Trucks are no longer leased

Due to the increase in leasing costs, which has reached 24% per annum, road freight carriers are beginning to abandon their fleet and switch to outsourcing, concentrating in the forwarding segment. This trend is mainly observed among small companies: larger carriers are still able to service leasing, although they hope for a reduction in rates. Banks, however, do not see an outflow of clients from the leasing segment.

Rising leasing rates are forcing road carriers to reduce the share of their fleet in leasing or even outsource transportation. “Vehicles in current leasing are not about income,” says TTG CEO Andrei Rudakov. “For most, this means working at zero or a small, acceptable minus. If the car is purchased, then we are talking about a net profit of 25 rubles. from a kilometer. At the same time, there is a tendency to decrease with a long service life (five to seven years) to 12 rubles. from a kilometer.” The company is considering the possibility of abandoning its own cars:

“At the current level of cost of fixed assets and long-term leases, leasing work will be, at best, zero, and every year – only at a loss. The purpose of such work is only to lease and sell the fixed asset. Only large fleets can afford this.”

Bridge Logistics, which purchased nine tractors and 16 trailers in 2022 and began operations in the road transportation of containers, cars, oversized and dangerous goods, switched to hired vehicles a year and a half later due to dumping by competitors, a shortage of personnel and the risk of disruption to the stability of cargo flow. “The volume of cargo traffic has not decreased, but on the contrary, has increased significantly,” says Bridge Logistics CEO Andrey Shaplov. “Today we have several contract agreements with transport companies that have up to 100 different types, brands and models of cars, which fully covers the need in road transport.” The advantages of this model, notes Mr. Shaplov, are that it allows you to devote more time to the main work, eliminates the need to maintain equipment, as well as “puzzle over where it will be located and who will guard it.”

According to Pavel Yanchenko, general director of the Da-Trans company, models with and without their own fleet of vehicles are two different businesses: “Both markets are important for consumers. We tried both. As a result, they abandoned their fleet in favor of developing customer service and forwarding.” He notes that the fleet model means fewer empty runs, lower fuel costs per kilometer and repairs, and lower depreciation. The main disadvantage is the price of both cars and spare parts: “The Chinese cars that have appeared cost the same as the European ones, but the quality is lower.” The model using hired transport is focused on maximizing profits; the forwarder is flexible in the products offered to the client and has transport anywhere in the country, but experiences difficulties in working with large businesses and feels threatened by various IT platforms.

SOTA Logistic Business Development Director Igor Chernyshev notes that the rate on leasing agreements has already reached about 24% per annum.

“And this is subject to an initial payment of at least 20%,” he adds. “And the cost of the purchase only grows with the exchange rate of the dollar and yuan. Therefore, many small motor transport enterprises with little history go bankrupt, and their fleet is returned to leasing companies.” However, he notes, leasing remains the only tool for maintaining fleet size. Going forward, he says, “we hope to see trucking rates rise in a shrinking market, allowing us to operate at the margins needed to support lease payments.”

Dmitry Ievlev, general director of Avto-PEC, which leases 15% of its fleet of 2.5 thousand units, notes that in conditions when the shortage of transport on the market is worsening, and the average age of trucks in Russia is increasing, the development of its own vehicle fleet allows you to minimize violations of delivery times and quality. At the same time, according to Auto-PEC data, in 2023, carriers’ costs for equipment maintenance increased by 10–12%.

Delko CEO Sanjar Ashuraliev says that now the annual leasing rate is two percentage points lower than the credit rate: “Our company purchases new equipment on lease.”

Due to the increased key rate, some companies actually began to refuse trucks, but only if partial prepayment was made for them, and the transport had not yet been delivered to Russia, says Eduard Mironov, director of procurement of transport services at FM Logistic in Russia. “If the contract specifies a single rate, then for vehicles that have already been paid for using credit funds, there are no changes in the leasing payment,” he says. “Most companies purchase trucks on lease at exactly this rate and do not refuse them. If the contract specifies a floating rate (key rate plus a fixed bank percentage), then the increased lease payment actually makes using your own cars less profitable compared, for example, to last year.”

The founder of the Main Transport portal, Roman Sudorogin, says that the lack of its own vehicle fleet could be regarded as an advantage in 2020–2021 in the context of a surplus of trucks and a decrease in cargo turnover due to the pandemic. But since 2022, the situation began to change.

Transportation by road showed an increase of 11%, and the price of new cars jumped sharply. “As a result, the increase in the number of trucks for 2022 was 0.1%, while the average increase for 2001–2022 was 2%,” he says. “For 2023, such a disproportion of supply and demand, a shortage of vehicles and about 60 thousand drivers of category E led to an increase in freight rates by an average of 30–40%.” According to Mr. Sudorogin, his fleet of vehicles allows him to guarantee the client the delivery time. However, for small and medium-sized transport and logistics companies, the vehicle fleet is more of a problem, driven by the increase in leasing payments and the need to care for the cars. “Here we are also seeing trends towards market consolidation: large transport companies can afford to maintain specialized departments servicing the fleet, receive discounts from the lessor for the volume of vehicles purchased and greater profits from each kilometer driven,” he says. “Smaller companies are forced to optimize costs and risks by abandoning your own vehicles.”

Banks have not yet noticed an outflow of carriers from financial leasing, a Kommersant source in the banking market says. “VTB Leasing does not see a trend towards refusal of leasing on the part of its cargo carrier clients,” says the company’s general director Anton Musatov. “In January-February, VTB Leasing financed a total of 2.5 times more cars and equipment than a year ago . The number of vehicles transferred to logistics companies has doubled. Today, the share of logistics companies is 30% in our car leasing portfolio.” Mr. Musatov noted that cases where customers refuse cars when making an advance payment and before shipment are rare.

Natalia Skorlygina, Olga Nikitina