I agree with this. You knwo that, due to the huge mileage, you're going to take basically a 100% depreciation hit, so why pay the premium to get a brand new car in the first place?
By going maybe a year old, you're straight away going to save yourself a couple of grand or more.
I'd also echo the suggestion of something of at least middling size. On top of that, you can pretty much ignore the combined mpg, just look at the high speed figure.
Regarding those suggesting that 4 cambelt changes will be needed, is this necessarily so? The figures quoted for each car for this change would take into account an expected age as well as mileage. I would expect that 50k done in 3 months (especially as motorway miles) would cause a lot less wear to a cambelt than 50k done over 4 years.
Mind you, I wouldn't like to be the one to decide exactly how long to leave it...
Cam-chain is a good idea still. What about a Primera? I believe several of the engines fitted to those are chain driven, you've got Japanese reliability, plus their suspension set up definitely errs on the side of 'comfort' which will help the driver and dalek both.
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It would be useful to understand the budget range you're looking at.
Been in many a Merc in Spain / Portugal with 400k+ kms on the clock, the ride and comfort has not been lost in any of them.
Failing that, I'd think about something Japanese purely from the reliability perspective. Nearly all the taxi drivers round our way drive a Toyota Avensis.
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"Also, something with a chain-driven cam will save you 4 cambelt changes."
Thats what I would be thinking, the cost of 4 cambelt changes could easily top £1,000. Mondeo is the obvious chain-cam diesel choice but some complain of seat comfort, so what other medium-large chain cam diesel cars are out there?.
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If you can get a Ghia spec Mondeo through Ford Direct or something then that has to be worth a look, comfortable and economical, and the Ghia has a softer suspension than Zetec etc. so would be better suited to your cargo. The seats are much better than the rest of the range, I would be suprised if anyone found them uncomfortable. Get the 6 speed TDCi 130.
Get an estate version and then you're really sorted.
I would definately echo the idea of buying at a year old. Obviously warranty isn't an issue as unless you spend a fair amount on servicing in the first few months the warranty will be invalid anyway after you've covered your first 15,000 miles.
Thinking about the huge costs involved in this I would say it's definately worth doing a bit of scouting amongst manufacturers to see if anyone would be interested in some kind of sponsorship. Obviously that means that you would be required to be involved with some sort of magazine article or other so that they cna get some free publicity from the whole thing, but probably worth it.
Blue
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Oh, and forgot to add, I would forget the idea of a small van based vehicle, they are not really suited to driving like this, the 206 is an awfully uncomfortable car at the best of times, never mind as a van, and I know the Fiesta has no lumbar support either.
Blue
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As Chris W says, a diesel Toyotoa Corolla estate or Avensis estate would surely be an obvious choice?
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Did start looking at a Chrysler PT Cruiser a little while ago. According to the dealer the 60K/3Yr warranty can be extended to unlimited mileage 4 years for under £500. NOt bad to drive in diesel form and cheap to buy. That would mean your warranty would cover it for all of the contract....
Jim
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I would have thought depreciation is irrelevant since this cost will be included in your contract bid.
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I would have thought depreciation is irrelevant since this cost will be included in your contract bid.
Great, order a Bentley then!
Seriously, I would have thought if it's a competitive tender process then depreciation should be a factor as you need to work out your costings and then add a margin to hopefully come up with a competitive quote...
Rich
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The idea of sponsorship is a good one. Try www.autoboards.co.uk.
If you can't get any sponsorship but think the idea of a liveried car is good, just get the Mondeo estate and paint it up like the Ghostbusters ambulance, give the driver a uniform and within weeks (as you are doing the same run each night) the whole operation and vehicle will be more famous than any Eddie Stobart lorry.
P.S the web page for their fan club(and music) is at: users.aol.com/venkie/rgb/rgb.htm
Also, what about an LPG car, Volvo S60 Dualfuel or a conversion
If you want to get ahead - get a Van!
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I'd have thought that this would be just the thing for HJ's profile in the Telegraph. 'Hi I'm Dave & I do 200k miles per annum. What do you recommend?' 'Hey, will anybody sponsor me?'
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I think that a car such as micra, yaris etc will be too small for this kind of usage and that whilst it may be slightly more comfortable to go for something like a mondeo or avensis the extra cost in fuel terms for dragging the extra bulk will be quite costly.
Someone has already calculated that for every extra 1MPG they do they will save £500 per year and so a mondeo sized car getting 45mpg will work out a lot more expensive than a slightly smaller car doing 65 or 70mpg.
My recommendation would be one of the smaller diesel engines in a car the size of a corolla or C3. Both of these have nippy 1.4 turbo diesel engines and you should be able to get 65mpg out of them easily on a good run.
As for the sponsorship one possible place to enquire would be with the M6 Toll - it would make things quicker to use it and if you could save the cash it would be another considerable saving. They already advertised on the back of i think James Irlam lorries so they may be interested in you.
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M6 toll - that's a good idea BH.
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Espada III - well if you have a family and need a Lamborghini, what else do you drive?
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How about contacting Honda and seeing if they'd like to sponsor their super economic and low emmisions 'Insight' for a 2 year test.
It claims to be the most fuel efficient car on the market - I'm sure Honda would love to prove it...
I have no experience of this car though, and know it only has 75 horses (albeit a decent amount of torque) but it could turn out to be the cheapest of the bunch to run, although not to buy.
Do we know how big the equipment and contraption to transport it is, if so would this have enough room / suitable access?
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Why thank you!
And whilst i'm on a roll why not approach someone like BP or Esso as well?
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Diesel
6 Speed Box
Comfort depends on what you find nice to sit in, but the Mondeo seems a bit hit & miss in that regard (www.car-seat-data.co.uk/xlcardata.htm), "serious layout problems, retrograde step!"; whereas the Golf/Bora & Passat fair well...
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I would actually go so far as to approach manufacturers (of cars and fuel) for this, they can only say no and may even be able to offer support by way of parts, fluids, etc.
This may be something that other bidders for this contract may not do. The wider you make your search for assistance in running costs the better.
If someone can make the claim that their vehicle / lubricant / filter can do 200k it's well worth their while.
If you want to get ahead - get a Van!
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Why look at diesel when LPG is half the price? I believe that Volvo and Ford make dedicated LPG vehicles and with that mileage you would be saving a great deal.
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I was just thinking that this must be one expensive piece of kit.
Some quick figures for the fuel alone (based on diesel at 90p / litre) show that at 45mpg it is going to cost about £35k in fuel or 60mpg is £26k. Add to that the cost of insurance, wages, repairs/maintenance and lastly a profit margin, it must be some pretty special equipment!
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"we are in the process of costing out a 2-year contract to take a piece of medical equipment from Milton Keynes to Glasgow every night, 5 nights a week and bring a similar one back. These units weigh 25kg and are very delicate, needing to be bolted into a special permanently vehicle-mounted cradle for the journey. The customer has tried conventional overnight parcel services with unsatisfactory results, and would prefer to pay a premium for a 100% reliable service."
Don't know if anyone mentioned it but if it is a high-spec piece of equipment, that will develop problems if it is jarred by hitting uneven road surfaces, then you should be looking at something bigger with good suspension/damping and a longish wheelbase.
This would suggest something along the lines of a good diesel estate car, and not a small car.
So anything from Mondeo/Passat/Accord/Octavia/C5 estates.
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>>it must be some pretty special equipment!
The thought had occurred to me - otherwise why not get two !
I cannot see the point of a new car. Even a 3 month old car, which will be virtually untouched when considering the life it is about to live, would be significantly cheaper.
Also, the car itself is likely to represent a fairly small percentage of the total service cost, so one probably doesn't need to be too economical about which car to buy, certainly not at the expense of any functionality or quality. And clearly its capital cost is much less significant than ongoing operational costs - so fuel economy is essential, cost of servicing, cost of maintenance and repair are much more important than the cost of the vehicle.
You're as likely to save more money by working out where is the best place to buy fuel.
Also, given that I suspect that reliability is paramount, you might be better off considering two cheaper vehicles which alternate travel nights. Less wear and tear and an immediate backup if something goes wrong with one of them.
If you are travelling back to base and know that there is something wrong with the vehicle, you have 12 hours to fix it. As opposed to a minimum of 36 hours if there are two vehicles and a maximum of a lot if the other vehicle can handle the load for a time.
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Your post has also prompted me from BR retirement, Dave. An excellent, if thorny problem.
Go for a low mileage Astra ECO4 from a main dealer for around £8,500. Vauxhall quote 80mpg. Servicing is cheap and the unit is reliable. Add an unlimited mileage warranty at £395 pa.
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Your post has also prompted me from BR retirement, Dave. An excellent, if thorny problem. Go for a low mileage Astra ECO4 from a main dealer for around £8,500. Vauxhall quote 80mpg. Servicing is cheap and the unit is reliable. Add an unlimited mileage warranty at £395 pa.
Do warranties include commercial use like this?
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Depreciation isn't an issue as the mileage will kill the value. However, low initial cost obviously desirable.
Wear & tear likewise not an issue - clutch, brakes and engine should all last that distance as they're not being put under severe strain/usage on a constant basis.
Reliable diesel engine for economy, chain cam preferable.
Comfortable cruiser.
What about a Rover 75 CDTi in Connoisseur SE trim? Won't now cost a lot to buy, certainly meets the above criteria. Same engine as BMW 320d, so servicing not an issue. Even in CDTi guise, this engine only produces 135 bhp, as opposed to the 150 bhp of the 3 Series (or have BMW upped it by now?), so it won't be running to the limits of its endurance.
In fact, if you do buy one and use it for this, I will take it off your hands afterwards!
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andymc
Vroom, vroom - mmm, doughnuts ...
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Wow, I can?t believe so many people have replied and given this so much thought! I can?t possibly respond to every point raised here, so I?ll try and cover the main ones. Oh, and hello to all the old BackRoomers who remember me :-)
We put the tender for the MK-Glasgow job in today. We plan on using a pre-registered delivery mileage old shape Octavia TDi 90 (the SDi engine went out of production a year or so ago) to be bought from the suppliers we use for new taxis.
The Octavia is a known quantity, I did 260k miles in mine in 3 years with the only major failure being the gearbox at 201k. Even with 50% of my driving being in town the clutch lasted 175k miles, and in every respect the car appeared to have the wear and tear of one with a third of the recorded mileage, as borne out by some of the comments above.
We are certain to go for an unused vehicle, as a 6-month old ex-demo car could theoretically have had a very hard 6,000 miles and therefore a greatly reduced life expectancy, so that?s one risk we?re not prepared to take.
Not too sure about chasing any kind of sponsorship, I mean some of the national courier firms cover this kind of annual mileage in Sprinters, Berlingos and so on by double-shifting them and working them 24 hours a day out of large depots without any fuss. And the potential for egg-on-face could be quite large if anything were to go wrong, generally these kind of jobs are usually best tackled discreetly and simply.
We would work around any major breakdown / accident damage by borrowing one of the company taxis for the night (it would an overnight journey), even a car with 200k+ on the clock can withstand an 800-mile blast now and again.
Thanks once again for all your suggestions and reasoning, if I?ve missed any points I apologise but these 18-hour days do that to you. A nice little contract of 5 consecutive 15-hour shifts and the weekends off could be just what I need?.
Dave.
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Good choice Dave. Best of luck with the tender - hope you get it. Let us know!
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Dave,
Almost always in these cases small suppliers tend to underprice. Typically its because they tend to under-estimate the need for contingency planning.
The car will break. Repeatedly.
It will get intermittent faults.
It will get punctures.
Stuff will go wrong with it.
Drivers will get sick.
Keys will get lost.
Roads will be closed.
It will snow.
There will be fuel shortages or price increases.
Drivers will leave your company.
etc. etc. etc.
Its a long time since I have done anything even vaguely similar, but we used to typically look at a risk premium of between 15% and 40%. Whether or not those percentages are right for you, I couldn't say, but you should have added a figure on for risk and contingency and probably a substantial one.
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Agree with you, Dave, about the sponsorship etc. - but don't forget that you might be able to sell some of the remaining cargo space for similar high value/low weight delivery. You are going past 75% of the UK's major cities - there might be others who would value your regular times/speed etc. Another £50/day would make you £25,000 over the life of the contract!
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Good grief, what a coincidence! Volvoman and I were only talking about you the other day, DTD!
Good to see you again, hope you'll stay a while,
HF
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Did you get the contract?
Chris M
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Yes, it starts on the 1st of November :-) And the vehicle?
A pre-registered delivery mileage 05 plate old-shape VW Passat Trendline estate, 1.9TDi PD 130 5 speed manual. Cost £12,150.
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Dave, what happened to getting the Octavia?
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The taxi dealers talked us into getting the Passat instead, it seems worth the extra outlay and has lots more creature comforts and a bit more legroom (I'm 6'3") than the Skoda.
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Bargain then?
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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