Nexus Vehicle Rental has announced a record year for bookings of commercial vehicles with a 29.1% year-on year increase in December 2015.

Nexus doubled the number of vans it had out on rent year-on-year throughout December and, excluding short wheelbase vans, this number was three times higher than the same period in 2014.

Its fleet covered a combined 8,373,400 miles during December, the equivalent of 336 trips around the equator.

The spike in van rentals highlights the current strength of the UK commercial vehicle market and the unprecedented seasonal demand brought on by online shopping events such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas home deliveries.  

David Brennan (pictured), chief executive officer at Nexus, said: “As a leading rental provider, we are well equipped to deal with seasonal demand and can offer guaranteed availability of vehicles - we have access to over 500,000 vehicles across 2,000 UK locations covering Newquay to Elgin.

“Rentals of CVs in particular were three times those observed in December 2014. This can be explained by the trend of the increasing value of online retail spend which was 8.2% higher than last year throughout December.

“We are able to source any vehicle at incredibly short notice, ensuring courier services were not affected over the festive period.”   

The parcel delivery service, Yodel, was one of the new customers Nexus served in December.

Dick Stead, executive chairman of Yodel, said: “Peak plans assumed that parcel volumes over the busy peak period would vary on a daily basis, therefore Yodel needed to find a supplier capable of quickly meeting the changing vehicle needs. Nexus delivered that promise by helping Yodel adjust vehicle supply to parcel volumes by delivery location and this helped us to deliver a record breaking quality of service and record the highest levels of customer satisfaction over the biggest parcel volume peak in UK history.”