24 July 2018

Auto Trader has expanded its business-to-business offer with a new auction service aimed at cutting the time taken for a car to move from a fleet operator to a retailer’s forecourt.

It claims it can halve the 34-day average to de-fleet a company car and get it onto a forecourt using a data driven, digital process.  As revealed in sister title Auto Retail Bulletin earlier this month, Auto Trader is already able to match de-fleeted company cars to recently sold vehicles and offer retailers a near direct replacement for their dealership and is currently piloting this new scheme with LeasePlan, ALD and Avis.

However, as a digital service provider, Auto Trader is not planning to offer physical storage facilities to cover the period between a car leaving a fleet and it is arriving on a retailer’s forecourt and would leave this aspect, and cost, up to the lease company. Karolina Edwards-Smajda, Auto Trader commercial products director, said: “Digital platforms will give that speed that physical journeys simply can’t provide.”

When quizzed if Auto Trader would buy a physical remarketing company such as BCA rather than build its own service, she added: “They are very physical, and we believe that we can introduce a lot of efficiencies in this inefficient market, this is the core reason.  The speed of turn is the key thing with these cars when the finance houses or leasing companies are remarketing.  The direction large lease companies are going to is to have some large compounds where they can hold these vehicles.”

Tags: auction, Auto Trader, remarketing