046, thanks for the offer of helping. The problem I have is this though.....unless I have a huge wad of money to spend, then I am looking at a truck over 10 years old to get out of having to pay hundreds here to put it through the Single Vehicle Approval. This is a think set up by the government over here whereby all vehicles less than 10 years old have to go through a heap of compliance testing, and is expensive and a right pain in the bottom. Now, when we get to trucks over 10 years old, the cost by the time it's on the road here in the UK is made up mainly of freight, import duty and tax, and registering etc.
Here's an example based on the something like the 91 Silverado dually I've been offered. I can buy such a truck in the US for say $6000 (from looking at Commercial Truck Trader). The UK equivalent of this is £3000. On top of this I pay £800 freight and about £200 for port transfer in the UK and about £100 port fees here in the UK. So now at £4100. On top of that I have to pay 10% import duty and 17.5% VAT on top of that and about £50 clearance fee, so now up to £5350. On top of that I pay £50 for MOT test + cost of any work that needs doing, then £224 for registration and 6 month road tax, and £20 for reg plates....so now I'm at minimum of £5644 (or $11288) for a truck costing $6000. And I need to add on £100/day minimum for my lost wages on days I'm running around sorting it all out so now I'm well over £6000 ($12000) for the $6000 truck, which I've found I can probably buy over here in the UK for £6000 or so anyway.
This is one of the reasons I stopped doing the imports from Japan - my customers thought they were getting done why I was selling them vehicles for £8000 that I had only paid 80,000 Japanese Yen for (or £4k), and they kept trying to knock more and more money off my prices. In the end I told them to stuff it. I pointed a couple to the Japanese auctions and they were gloating that they had bought a car for £1000 in Japan and were posting all over the forums how easy it was to do. Then I had the last laugh though as by the time they had got it shipped and paid the import duty and VAT it had cost them almost £3000 and it turned out to be a worthless POS that needed a heap of work and a rebuilt engine.
I think things would work out ok if I was looking at a newer truck as shipping costs and all the other bits then become a smaller part of the equation. I need to sort out where I am financially once I've shifted some stuff here. And also, now I've found out how wide the dually is....I'm not even sure if it'll fit my road!
