across all divisions, supported by significant and confident new backing from Arbuthnot Latham & Co Ltd.
After listening to customer feedback and assessing what was required, we kicked off our first round of investment with a £17 million order of 200 DAF tractor units in Spring this year. Assets include 4×2 and 6×2 tractor units with a range of cab sizes that are now available across our depots for leasing, contract hire and rental. Indeed, many have already been put to work!
Since then, we have also concluded our latest round of procurement which will see the arrival of a further 600 trucks from major OEMs including Mercedes, DAF, Scania, MAN and Iveco. We also have a further 200 trailers starting to arrive and being added to our fleet in the months ahead. This amounts to an investment of over £75million investment in our fleet so far this year.
As for 2022, we’re just in the process of finalising terms with a range of manufacturers for more tractor units, trailers, ambient and refrigerated trailers and traffic management vehicles.
We’re also in talks with bus builders, as we look to build our own fleet of leased buses and coaches.
It’s all a welcome contrast to last year and a really exciting time for our team and our customers.
Of course, key to all of this work is timing. It’s important we choose the right manufacturer and the right specs, and crucially that we can have the vehicles to give to customers when they need them.
And for us, the dates of when stock is returned influence whether assets move into our rental fleet – typically if they are younger, fewer miles on the clock and less wear and tear – or into our used stock for sale.
As ours is a cyclical model with the majority of our used truck stock comprising ex-contract hire trucks, we know the investment we make in stock now will be what we are selling in years to come.
I’m grateful to say the future is definitely looking bright.
