There are basically two kinds of commercial vehicles that businesses use; those that transport goods and those that transport passengers. Basically, a vehicle is considered to be a commercial vehicle when it is used for business purposes and in the case of a person carrier, where it holds more than sixteen people at a time. These are only a couple of the parameters of what constitutes a commercial vehicle but we won’t go into any more depth on the subject here as the type of business vehicle that we will be focusing on in this article is the ‘light’ commercial vehicle and how it can be of benefit to small businesses in particular.

Light commercial vehicles are sometimes called ‘bakkies’ or ‘pick-ups’ and typically have a loading bay at the rear that provides space to carry goods for delivery purposes or to transport materials and equipment for the business. Light commercial vehicles are useful to small businesses because they provide a reasonable amount of space to carry goods for delivery, for instance, yet are not so large as to be uneconomical. There is no point in a small company investing in a large commercial vehicle that is not going to be optimally utilised in terms of interior transportation space. What is more, light commercial vehicles tend to be cheaper to purchase and maintain than the larger lorries and trucks are likely to be, hence they are a logical choice for a small business.

All light commercial vehicles possess a tailgate that can be lowered for easy loading and some even have drop sides or a flat bed with no sides to assist with loading and unloading. Certain light commercial vehicles come in the form of a double cab 4x4 that allows them to be used for private purposes as well as business purposes. This type of light commercial vehicle is particularly useful to small businesses where deliveries are sporadic and on a very small scale. Because they can carry more passengers than standard drop-side light commercial vehicles, the interiors of these double cab vehicles tend to be rather more luxurious inside so as to offer a higher level of passenger comfort.

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