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It is good to be back - can you have too much Christmas? My Christmas socks fit and the new underpants could have done being one size more generous. Boris might have won his Covid bet - politics versus science. He took Scenario F and ran with it - well his luck was due to change. If he is right we are in for a pretty dicey January and then nothing but sunshine from February - so that will give the market a lift. So please form and orderlely queue and buy our tipping trailers.
On a less flippant note, supply side issues are still troublesome. As manufacturers solve one issue - say tyres - then the next one is revealed - say landing legs. Like restauranteurs price: 30% cost of food/ 30% labour/ 30% overhead - so to do manufacturers: 80% materials/ 20% labour. Clearly steel and aluminium World prices are important. They have risen dramatically and many of our suppliers are pricing purely by fear and guesswork - or not offering prices at all. Worst of all, some are pricing incorrectly and then changing them afterwards - ie retrospectively - now that sends panic up the chain into the dealer network. The dealer network (Newton et al) then act as a shock absorber until overwhelmed. The prices then get passed on. So it is entirely possible that there is another 5 to 10% price inflation yet to be revealed from January to June this year. My fear is that this will not be seen equally across the market and that will be the 'competition zone' for the year. Customers yelling at Dealers - and Dealers yelling at Manufacuturers. What about a bit of peace love and harmony?
And a small shout out to my one blog follower - Pieter - Jan a quote for you:
“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”
Mark Twain.
Posted by Andrew on 04/01/2022
Twas the night before Christmas and Santa's little elves are still hard at it at Newton. As a kid Christmas was a long build up killing, plucking and drawing the turkeys and capons and then handing them over. Often the last bird left the farm late Christmas Eve - so a build up of stress before the finish and then RELAX. So no turkeys now, but a big thank you to the team here for working all the way through to lunchtime this Christmas Eve. The handover team have put in a big shift in 2021 and 3 new trailers handed over today - so worth the grunt. The workshop crew are working through next week to make the shop sparkly for the New Year start - thank you to them too. 2022 is going to be so good - cannot wait!!
Posted by Andrew on 24/12/2021
Not feeling that Christmas groove thing .... not sure why? Concious that I must keep the blog positive. Newton has had the most amazing sales year in our history - just over a 1000 trailers sold which is ludicrous given the overall vibe of the year. We have had plagues, winds, fires the lot. But a huge amount of good planning and good work by our team and by our suppliers has left us with a record year. So I guess it is a big thank you to my amazing staff and my supportive customers. I truely hope for a few less plagues next year for all of us. Best of health and happiness to you all....
PS We are open til Christmas Eve unless the lurgy gets us.
Posted by Andrew on 20/12/2021
Knapen have release their latest development into the wilds.
It is an anodised aluminium chassis - in silver grey. More durable than paint - may even last for ever (depends on your view of time).
It is quite a big step forward. All manufacturers have been hitting paint problems with the removal of Chromium Oxide from paint formulations - this is better than a work around
Posted by Andrew on 08/12/2021
Good to see that Commercial Motor Magazine penmanship is up to snuff. Interesting to see them reporting that Fruehauf had a 90 % market share prior to their Bankruptcy in September. Well possibly that maths might work in some universe - somewhere where grass is purple and dogs have two bottoms - 90 per cent in a suburb of Grantham perhaps? It is not even hard to fact check - there is public data showing market shares. At some time Commercial Motor needs to work out that people in our industry need objective reporting not Press Releases or their magazine will need to have slightly more perforations and come on a roll to be useful to us?
Thanks to Father Ted for 'Small Far Away' - perspective can be tricky when your primary advertisers issue press releases that are slighty out of kilter with planet earth.
Posted by Andrew on 29/11/2021
