Q&A: Anna Marie Taylor, Scania rentals

Scania Truck Rentals is a reasonably new concept in this country but just how big is it and how far can it go? We asked National Rental and Used Vehicles Sales Manager Anna Marie Taylor

Scania Truck Rental provides short term or long term hire solutions for truck operators and is also a backup facility for Scania contract customers. Scania’s rental arm is run by UK expat Anna Marie Taylor who has been in truck rentals for 28 years.

Ms Taylor started Scania Rentals back in 1995 and it has proved an unqualified success throughout the world. We caught up with the fast-paced manager between meetings at the Scania HQ in Melbourne.

Trucksales: You were originally doing rentals for Scania in the UK, is that right?

Anna Marie Taylor: Yes we started up Scania Rentals in Scotland and Ireland in 1995. I then moved to be General Manager of Scania Rentals UK and we took the fleet up to about 1450 vehicles in 2006. We worked with 97 locations in the UK. In 2010 I moved to Australia and set up Scania Truck Rentals here. We now have just over 100 vehicles in the fleet.

Was there existing rentals in Scania Australia?

No we started up the dedicated rental fleet and have built it up to where it is today. We were the first manufacturer to have its own dedicated rental fleet here.

Could you bring the same business model as you had in the UK or is it different?

No it’s the same model. Obviously, some of the truck specifications are different but it’s pretty much the same all around the world. I think we’re in about 40-odd countries now.

What’s the potential of rentals here in Australia?

It’s huge. As I said, we have around 100 trucks now and we have about 20 new vehicles coming on now for the Christmas rush. We mainly run on the eastern seaboard but we do have some trucks in Perth. Lately there have been only two of us working on the business so we’ve only been keeping the fleet at between 100-112. But I can see us growing the fleet to 150 in two to three years.

But its only slow growth, I might see that we could do with another 10 prime movers here or another 10 rigids there, but I’m not going to just be dumping 50 trucks into the business. We look at the market and look at what’s required.

How can you grow it? Apart from just getting more people.

Scania as a company is growing, there are more people driving our trucks, so we can grow this to whatever we want – in fact we’re holding back and not growing with demand or the fleet could be a few hundred by now. We actually turn quite a bit of business away.

I won’t say we’re the most expensive but we’re up there. We have the best premium rental vehicles available, their fully specced up. We have servicing throughout Australia and there is the backing of Scania Australia, so there is a lot of potential.

How long do you keep the trucks?

We keep them for two years then change them over. The rigids we can keep for up to three or four years, because to be honest, they’re hard to get back from the customers!

They just adopt the truck as part of their fleet then we take it back and replace it.

We don’t really want a fleet of 500 vehicles, that’s not what the manufacturer is about. In the UK it was because the demand was there but here it’s a slightly different market.

Who are you main customers here?

It’s a mix. Some of them are national carriers, blue-chip fleet operators, while others are small fleets, right down to the farmer who might hire a vehicle with hydraulics and a PTO for the grain season. So we have a good mix. We don’t have all our eggs in one basket which is good for a rental fleet.

Over the 100-odd vehicle we have now, we’ll have 60 or 65 customers which is ideal. You wouldn’t want to have just one customer for 50 or 60 trucks.

What type of trucks do you typically rent out?

Everything that Scania has to offer. We start with P320 6x2s and the P320 8x2. We’ll be phasing out the 6x2 as the 8x2 is more in demand for a 14-pallet truck. We have the 8x2 refrigerated with tail gates or non-refrigerated. Then we move to the 440 for the single application, then we have 480, 560s and 620s. The 480s are for a very light B-Double then we recommend 560 and 620 for the V8s. We don’t put the 730s in the rental fleet as we think they’re more dedicated to the owner buyer.

Do you see that if rental gets too big it has the potential to eat into sales?

Why does rental get big? It gets big because of demand. Ten years ago you were given a contract for 60 months so you bought your asset for that 60 months. You had a five-year contract. In today’s market, the contracts are 24 months, 36 months some people are saying: "We might have 15 of our own trucks but we need 18 in the short term so we’ll rent for that 12 or 24 month period".

I think that really with Scania, rental complements our sales because people try the product and they think “this is a pretty good truck” and they might buy one. So if anything I think it helps with our sales.

I never ever think that sales are affected in any way. When people rent a truck it’s not that they want to buy one, they might only need it for six months and they don’t need to buy one, just need it for peak times or short term if they have a gap.

What sort of terms are people renting for?

Probably about 60 per cent short term and 40 per cent over three months or more.

Some take it for 12 months.

What about servicing and downtime?

What happens with servicing is that a general service is about eight and half hours so we book it in for the customer and he’ll arrive at say eight o’clock in the morning and we’ll give him a replacement vehicle for the day so there’s no disruption to his business. We want to give24/7 flexibility for the customer. Transport doesn’t stop at five o’clock. We don’t stop at five o’clock. My phone’s on 24 hours a day.

When the vehicle comes in for a service, we check it thoroughly – it might have a cracked headlight, or something like that, so we’ll fix it as part of the service.

It’s a full replacement for servicing. If something more major happens – I’m not saying that trucks don’t break down, they can – if a truck breaks down we make sure he has a replacement vehicle as soon as possible. We can’t stop trucks breaking down, it’s how you react when they do that makes the difference.

My experience over 28 years in the rental business is that it’s a people business. Back in the UK, people would never discuss a rate with me. They’d say: "We need this truck on this day, and it needs to happen." The rate comes second. They might be doing a contract for Coca Cola and they can’t let them down, so we can’t let our customers down. You come to be part of their transport solution.

"I love this industry!" Ms Taylor concluded.

Anna Marie Taylor also loves the second-hand market and the other hat she wears at Scania is that of National Manager Used Vehicle Sales. Next week we’ll continue our chat with Anna Marie on the subject of used trucks and their importance in the industry.

For more information on Scania Rentals, visit the website here.

Q&amp;A: Anna Marie Taylor, Scania rentals

Tags

Q&A: Anna Marie Taylor, Scania rentals