Used Ategos sell well at auctions
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• Used Mercedes-Benz Ategos are now turning up at auctions and they're fetching good prices. They are being entered by finance companies. "We've been selling i7-tonners at io% over CAP Guide values," reports John Connolly, branch manager, HGV, at the British Car Auctions site at Bellevue, Manchester.
And there haven't been too many complaints about the prices realised by the most recent crop of Mercedes Actros tractors: "1997 R-plated 1835s with fleet-spec cabs have been going for £19,000 each," says Connolly.
Older Mercedes, like the 1834 tractive unit, can be picked up much more cheaply, with buyers from Eastern Europe coming in and snapping them up for export, Connolly adds—i994 examples on an M-plate have been fetching a mere L4,500-5,000.
Bellevue holds a sale once a fortnight, and bidders get plenty of
choice. -We'd view 170 to 175 trucks and trailers as a poor entry, and 250 to 300 as a good one, and we'd be disappointed if we sold only 6o to 65%," he says.
The entry is varied. "We've got everything from £2,000 trucks to late-plated, low-mileage examples," Connolly adds. "And we have a special late-plated, low-mileage section in the sale. What we are noticing is that much younger tractors are being bought to be broken up for spares than used to be the case. We're also conscious that, whereas five years ago a haulier could buy a five-year-old tractive unit and make a living out of it, that's not so easy these days."
The outstanding vehicle of recent weeks was a Leyland Oaf 55 18o EUTO-2 rigid—April 1998 on an R-plate—with a dropside body and a rear-mounted PM crane complete with a brick grab.
Reserved at /15,o oo, it fetched a phenomenal £28,250.