Claim's Cabbies Corner. Repo Revenge.

[Warren t claim]

It's what we in the trade call a "Settle Buy".

A deal done between two drivers or a driver and a fleet owner where the buyer puts down a deposit and pays weekly rental payments until the vehicle is paid for. I did offer to rent the cab but he'd rather sell it for cash or on the weekly. I refer the settle buy option because if I was only renting it there's nothing stopping him selling the cab to someone else with a weeks notice and leaving me without a job again.

As well as renting out private hire cars back in the mid 2000s, I also used to offer settle buys. A driver could either rent a Mk2 Mondeo from me at £80 a week or buy one from me at £100 a week. The ones I sold were usually the better examples of Mk2 Mondeos, meaning the rentals were bought in as a Cat C and the settle buys were Cat D.

I generally tried to sell cars for less than £4000 so they'd be paid for in much less than a year as I didn't want an argument if it failed its next plate MOT. Warranties were usually only for a month as a driver could hand the car back at any time, even after a month. What I, and a few other fleet owners offered, was the option for the driver buying the car to bring it to the garage I used to have any major malfunctions fixed with no immidiate cost, I'd just put the cost of the replacement clutch, gearbox, injector pump as extra weekly payments of £100 at the end of the finance agreement. This usually worked out that the driver ended up paying maybe £4800, or 48 payments of £100 for his Mondeo. The profit on charging full retail on the parts and labour I'd split with my mechanic. Unlike the rental cars on my fleet, things like tyres and servicing were not included in the weekly payment although I'd happily put a £70 service on the end of the bill for £100.

Every car I sold on the weekly would be sent out with a new cambelt, decent tyres and freshly serviced. If a car was returned within a month, something that only happened once, I'd advertise it out again as a settle buy. Any car handed back to be after that went straight onto my rental fleet. I generally stuck to Mk2 Mondeos for several good reasons. Firstly they were a cheap fix both mechanically and to get them hammered straight in the first place. Secondly, I always had a crashed or dead example to rip apart for parts. I always made a habit of buying Mondeos no older than five and a bit years old so I had the time to get them pulled straight and plated before their sixth birthday meaning that they'd be young enough to get a 12 month plate on because my council insists on retesting a PH car twice a year when it reaches 6 years old.

At the same time I was selling Mondeo Mk2s on the weekly another, larger, operation was doing something similar but selling the super desireable at the time Peugeot 406. Although admittedly his 406s were a couple of years newer than my Mondeos, he had no shortage of punters chomping at the bit to grab themselves a piece of repaired Cat C 406 action for the eye watering price of £10k. FFS! That's well over two years repayments after repairs. Come to think of it, that's £10 grand for a Cat C 406 with DHSS spec, clock instead of a rev counter in that shitty solid green colour. Any Mondeo Aspen I bought went straight to rental and the driver would always want first refusal on the next LX or GLX I had available.

One interesting point to ponder is that it didn't matter if the Mondeo I was selling was a hatch or a saloon, they both sold and rented out just as easily. Another fact that's only just occured to me twenty years down the line is that out of the dozens of Mk1/2 Mondeos that passed through my hands I honestly don't think any of them were estates. I can't think why this is.

I had one driver who totally refused to buy a car on the weekly from me and insisting on renting despite me telling him it was dead money. He'd been with me nearly two years and as my longest serving driver he'd managed to work his way up to the top of the food chain on my rental fleet finding himself driving a Mk2 Ghia X manual hatch with full leather in metallic grey. He'd recently swapped to this Ghia X from a GLX 1.8 diesel hatch because he had his own operators licence and did airport transfers like a Poundland NorfolkNWeigh and was happy to have a 2.0 petrol over the diesel fitted in his GLX as the Ghia X had cruise contorl fitted, a feature unavailable on any Mk1/2 Mondeo. It came as no surprise that he didn't really have to pay any fuel penalty as the 1.8 Endura D diesel lump wasn't the most economical oil burner at motorway speeds. The problem started when this lad took one Manchester Airport job too many and fell asleep on the M56 whilst driving to pick up one of his clients. He woke up after the Mondeo hit the central reservation causing him to spin accross all three lanes before coming to a halt sideways covering lanes 1 and 2. He was only insured third party, as almost all drivers were back then, which happily paid out for several yards of Armco but left me with a pretty big bill for a Mondeo that was way beyond repair.

When I chased him for the money he started to whinge stating that he'd given me something like £6000 over the last year or so which more than covers what I paid for the car. Now that's sort of true but he'd not had the Ghia X more than a couple of months. If he'd have bought the first car I rented to him off me on the weekly, a Mk2 1.8 petrol LX in Panther Black IIRC. He would now not be looking at a huge bill to replace the Mondeo that at the time was the pride of my rental fleet. Eager to avoid a bare knuckle fist fight with a 20 stone 5'5" bloke who looks like he'll drop dead of a stroke at any moment now, I agreed to rent him a metallic dark green 2.0 LX automatic Mk2 Mondeo for £185 a week. £80 rental, £55 insurance and £50 to pay me on the weekly for the crashed Ghia X. After a few months I awoke to discover the Mondeo Mk2 parked outside my flat with the keys in my letterbox. I was expecting that to be honest but what really hurt was seeing him later that week driving a settle buy 406 from the other firm I mentioned earlier. I really couldn't be arsed chasing him for anymore money.

[Warren t claim]

If you're wondering what the profit margin was on a settle buy Mk2 Mondeo then it was usually £1500 plus whatever I made on the service and repair charges lobbed on the end. Not a massive margin really. If I'm being honest, my mechanic probably made a bigger profit pulling them straight. I'd buy a Mk2 Mondeo that'd been in a reasonably hard, but not enough to set the airbag off, front and back Motorway crash for about £300 from the now defunct, trade only Blue Cycle salvage site. To get it pulled back into shape, pay for new parts required, sprayed and inspected cost me between £1500 and £2000.

[Warren t claim]

So Warren, two decades later would you do this all again I (don't) hear you ask. Well, the answer has to be a solid maybe. Back in early 2020 I was at the point of sourcing a fleet of four Toyota Prius's as I saw a gap in the market for newly badged pakis with only automatic licences eager to hit the road as private hire drivers. This was to be a joint venture with a wealthy mate who owns Claim_Garage. We were even going to book the garage staff on a hybrid maintenance course at the local tech college. Due to commitments elsewhere, we couldn't get together to travel to the auction in Brighouse to purcahse our hybrid fleet and before the next auction, Covid hit the UK. We both breathed a sigh of relief as rental taxis were being returned everywhere and we dodged the bullet of having four hybrid Toyotas sitting there depreciating.

Another avenue we were exploring was insurance credit hire. Frank, someone who'll be familiar to all regular Warren Watchers on this thread, was approached by a local solicitor with regards to providing local plated taxis to non fault accident taxi drivers for the right backhander. This law firm was pretty upfront about the bung required to steer this lucrative business in the direction of Frank. Frank had to pass on the offer as he didn't have a plated car less than three years old. My walleted up mate and I thought it'd be a good idea to pay the correct bribe and use my Ioniq, which was well under three years old at the time, as a credit hire car and I'd jump into a spare Prius. Now, neither my mate or myself have much knowledge regarding insurance credit hire cars but at that time Pete M over on the vanilla had just quit his job working for a credit hire firm, a fact I mentioned to my mate that I had a Facebook friend who I'd met who'd be handy to get advice from as he'd recently left the credit hire industry. Wealthy mate suggests that in a few weeks when we're up and running with a limited company I should approach Pete M and offer to bung him a couple of grand in a brown envelope for a couple weeks of consultancy work. Sadly, in the intervening fortnight Pete M posts something pro EU on his FB page and I reply saying that all his facts come from pro EU news sources causing me to be unfriended and blocked. Bollocks!

[Warren t claim]

Another avenue of opportunity that we've considered exploring is renting scooters out to Albanian Just Eat riders and offering credit hire scooters to those who inevitably crash. WWe even registered the domain name justseat.

[M'coli]

Is this a buy or rental Warren?

It's a buy. Paid off over so many weeks.

HP then.

Daddies.

[Hooli]

The never never

[Eddie Honda]

It's a buy. Paid off over so many weeks.

HP then.

Daddies.

Gold Star is the bestest.

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[M'coli]

Fuck me, that list of ingredients is grim!

[Eddie Honda]

Tastes lush though

[DodgeRover]

Contains ingredients known to cause cancer in the state of California...