Vehicles - Commercial and Specialist and equipment

The term “vehicle” is used very widely, from the rather more obvious example of haulage vehicles to the somewhat less identifiable vehicle classes as fork-lift trucks and earth moving equipment that might fall into the “vehicle” definition.

Open Capital terms haulage and general commercial use vehicles into one category Commercial”, and others into a second –Specialised”.

The Commercial vehicle market has traditionally been serviced well by the finance houses and banks supplying a combination of leases (operating and finance) and hire purchase. In addition manufacturer schemes, albeit often “badged/labelled”  programmes and fundamentally run by bank lines, have filled a valuable role in the marketplace over the past decade. However, we are experiencing a number of situations that do not fit the traditional asset-based facilities, with a real need for customers to provide more project-style facilities to their own customer base. This involves careful structuring, both legally and financially to ensure they achieve the expected financial rewards from the relationship. Our expertise extends from trailers, tractors, to container finance.

Specialist vehicles – these extend from items that could be classified as equipment such as earth moving equipment to clearly identifiable vehicles such as refuse collectors, sweepers etc.

This category, albeit specialised, is not as tradition dictated confined to the public service sector i.e. local authorities, ambulance trusts, who have tended to provide such services. Outsourcing has been a growing trend in both the public and private sectors over the past fifteen years, with more and more companies relying on specialist private sector bodies to provide the services they are required to carry out. A result of this is several of our customers are private contractors rather than the Local Authorities for whom the have contracts. In order to attract the best rates to ensure competitive bidding, and dispel the theory that small must be vulnerable, Open Capital has devised financial products to help hire companies and other service providers leverage off the power of their customers credit rating rather than depend on their own. This results in the opening of new credit lines as well as much keener finance charges.