PCL Travel
PCL Travel
(08 Nov 2016, 9:52 pm)Andreos1 And all of that comes down to cash flow.
It is OK having thousands of pounds tied up in assets, but you need cash to hand to finance the maintenance and titivating.
To go back to your point about keeping it in-house. That in itself will have cost. You either have a multi-skilled driver/fitter/jack of all trades or a dedicated member of staff. That's without the costs involved in purchasing and maintaining equipment and tools. Or you pay someone to do it.
Just to tie this in with the big-boys. After de-reg in 86 (when assets were bought from the government/taxpayer), it was a good few years before the likes of United, Northumbria or Go-ahead were able to finance the purchase of new vehicles. Go-ahead's first purchase from memory was a handful of Lynx's, Alexander Olympians in and the G RTY Delta's circa 1990. That was despite having stock from the 70's on front line service. The last lot of deckers would have been the C OCN Metrobuses and C LJR Olympians 7/8 years previous.
If it takes a PLC 4 or 5 years to purchase new vehicles, you can see how difficult it is for an independent like PCL.
(08 Nov 2016, 9:52 pm)Andreos1 And all of that comes down to cash flow.
It is OK having thousands of pounds tied up in assets, but you need cash to hand to finance the maintenance and titivating.
To go back to your point about keeping it in-house. That in itself will have cost. You either have a multi-skilled driver/fitter/jack of all trades or a dedicated member of staff. That's without the costs involved in purchasing and maintaining equipment and tools. Or you pay someone to do it.
Just to tie this in with the big-boys. After de-reg in 86 (when assets were bought from the government/taxpayer), it was a good few years before the likes of United, Northumbria or Go-ahead were able to finance the purchase of new vehicles. Go-ahead's first purchase from memory was a handful of Lynx's, Alexander Olympians in and the G RTY Delta's circa 1990. That was despite having stock from the 70's on front line service. The last lot of deckers would have been the C OCN Metrobuses and C LJR Olympians 7/8 years previous.
If it takes a PLC 4 or 5 years to purchase new vehicles, you can see how difficult it is for an independent like PCL.
