Merc boss eyes van market
Mercedes-Benz’s UK commercial vehicle managing director Michael Kamper has a simple solution to what is widely seen as a difficult market for new trucks in the coming years: selling and servicing vans!
“The aim is to sell 50,000 new vans a year by 2016 or earlier,” he told Transport Operator. “It’s ambitious but achievable: we sold 26,000 in 2012 and will sell 30,000 in 2013. We can do if it the van market holds up: it’s currently increasing 10 per cent year-on-year.”
Kamper is putting the focus on Citan, the smallest and lightest Mercedes van ever, and retail sales – pointing out that Mercedes truck dealers are well placed to offer the kind of service that business users demand, such as after-hours servicing, while most of Citan’s rivals are sold by car dealers who may not understand the needs of commercial vehicle users as well.
“Keeping vehicles on the road is even more important than sales,” he asserts, pointing out that operators need vehicles they can use and his dealers need workshop and parts volume.
One thing he emphasises is that commercial vehicles will remain firmly in the hands of commercial vehicle dealers, irrespective of the vehicle’s size. “I will not involve car dealers in van service. The CV dealers will be expected to deal with everything from Citan to Actros.
“My biggest responsibility after the customers themselves is providing franchised dealers with business opportunities and not let these opportunities go elsewhere. In return, the dealers have to offer the customers suitable levels of support, and that includes being able to service vans at night for operators whose vehicles work all day.
“Glass showrooms don’t sell products in the commercial market but good aftersales will. I am confident that we can offer such good service that we will keep our commercial vehicles in the family.”
Although new truck sales will be harder to come by, Kamper sees used vehicles as being vital.
“Our dealers will become increasingly engaged in remarketing used vehicles. We will buy and sell attractive used product. Thirty per cent of our used vehicle customers go on to buy new Mercedes products.
“Some of our dealer partners are very good in dealing with used vehicles, others are abysmal.”
Selling vans requires a different mindset for a different market, Kamper asserts. “Truck drivers and operators are focused upon transport, and that makes them more professional in their approach to vehicles than van customers are. For instance, we found that many of the off-the-shelf service packages that we sold for vans were never activated, so we now do a matrix of service offerings for vans.”
Turning to heavy trucks, Kamper said that the all new truck ranges meant they had never been able to offer operators such a comprehensive choice: “The replacement Atego is a particularly good addition,” he said.
“But from 18-tonnes up, we now fulfil applications that we couldn’t before: for instance lightweight tipper chassis and tractors. We didn’t have vehicles of the right specifications before, but now it’s all mapped out for the customer by model type, application and industry sector.
“It’s next to impossible to allocate potential sales to different model ranges at this stage, but we are aiming for 20 per cent of the heavy truck market sector by 2016.”
