Wagon Builders

I stumbled on this bit of information from Law Notes: Vol. 5 Pg 147 ©1886 while researching various wagon builders. What I found interesting about this was the practice of the "financing" of the purchase of a wagon.


Throughout the kingdom are many wagon companies, so called, that never build a single wagon; in fact, were they to do so, it would actually be ultra vires. In reality, these companies are "financing" companies only; they are no more wagon companies than bodies that lend money on bills of sale of furniture are furniture companies.
A person wishing to buy wagons, but to pay for them by instalments spread over a term, say, of seven years, will go to a wagon builder and get him to build the sort of wagons he (the intending purchaser) requires. Application is then made to a "financing" wagen company, by whom the wagons are purchased from the builder at the price the intending purchaser agreed to give; the builder invoices them to the company; and then they are let by the latter to the intending purchaser on the hire and purchase system. The rent fixed by the agreement for hire is calculated on the basis that the payments made during the term shall at its expiration have recouped the company the cost of the wagons and interest at the rate agreed upon; and in the agreement is contained a license to seize and retake possession of the wagons on non-payment of the rent and in certain other events. A proviso is also inserted that the property in the wagons shall, at the expiration of the term, when all moneys due under the agreement shall have been paid, vest in the bailee for hire, or, as he is generally termed, "the tenant."