Scored myself a new job

AllanWorms said:

Hahaha. That's probably what sealed the deal!

Years ago, I managed a family owned rental fleet of about 120 vehicles... Just remember... People are strange: some of the stuff you'll be dealing with will make you wonder how we survive as a species

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Today was 1 of those days

German couple in 1 of our vans they picked up in Auckland came into the yard. They were saying there are some rattles that are annoying them. As you will know campervans are quite rattly, but I spent 3/4rs of an hour going over their van tightening things up and other stuff, mainly to do with fly screens and the cooker. Sat in the back while the fella drove round listening out for stuff and doing my best to turn it into a van into a Rolls Royce. I did point out that the noisiest rattle was the torch they had hanging up on the side of a cupboard. At the end of it all, they just got in the van and drove off. Not so much as a thank you. I didn't even mention the war.

Then I'm working away on a van and a transporter turns up to drop off 1 of our vans (picked it up in Invercargill). Evidently the clutch had gone. Gawd knows how long they had driven on a bad clutch, but the mechanic had to rev the nuts off it to get it to move... and nerves of steel to keep it up on a sharp turn onto the hoist ramps!

Then I'm out front when someone comes in to drop a van off. Woman gets out and I notice she's with 2 young kids. They'd only had the van for 5 days and I ask if they've had a nice time. She coyly answers yes. I look closer at the van, a Mazda, and the front passenger side corner is munted as is the passenger door. Walking round the back, the bumper on both sides is munted. Not a big van and in 5 days she's managed to trash it!

GrumpyGel said:

She coyly answers yes. I look closer at the van, a Mazda, and the front passenger side corner is munted as is the passenger door. Walking round the back, the bumper on both sides is munted. Not a big van and in 5 days she's managed to trash it

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Presumably she has to pay for the repairs?

Nodge68 said:

Presumably she has to pay for the repairs?

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She will have had insurance, but she will be liable for the excess which may be £750 depending on which option she took.

Nodge68 said:

Presumably she has to pay for the repairs?

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I managed to fit new back bumpers yesterday, and luckily she managed to avoid breaking any lights on the back.

We have a replacement door and 1/4 panel for the front which will hopefully fit safely. Have ordered the lights & surround.

It will be missing some plastic cappings etc, but hopefully we can get it looking reasonable enough for when it goes out in a couple of days and fully repair it over winter. It's due for a COF (a commercial MOT) before it goes out, so it will be safe. Luckily we have a couple of days to sort it, usually this time of year vans are coming in 1 day and back out the next.

Most of the vans will need to go to the panel beaters over winter. And most of the Chinese ones will be going for rust repairs to, even though they're under 6 years old

Ah yes.
So much sounds familiar!

People. Enjoy them

GrumpyGel said:

She will have had insurance, but she will be liable for the excess which may be £750 depending on which option she took.

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Perhaps she was hoping you wouldn't notice the damage until after she'd left?

Nodge68 said:

Perhaps she was hoping you wouldn't notice the damage until after she'd left?

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"It was like that when we picked it up"

I once had a car returned and the ENTIRE passenger side was repainted, and the clearcoat was OVER our rental company logo on the 1/4 panel!

Nodge68 said:

Perhaps she was hoping you wouldn't notice the damage until after she'd left?

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I was just speaking to the girl cleaning the van. She said the inside was disgusting.

A mum and 2 kids on a 5 day rental!

How's the job going?

Hippo said:

How's the job going?

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Yeh good thanks

The best part is that it is quite varied, no 2 days the same and doing different stuff.

I generally "pre hire check" 2 or 3 vans a day and each van takes about 2 hours. Some days the mornings can go a bit slow while you're waiting for vans to be dropped off and there's only so many times you can sweep the yard or tidy stuff up, so ideally there's vans left over from the previous day or vans are dropped off early. Probably 1/2 my day is spent actually checking the vans, which is pretty monotonous (I described the process in the OP), but as monotonous things go, I can think of a lot worse.

The other half is fixing stuff that wasn't just a simple tightening of a screw or summat. On Saturday I fitted a new radio aerial, waste pipe cap, outside light and a few other bits to a van. The van was one we don't have many of and we didn't have some of the bits it stock, so I was driving round Christchurch collecting bits for it. I'm quite often jumping in the company's courtesy van and picking people up or dropping them at the airport or hotels, or jumping in a van to drop it off at the panel beaters or for a COF. Makes the day more interesting and I get to have a yarn with the punters

Done stuff I've never done before to - like fitting tyres to rims - which if you're doing it all day long, is one of those very monotonous jobs, but to do it occasionally is fun. Plus of course when the Freelander comes to needing rubber, I can use the company account to get them cheap and fit and balance them all myself. I put on Ali's EV thread about helping the mechanic change a fuel tank on Saturday, I help them out with other stuff to, eg undoing pipes when they're doing a cambelt change - general playing about with the mechanicals without the responsibility

Its a nice team to work with to.

I started a thread on here about checking the house batteries that are wired up in arrays. Thought I was being told to do it wrong, which was confirmed on here, so now I do them properly. I also think they tell me to lubricate the door hinges and locks incorrectly as well. Before each hire, I have to "lubricate" all the hinges and locks... which is fair enough. However, they tell me to do this by giving them a spray of WD40. To me this is not what you should do as if anything it will just remove the lubricant. I'd have thought lubricating them would be greasing them.

WD40 isn't the best. You want some proper grease or oil for hinges and stuff like that.

Wurth HHS2000 - I used to be a wurth rep in a former life... and think everyone should use it on everything

and a TINY bit goes a long way... because it's not cheap...

AllanWorms said:

Wurth HHS2000 - I used to be a wurth rep in a former life... and think everyone should use it on everything

and a TINY bit goes a long way... because it's not cheap...

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There's a Wurth man that visits regularly and "replenishes" our stocks of what we "need"

Our boss visited the yard recently and told us that next time the Wurth man visits, tell him to feck orrf

I'll look into that HHS2000 though, I'm sure it will be invaluable and the Wurth man will agree... before he gets the big boot up the jacksie

Was a great day at work today. Really busy day with everyone rostered on, an early start with a number of vans being picked up and lots being dropped off.

Pre hire checked 4 or 5 vans, luckily not to many issues and all fixed up, including some "panel beating" of a LDV V80 door to get it to open without grating against the wing. The monkey who missed the damage on the drop off inspection decided to "remedy his error" by using a crow bar against the wing to lever the bent bit of the door out - which of course just bent the wing It took my expert worldly experience to then remedy both his errors with the #1 tool and summat hard, long, thin and flat at both ends (feck knows what that was, but I found it lying around).

Did 4 runs up to the airport for people dropping off, so had a good chin wag.

Was chatting to with a young burd with baby who was picking a van up. Just flown down from Germany... 24 hour flight with baby, such fun. Then they were picking up a 2 berth camper. So baby will be sleeping in the double bed with them and the child seat will be in the middle of them up front in the van.... for a 5 week hire!

Probably boring people to death with this thread, but if you're interested here's some pics of the yard...

Out front is the pick up/drop off area, then the office by the (inside) gate, then wash bay, 3 service bays, mechanics bay and hoist. Parking area out back...



As well as campervans, the company also hires out cars (Toyota Fielder (Corolla) station wagons) that come with camping kits with either a tent or roof tent. The Fielders are quite boring, but most of them are hybrids so add some interest to them. We have a pile of broken roof tents out back, mainly broken zips that hold everything inside the cover. I'm hoping to score myself one of them

Most of my work is done in the service bays. 3 vehicles can be worked on at a time, the back wall has all the screws, caps, valves, clips, plugs, hose adapters, stickers etc that we use along the back wall and there's 3 rooms off the back for our pre hire bits (heaters, fridges, TV aerials etc), laundry (bedding/towel sets that are laundered externally and delivered back in 'packs', all our towels and cleaning bits plus a washing mashing to clean them etc) and the mechanics room (spare parts for the different vans, tools, bulbs etc)...





I was last out today and took this pic looking back into the yard. Out front are LDV V80 and Deliver9 based vans - but also out of sight is a VW LT35 and out back is a Merc Sprinter and Mazda E2000 all of which are being sold off at the end of this season (together with the Toyota Hiaces and Mitsubishi Canters) as they are to old and/or troublesome. The mainstay of the fleet will be the LDVs with Iveco 70c based 6 berths and VW Crafter based 4 berths with the older LDVs becoming out 'budget' vans.

I like this thread

I was looking at some VW Crafter 6 berth campers on tardme... Wondering if I sprung the $75K or so, if we'd get enough use over the next few years and keep enough value in it to work out OK... or should we whore it out on Camplify or similar.

My wife keeps reminding me how much I HATE being in the car with my 3 boys though

AllanWorms said:

I like this thread

I was looking at some VW Crafter 6 berth campers on tardme... Wondering if I sprung the $75K or so, if we'd get enough use over the next few years and keep enough value in it to work out OK... or should we whore it out on Camplify or similar.

My wife keeps reminding me how much I HATE being in the car with my 3 boys though

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That'd be a very good price for a 6 berth camper.

You will be more than familiar with the perils and possible costs of renting out vans - I've seen a fair bit in the 10 weeks I've been working with them.

Mind you, you'll also be familiar with the good rewards that are possible. Our 6 berths earn about $4k per week. On Camplify, it looks like you're looking at about 1/2 that.

That Camplify looks good. Lots of people, and companies, listing on there and the couple I looked at had a lot of reviews, so they do get a lot of rentals. Looks like they make the insurance cover "simple", but there's the hassle of getting stuff fixed. They also say about 24 hour nationwide breakdown assistance for breakdown - but I wonder how that works and who decides what contractors to use at what price and who then covers it (presumably the owner). We've had about 180 vans out on the road over the summer and the breakdown line is very busy at times - lots of it simple things to be fixed over the phone, but there's blown clutches etc where the cheapest/quickest solution is to send out a flat bed with a car on it, swap the van for a car, bring the van back to the yard to be repaired and then do the reverse a couple of days later - where ever the van is. Costs a lot of money.

One of the things I've noticed is how many tyres these vans get through. It may be that I see so many vans that I think that, but if a tyre gets below 4mm tread both are replaced on that axle and I'm always finding them. They need a lot of servicing as well, one of my pre hire checks is to reset the trip counters and I recon the vans average around 1,000km a week. Having said that, if tyres and servicing become a problem, then you'll be making good money out of your camper, not just covering your costs

Part of my problem, will be letting morons drive MY van... and other morons fixing MY van...

So many of both groups have no idea...

Camplify was only the fist thing I saw - I haven't even looked into others, so don't know if there are better ones. Having the insurance and "legal" side of things covered makes it seem easier anyway. I assume the booking is done through Camplify, then I'd have to deal with the collection and drop-off. I don't like people that much anymore - I'd probably tell half of them to ****-off at the time of collection :-D

I'm a bit tempted to try it, but it's quite an outlay for it to not go well :-D But taking risks is how things work though... right???

Do any of your VW crafters have the "auto" trans? the mechanised manual box (but not dual clutch). I wonder how good they are - I'd prefer an actual slushbox for renting out - so the clutch isn't getting smoked everytime somebody is trying to creep it into a spot somewhere!

LOL

Thing is they generally come over nice and competent when you meet and greet them.

Then you hand them the keys and cringe as they start the van up and leave the yard

We had one woman who didn't even get off the yard before crashing - took the sliding door out of a VW T5 and the rear bumper of a Nissan Leaf parked next to our exit. The T5 is only a small van!

Sounds like a nasty crash in Geraldine last night. 3 dead in a camper that caught the safety rail of a bridge on the main highway to/from Tekapo/Queenstown. Heavy crash and exploded evidently.

Our Crafters are 8 speed auto. We don't have many of them and I've not driven 1 yet. The driving layout is good in them because they have 4 captains chairs. The rear 2 can be removed if the hire is only for 2 people giving more room in the van.

Yeah... driving a camper isn't so easy...

We have a few hirers who we could tell would have claims... just AS they left. Like missing the driveway, and taking a detour across the yard, over the footpath. down the kerb and away... So we tried to keep the front row FULL... Even though the driveway was obvious...

The Crafter I looked at was a Double cab, to two front seats and a rear bench seat, 4 wide! All forward facing. Some (mostly mercs) have the 4 other seats around the table, all with 3 point belts, but two are rear facing... urgh!