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Lex spends 1500,000
Page 54
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• Lex Commercials has spent Lsoo,000 on improvements to its Beeston, Notts, Daf distributorship.
The offices have been rebuilt and extended; the ninebay workshop has been refurbished (it now boasts a tachograph bay): and the parts department has expanded by 95m.'. New fences and gates surround the enlarged yard, which now has a concrete pad for steam cleaning, It all adds up to a considerable commitment to the Daf franchise at a time when the dealership's truck sales have been growing.
"We cover the territory through three locations—Nottingham, Derby, and Sutton in Ashfield—and we should sell a total of 3oo Dafs across all the outlets this year," says general manager Sulchdev Singh. "That compares with 225 in 2000."
He has not seen a major dip in demand as a consequence of the New York disaster but orders are down slightly. "We've been used to taking at least 20 a month, but that's now dropped back to17," he says.
But Singh is far from disheartened: "People keep saying how bad things are going to get, but many of our customers say they are doing very well."
The Nottingham workshop opens round the clock from o7:3ohrs Monday to 17:oohrs Saturday. It's not easy to recruit technicians so the firm is growing its own
talent with an apprenticeship scheme.
"Our target is for aftersales activities to absorb 130% of our overheads," Singh reports. "We're selling a lot more repair and maintenance contracts, and that helps."