Northway Vehicle Sales is an independent company offering short and long term van hire and commercial  vehicle sales from its base in Baildon, just to the north of Shipley, West Yorkshire.

The company was founded in October 2003 by two experienced commercial vehicle industry professionals and offers a comprehensive range of services. Vans are available for short and long-term hire and Northway can also arrange new vehicle leasing. The company keeps a wide range of used commercial vehicles in stock - they specialise in vehicles under five years of age with service history.

If you’d like to learn more about van hire or sales from Northway Vehicle Sales, visit their website at www.northwayvehiclesales.co.uk or call or email them direct on 01274 588880 / northwayvehicles@msn.com.

Baildon is a small village just to the north of Shipley, which itself is just to the north of Bradford, West Yorkshire.

The rush to use food crops to make biofuels has caused 75% of the rise in food prices seen between 2002 and Febuary 2008, according to a new, unpublished World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

In comparison, the report found that increased energy and fertiliser costs have only been responsible for 15% of food price increases across the same period.

This is a subject I have been concerned about for some time - it’s good to see authoritative, objective support for this coming from such a respected source.

Hopefully both EU and US politicians might start to think a little more carefully about their biofuel policies now - with about half of EU-produced vegetable oil and a third of US corn being used to make biofuels, their incentives have unwittingly distorted global food markets.

An untangling of this mess is urgently needed.

You can read the full report on the Guardian’s website.

Rent A Van, Plant A Tree

Green Motion, one of the leading green van hire companies in the UK, has recently announced a partnership with Trees4Good, a carbon-offsetting organisation.

Trees4Good operate tree-planting campaigns in Borneo and Brazil and their partnership with Green Motion will mean that a tree is planted for every customer. The cost of this will be fully-absorbed by Green Motion; unlike some other hire companies, they will not levy an additional charge for this carbon offsetting service.

Green Motion claim that this partnership will enable them to become the world’s first carbon-neutral car and van rental company, as the carbon benefits for each tree planted will more than offset the carbon emissions of each vehicle Green Motion operates during its lifetime with the company.

New Hybrid Mercedes Sprinter Gets Early Test Drive

I’ve been touting hybrids as a way forwards (in preference to biofuels) for some time now and it is encouraging to see how many hybrid vehicles are starting to come to market - or at least get close.

The van market isn’t being left behind and Mercedes are now in the advanced stages of testing and developing a hybrid Sprinter van. Commercial Motor managed to get a test drive of a pre-production model in Germany this week and found it to be a well-developed and competent van.

You can read their first impressions review here.

I had an email the other day from a visitor to this site who was puzzled as to why the National and Europcar van hire branches in the location she’d chosen (Sheffield) had the same addresses.

As this is a common question, I thought I would answer it here as well as emailing her back.

Over the last few years, there has been a lot of consolidation within the global car rental industry. One of the changes that has taken place is that Europcar UK Group own the National brand in the UK.

What this means is that the two companies have decided to combine their rental fleets and some of their branches. The result is a combined van fleet of 6000 vehicles and 250 locations across the UK - and 60,000 cars in the UK. In some locations, branches have been combined for efficiency and both companies now list branch offices with the same address.

Sheffield is just one example of this. A few others are Stoke on Trent, Aberdeen and Brighton - but there are many more.

Although the branches are the same, each company still operates its own pricing structure and has slightly different rental policies. This means it is always worth getting a quote from both Europcar and National - don’t assume they will be the same price, as they probably won’t be!

As the proud owner of a Mk5 Ford Transit, it warmed my heart to find that these magnificent beasts (…) are still being made in China, courtesy of the Jiangling Motors Corporation.

While I am the first to admit that they aren’t the last word in refinement or performance (slow and noisy might be a fairer description) they are excellent, reliable workhorses built in the tradition of older commercial vehicles and designed to take some abuse.

These Chinese Transits look like they should be even better than the original Fords. The cabs seem to be nicely specified and the choice of engines has improved, with a Mitsubishi petrol engine or one of several turbo-diesels to choose from.

According to ChinaKnowledge.com, JMC sold more than 2,500 of Transit-based commercials in May alone - proving that there’s still life in the old dog yet.

You can check out the Jiangling Ford Transits in all their glory here - and be quick, as it looks like JMC are about to leapfrog the Mk6 and go straight to the latest generation Transit - the same one as the European Mk7 Transit.

P.S. The scruffy old nail in the picture above isn’t mine!

I was surprised recently to come across this story in the Scarborough Evening News (of all places!)

Apparently an unsuspecting Ford Transit owner came back to his parked van and found that the exhaust system and catalytic converter had been removed and stolen.

I suspect that these will now be sold for spares - or even scrap metal, but I suppose there is a chance that the thieves needed an identical system for their own van. Whatever the case, it’s a bit of a worry to think that you can’t even rely on your exhaust system still being there when you come back to your parked car or van.

It’s no laughing matter, either - a new exhaust plus catalytic converter is likely to cost the best part of £400, or even more for some models. I feel for the van owner - I don’t think it’s very likely he will get his property back, even if the thieves are caught.

Increased congestion is hitting the effectiveness of British businesses, according to a new survey by car and van rental giant Europcar.

70% of the 300 businesses surveyed said that congestion was impacting the efficiency of their staff when travelling for work, with 42% of those who responded saying that up to 20% of business travel time was spent in congested traffic.

80% of those surveyed felt that traffic congestion is getting worse in the UK - no arguments there. David McNeill, Corporate Sales Director at Europcar feels that it’s time for all road users to take responsibility for minimising their contribution to congestion:

“…what this survey has clearly shown is that we must all take responsibility to identify the ways in which we can reduce congestion on our over-stressed road network.  Challenging times lie ahead and the survivors will be those that tighten their belts and explore all the options to work as efficiently as possible.”

Europcar are one of the world’s leading car and van hire companies and their combined UK fleet (which includes National Car & Van Rental) amounts to more than 60,000 cars and vans.

It looks like the BVRLA’s ongoing campaign to persuade van manufacturers to publish their vans’ CO2 emissions may be nearing a triumph.

Back in January I reported on the BVRLA’s (British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association) plans to create a public database of van emissions, similar to that which is already available for cars. From 1st January, 2008, manufacturers have had to give their new vans a CO2 rating - but they aren’t yet required to disclose them.

This has made it difficult for fleet buyers whose businesses may have set emission reduction targets or who may simply wish to try and do their bit for the environment. However, it now appears that the manufacturers have agreed to publish the CO2 ratings of new vans and the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders (SMMT) is now in discussion with the Department of Transport to bring this about in an effective way - probably “via the Vehicle Certification Agency“, according to BVRLA Director General John Lewis.

The decision has come none too soon; according to the Department for Transport (DfT), vans are now the fastest growing source of CO2 emissions on our roads. With 340,000 new vans hitting the roads last year, it’s not hard to imagine why.

The SMMT is keen to point out that these figures are far from perfect. Unlike cars, whose profile and payload rarely varies significantly, vans can nearly double in weight when loaded and can be typically be specified with different roof heights, for example. Both of these options will affect a van’s CO2 emissions and since CO2 ratings are currently calculated based on rolling road tests with no payload, we can expect the manufacturers’ ratings to be somewhat optimistic for many van users.

The European Commission is planning a consultation exercise to try and work out how to bring more realism to these figures, but this could take years. In the meantime, hats off to the BVRLA, as their six-month campaign has finally bore fruit, providing van operators with some much needed data!

A leading charity has joined the calls by top scientists for compulsory EU biofuel targets to be reconsidered.

Barbara Stocking, CEO of Oxfam GB said that “Recent estimates suggest that increased demand for biofuels accounts for 30% of recent food price rises, while mounting scientific evidence shows biofuels are having an overall negative impact on climate change.”

The UK government has already promised to review their target of making 5% of transport fuels biofuel within two years. However, the EU has continued discussing even more ambitious targets - despite the widespread evidence that the carbon footprint of biofuels can be larger than that of fossil fuels.

Stocking said that “the urgent review of compulsory biofuels targets in rich countries to stop their inflationary impact” was “a priority”.

I’ve been writing articles on the unwanted side effects of increased biofuel use for some months now and over that time the case has only got stronger. Environmentalists, poverty campaigners and scientists all agree that we need to take a step back and look at the bigger impact of biofuels.

So what does the EU do? Plough onwards with plans to make increased use of biofuels compulsory…

European van hire - taking a hire van from the UK to mainland Europe and back - is an increasingly common practice. A few of the more popular reasons for crossing the Channel in a rental van are:

• Moving house
• Musical/sports tour
• Booze cruise
• …and of course couriers/express light haulage

Here on myLocalVanHire.co.uk, Birmingham is our second most popular van hire search location.  Walsall-based Admiral Self Drive Van Hire are perfectly positioned for both Birmingham and Walsall customers and are also one of the few companies in the area who offer a comprehensive European van hire service.

Admiral have a wide range of vans and minibuses available for European use. These Include Transits, VW Transporters, Mercedes Sprinter 4.3m long-wheelbase hi-tops and Mercedes-Benz Lutons with tail lifts. Admiral also have specially built 950cu.ft mini furniture removal vans (pretty much the biggest possible 3.5 tonne vans). All rental vans can be driven on standard car licence.

To ensure that your European trip is as stress free as possible, Admiral also provide comprehensive European RAC rescue and recovery cover. European driving insurance and documentation is arranged at no extra cost and there are no additional charges for extra drivers.

Admiral are ideally located for most of the West Midlands, just off Junction 10 of the M6 - click here for a map.

If you’ve got any questions about Admiral’s European van rental service or would like a quotation, you can call them free on 0800 197 8875. For details of their vans, check out their website here.