Ken Trinder, head of business development at epyx, the company behind 1link, said: “Orders through the platform are up by 50% on a year ago but still not reaching the pre-2008 level, when fleet sales really began to be affected by the recession.

“However, we do see an interesting effect which we believe is a reflection of the erratic economic recovery – we’ll have perhaps two busy days on the platform followed by a noticeably quiet one.

“Fleets are certainly buying cars and vans in much higher numbers than during the last couple of years but are not automatically repeating orders in the same way they would have done before the recession. Instead, each order for a single vehicle or a batch is clearly being carefully considered.”

Trinder added that there were strong indications that fleets were increasingly looking to the use of e-commerce for vehicle ordering.

He explained: “The benefits that e-commerce brings to fleets buying cars and vans are very similar to those it delivers in areas such as buying service and maintenance or short term hire – it provides access to a wide pool of high quality suppliers through a process that is fast, accurate and costs less than existing methods.”

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