New life has been breathed into nearly 1,000 former Leaseway vehicles six months after the company went into administration.

But rather than the deal being struck by a familiar face in the van rental sector, the fleet of LCVs and associated business has been bought by a newcomer, Commercial Vehicle Solutions (CVS).

Established in 2002 by former Lex and GE employee Martin Collins, CVS has traditionally been seen as a supplier of heavy commercial vehicles.

However despite the van rental market’s recent rocky history, Collins told Fleet News he saw an opportunity to expand his business, while providing customers with a better level of service.

“We all saw how the market had grown and we could probably all see how the market was going to suffer,” explained Collins.

“There were some high profile failures and that’s why we don’t want to be another ‘stack them high, sell them cheap’ operation.

“Of course we want to be winning business and we want to be profitable, but we want to be doing business with the right customers and with the right service levels.”

Leaseway Vehicle Rental had been a FN50 company employing more than 250 people with a risk fleet of 13,000 vehicles before Pricewaterhouse Coopers was brought in at the beginning of December 2010.

Its failure had come in the wake of GE Capital closing its vehicle rental business TLS and within 24 hours of Leaseway entering administration it was joined by another FN50 company, Newton Vehicle Rentals (NVR).

It had a fleet of around 7,000 vehicles and blamed its demise on tough trading conditions, before the bulk of its business and assets was bought by Hitachi Capital Vehicle Solutions.

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