Awards for Dealers of Used Trucks for Sale

The Nominees for a prestigious American truck industry award have been announced. Five dealers of used trucks for sale across the United States have been shortlisted for the award, who will feature in the May issues of Heavy Duty Trucking magazine. The Truck Dealer of the Year awards in the United States will be held at the 48th annual ATD Convention and Expo in Phoenix, Arizona on April 16th.

The nominees are:

- Eric K. Jorgensen, president and CEO of JX Enterprises, Waukesha, Wisconsin.
- Richard Kane, owner of Grand Truck Center, San Antonio, Texas.
- Erick Miner, president of Central Illinois Trucks Group, Normal, Illinois.
- Richard Ryan, president and CEO of Carolina International Trucks, Columbia, South Carolina.
- Craig Young, president of Young Truck Sales, Canton, Ohio.

Nominees for the ATD/Heavy Duty Trucking Truck Dealer of the Year are evaluated based on several categories, including dealership performance, civic contributions and industry leadership. The winner and runner-up will be chosen by a panel of professors from Indiana University's Kelley School of Business.

The nation's commercial truck dealers will convene at the ATD convention, which runs April 15-18 at the Phoenix Convention Center. In addition to honoring the Truck Dealer of the Year, the winners of ATD Commercial Truck of the Year for new medium- and heavy-duty trucks including tipper trucks for sale sold in the United States will be announced April 17 at the convention.

Keynote speakers include ATD Chairman Kyle Treadway, Bill Graves, president of the American Trucking Associations, and Donald Broughton, senior research analyst and managing director at Avondale Partners. Top political and election analyst Charlie Cook will headline the first-ever Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Day on April 18. Dealers will also have an opportunity to meet face-to-face with their manufacturer executives at 12 franchise meetings and with suppliers on the expo floor. More than a dozen workshop sessions will be offered for dealers of used trucks for sale and their managers to learn ways to improve their business operations.

Used Trucks From MAN Move to Dedicated Auction

German Manufacturer MAN's division for used trucks, MAN TopUsed, is moving its older stock at a dedicated auction site. ProTruck Auction is an auctioneer located on the Sandtoft Industrial Estate near Doncaster, where MAN is disposing of its older models not used for retail.

Tony Bevan, MAN TopUsed's General Manager of Sales, says the auction has proved a profitable way of moving older models, and have been sold to buyers overseas as well as in the UK.

"We entered 26 trucks, typically 03- to 06-registered, in a recent sale, sold 25, and 21 of them beat their reserve," said Tony Bevan. He went on to explain that MAN wants to make these auctions regular, subject to availability.

"We'd like to try to hold these sales monthly, but it's all down to the availability of vehicles," he says. "We've thought about holding electronic auctions online but we've decided that we prefer the traditional approach, and there's plenty of online bidding at traditional auctions these days anyway."

MAN TopUsed runs a trade-in offer based on part exchange for new trucks, and this offer has been the source of much of their used stock being sold at auction. Bevan says that the age of their used trucks makes them perfect for auction.

"We're getting 04-, 05- and 06-registered vehicles offered to us by customers and there's a good export demand for them," he said.

"We wouldn't usually retail them ourselves because we tend not to retail anything that's more than four to four-and-a-half years old."

MAN are taking advantage of their Euro-4 accredited range, which have become increasingly popular overseas because they do not depend on AdBlue like the models of their rivals like scania trucks.

"One thing we are finding is that some overseas markets are looking for Euro-4 trucks and MAN can of course meet Euro-4 without having to use AdBlue," he said. "That's starting to benefit export sales."

Plant Hire Firm Buy Two New 26 tonne Vehicles from Scania UK

Fork Rent, a plant hire firm based in Ipswich, have expanded their delivery fleet with the addition of two new 26- tonne P320 DB trucks from scania uk. The company have used body builders Andover to build custom bodies for the trucks so they can be used to deliver Fork Rent's range of construction equipment nationwide.

Andover's LPPB 26 beavertail bodies, measuring 9.3 m by 2.54 m, are designed specifically to transport the plant hire firm's range of forklifts, telehandlers, excavators, dumpers, diggers and general construction equipment. Fork Rent's stock of construction equipment currently stands at 2,400 machines.

The new Scania P320DB 6X2 MLA trucks join Fork Rent's existing fleet of 14 vehicles, that are responsivble for delivering equipment across the UK. The company says their vehicles typically cover over 85,000 kilometres a year, and make up to six drops a day, five days a week. In difficult economic times, companies looking to expand their delivery fleets have often been choosing cheaper vehicles, used volvo trucks, for example.

Trucks from scania uk are often chosen for their ability to easily fit custom bodies onto their chassis layouts. The new Fork Rent vehicles come fitted with a 3mm steel underlay, which is welded to the crossmembers under the whole floor to support the weight of heavy machines. Plant equipment is loaded onto the trucks by hydraulic powertoe ramps, which are fitted with expamet on the outer half and hardwood on the inner half.

“We chose Andover because of the exceptional quality of the product," said Guy Nicholls, managing director of Fork Rent.

"We’ve bought two bodies from this manufacturer before and both have delivered an outstanding performance. It’s rare to find a plant body which will last as long at such a competitive price.”

Fork Rent recently made the news for purchasing a Union-Jack styled JCB 3CX for £70,000 as part of a charity auction for armed forces charity Help for Heroes.