October 1, 2025
Sara Davies
Wessex Fleet Updates
As we head into the final quarter of 2025 our Director Simon Naylor reflects on a better than anticipated Q3, giving his expert opinion on what we might see in the fleet sector next.
Business gains outrun tough climate
We’ve painted a picture this year of low business confidence and flat growth but despite the indisputable fragility in the market, we’ve had some of the most high-achieving months of our two decades in business.
Clusters of key new contracts have crystalised. Despite corporates erring on the side of caution and customers focusing now more than ever on cost cutting measures, successes over the past quarter have included Travel Chapter , a leading marketplace platform for UK self-catering holiday rentals, placing in excess of 90 new vehicle orders which will be delivered between now and Christmas. We’ve also won fleet management contracts for businesses including Holmes Seafood and TCi (GB).
Elsewhere in our corporate division, we’ve had another order take of over 140 cars this month in just one of the channels. These successes over the past few months are reassuring since our business has been radically transformed throughout 2025, growing from around 40 members of staff to 70, to service the AA contract as well as our other revenue streams, including rental which has gained significant momentum in recent months.
AA Lease orders reach record highs
The AA contract we won approaching a year ago now is continuing to gain pace, as we fine tune our methods of meeting the ever-increasing targets and adapt our processes. A couple of weeks ago we hit 87 cars in a single day; our highest order take day so far.
In fact we’d achieved 505 deliveries across all of our business channels before the third week of September, making it a record month for deliveries with more than a week still to go.
Significant growth for rental
The rental team’s July figures revealed that they arranged over 1,600 client reservations with an increase of 52% in the amount invoiced year on year. So far this year, the number of rentals purchased from other providers is up by around 40% compared to last year.
Between now and the end of the year, we’re looking to steer more rental clients towards setting up accounts with our rental management programmes. Sian Ianson, our new Rental Coordinator, has been a great recent addition and her background as Branch Manager running several locations for Enterprise has given the team a significant boost.
We now also have our own fleet of 550 units that are mainly vans, out with both corporate and higher education clients, forming part of the provision we offer them as a long-standing university supplier. We’re an Approved Provider to: Crescent Purchasing Consortium and NWUPC via Framework VEH 3085 Lot 3 and also an Approved Supplier to Southern Universities Procurement Consortium (SUPC), LUPC (London Universities Purchasing Consortium), NEUPC, APUC and Higher Education Purchasing Consortium Wales (HEPCW).
Appointed Representatives (ARs) play a bigger part
September shaped up to be a record month for order take from our ARs too, who had reached over 160 orders just before the third week in September, culminating in a month-end tally of over 250, for the first time ever. In an arrangement similar to a franchise agreement, these leasing brokers use our resources for leasing deals and regulation, and the programme is really starting to gain pace.
We’ve set stricter parameters and expectations of the companies we on-board onto the programme and now have a really good spread of firms achieving consistently good figures on a month-on-month basis. We’re really excited to see how far the programme could take our business and it’s been fantastic to see the mutual benefits it’s bringing the ever-increasing number of appointed companies under our wing.
Top tips in the lead up to 2026
We’re continuing to see strong discounts on vehicles moving into Q4, as the market reacts to soft demand. There are likely to be some good deals out there.
As always at this time of year, start checking fleet vehicles are in good shape for winter driving including tyres, the functionality of lights, that fluids are topped up and batteries are in good shape.
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