Fleets should "replace vans sooner to benefit from lower costs"

The latest generation of vans represents a step forward to such an extent that fleet operators should consider replacing existing vehicles earlier, says GE Capital Fleet Services.

According to GE Capital’s whole life cost calculations, over a typical sample, light commercial vehicles are showing whole life cost savings of around 10% over a four year cycle compared to their predecessors.

Simon Cook, light commercial vehicle leader at GE Capital Fleet Services, said: "This new generation of vans is a revelation in terms of impact on the key cost drivers such as fuel consumption, reliability, maintenance costs and carbon footprint.

"Historically, when a new design appeared, the change in whole life costs compared to the previous model, showed a slight improvement but we are now seeing a genuine change for these vans.

"For example, some LCVs now have 30,000 mile service intervals, something that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Manufacturers have recently delivered some very impressive products."

With the new vans representing such an advance it would, in some cases, make financial and operational sense for operators to consider replacing their current fleet earlier than planned, according to Cook.

He added: "The picture will be different for each fleet and it is a question of sitting down and crunching the numbers. This is something that we have been proactively doing with a number of fleets with which we work.

"It means taking all key operational and funding factors into account and performing some fairly sophisticated calculations, but we believe that there are certainly scenarios where there are strong financial arguments for taking new vans earlier."