News

TLS Vehicle Rental is back in the black and has launched a co-location strategy for its vehicle hire and sister company's plant hire business with the opening of a depot in Stoke-on-Trent. TLS has been running in the red for several years but new chief executive officer Carl D'Ammassa says the company will post a profit of £5m on an £80m turnover for 2007. "It's respectable margin and the business has the capacity to grow," he adds. In 2001 it made  a one-off adjusted loss of £50m.

D'Ammassa, who runs TLS and GE Plant Hire, has a back-to-basics policy on fleet acquisition. The company will continue to offer cars and car-derived vans up to 3.5 tonnes as well as 7.5-18-tonners but he expects the range to extend to five and six-tonne vans: "Many customers want to maximise payload without training drivers for their HGV."

The company's co-location plan was successfully trialled in Oldham following the Stoke site D'Ammassa expects up to 10 more sites to follow suit in 2008. He feels this policy will give customers a better service, as there is considerable overlap between the two companies. However, they will continue to be run as separate cost centres.

TLS is also moving into telematics, where it expects revenue to reach £1m of by 2009 third-party maintenance, which will contribute £4m and contract hire, which is expected to  grow from its current 1,500 vehicles to over 6,000 by the end of 2009. Vehicle rental, by far the company's biggest earner, is projected to reach £85m.