Scania targets used truck market

Following on from our chat with Scania Australia's rental manager Anna Marie Taylor, we talk to her about the other hat she wears in the company – that of national manager of the company’s used truck business

Trucksales: Along with being the boss of the rental arm of Scania, you're also national manager of used trucks. Tell us about that.

Anna Marie Taylor: While I really like the rental market, I love second-hand. I've always worked with the used people. In the UK the used-truck director was also Scottish and we got on really well. I used to help him out on Saturday mornings and got to know the business. So when the job came up here, I applied. The MD said, "I never thought you'd be wanting to get into used trucks." He thought that National Fleet would be better for me, but we had a chat and I got the job, and I love it.

Where are your used-truck bases?

We have used at every wholly-owned outlet. So we have two locations in Brisbane, two in NSW, we've got three across Victoria, one in South Australia and one in Perth. And we've got at least one of our used-truck team at each location.

Obviously you source your vehicles out of trade-ins, but where else do you get them from?

We do a mixture. To start with we have the vehicles coming off the rental fleet. Two-year-old vehicles coming off with a full service history, and we know exactly where they’ve been and even who’s been driving them. Fully spec'd up, the latest vehicles with everything on them so they're an ideal vehicle. We also have operating lease vehicles. An operating lease vehicle which is really a contract hire vehicle where they take it for 40 or 60 months or whatever it might be. The vehicle has a full service history with Scania as part of the contract and that comes back after the term. Again, a really good used product because we have its full history.

We also do valuations and appraisals for national fleets and get some of the trucks from them as trade-ins. If a guy's buying a new truck, he's generally got something to trade in so this is where we're getting a lot of the stock.

Often they're Scanias, but a lot of the time they're not. Currently it's about 50/50 Scanias and others.

The other thing is we're keen to buy in the marketplace. We call them SPs – strategic purchases. We look at anything but especially Scania. Not a lot but a few.

What about the staff? Where are they from?

They're generally pretty young and come from the car industry. We send them off to auctions to get a feel for the market. They don't necessarily buy at the auctions but they come along. We buy at the on-line auctions as well.

What about Trucksales.com.au?

I actually use trucksales as my bible. I've had all your guys out to see me and show me how to the get the best out of the site. They're brilliant. I had them out here last month to do a presentation to the whole team to make sure they're getting 100 per cent out of the system.

Every single day we're on the site. I was on it last night doing some research. It's great.

How far are you going to take used within the Scania family?

How big is the sky? Used has got so much potential. Years ago we would only sell Scania product, now we're selling every manufacturer's. We are a used truck sales outlet, not just a Scania outlet. You look at any of our forecourts and you'll see that if there are six trucks, two or three will be non-Scania.

We would like to be in a position where for every two new trucks we sell, we'd sell one used.

A used truck in my eyes is a new truck with some kilometres on it. When you actually look at our trucks, they're really immaculate.

Are you going to grow the number of used outlets you have?

We're at every Scania wholly owned outlet. We're not at the independents [independent Scania aftersales centres] because they have their own used stock, but they do have our stock lists because they have people coming through all the time and they can sell our trucks and we do get inquiries from them.

You obviously know a lot of your customers and their needs.

Yes. We try to look at their business requirements. It's not about buying a cheap truck, it's a business decision. We look at their application; the job they're going to do, how long they're going to do it. We take all that in. It's not a hard sell. If you're going to buy a used truck you're not going to just walk in and say, "I'll take that", you'll look, then go away and do your research, look at the market, then come back.

So you help them with their business decision?

Yes. We try to help and educate the customer to make sure it's right the first time. They might say, "I need a 6x2 now but I might need a 6x4 in a few months' time". We want to make sure that they don't come back in six months saying, "This hasn't worked out for me," because that's the last thing we would want. That's one aspect of Scania used – we want to make sure the customer gets what he's looking for and what he needs. Not something he thinks is just a good price.

We also 'advance sell'. We know what's coming up, so we can easily say that in the next few months we might have 40 or 50 trucks coming. We can say, "Who have we got for these trucks?" Someone might be looking for a couple of 620s and we know there are some coming soon. And we do forward sell.

We'll take people around to see trucks and let them test drive them – even interstate. If they want something and it's not here we can rent them a truck until one comes in and then refund their rent if they buy the used truck when we get it.

In April we launched Scania Finance, which is all over the world. So now we can offer them finance on the spot or at least give them a quote. Soon we'll have Scania Insurance, which will be available for Scania and non-Scania products. We're a full one-stop shop.

We also offer extended warranties, maintenance contracts and even driver training, which is unusual for a used-truck outlet. We're keen to push the driver training as drivers might not have driven a Scania before and we can show them how to get the best out of the truck. It's all about driver education.

There's also telematics (Scania OnBoard) on all the ex-rentals and demos and the customers can choose to carry that on if they want.

Well thank you very much for your time; it's been great learning about your business.

It's been my pleasure; come and see me if you need to buy a used truck!

Scania targets used truck market

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