Prices paid for de-fleeted light commercial vehicles (LCVs) suggests selling with a comprehensive service history could increase values by more than 10% versus guide books, according to new research from auction giant BCA. 
 
It researched price performance across a basket of 5,000 vehicles earlier this year from a variety of sellers including corporate and dealer sources, split by mileage.  
 
For lower mileage vehicles, (sub-50,000 miles) BCA saw a 3.5% uplift in performance against CAP. The figure rose to nearly 4% for vehicles that had covered 50,000-100,000 miles and rose again significantly to a 10.4% uplift on vehicles that had covered more than 100,000 miles.
 
 
BCA’s head of commercial vehicles Duncan Ward said: “In an increasingly competitive used van sector, vendors need to make sure they present their vehicles in the best possible way to attract the buyers. Put simply, if a service history that could be present is missing when the van is sold, the seller is potentially sacrificing up to 10 percentage points on the return to the company’s bottom line.”
 
Mr Ward added: “For commercial vehicles reaching the used sector for the first time, it is critical that the service history is present when it is sold. On older vehicles that may have been resold several times, even a partial history is better than none at all and can help to improve sale performance.”