Lighter trucks in clover but concern raised on chances of heavy duty return to form
The Truck Industry Council (TIC) continues to keep a wary eye on languishing heavy-duty truck sales, noting the segment’s fortunes are bound to suffer due to political instability following the election.
Added to that is softness in the light-duty vans segment, those of 3,500kg- 8,000kg gross vehicle mass, with only 590 van sales for the month, down 12.2 per cent, or 82 vans, over June 2015.
LD vans posted a total of only 1,483 sales for the months of April to June, down 160 vans over the same period in 2015.
On the flipside, medium-duty and light-duty trucks are more than just bearing the load.
As is seasonally typical with the financial year drawing to a close, June 2016 sales were the best we have seen for any month year-to-date, the TIC points out.
“In fact June 2016 sales pushed the second quarter total to 8,902 sales, the third best result in the past 10 years, beaten only by the pre-GFC boom years of 2007and 2008 where the quarter two tallies were in the high nine thousands,” it says.
“For the month of June 3,552 trucks were sold, falling just 166 vehicles short of the all-time month of June sales record of 3,718 heavy vehicles set jointly in 2007 and 2009.”
The MD segment has been the real surprise of 2016 and as the first half of the year concludes medium truck sales are up 9.0 percent (276 trucks) over those of 2015.
Year-to-date MD truck sales stand at 3,344 units.
Most of that growth (248 trucks) has come from very strong second quarter 2016 sales. June was a particularly strong month that saw a total of 805 medium trucks delivered, up 22.5 per cent (148 trucks) on June 2015.
Light-duty truck sales have also seen good growth in 2016 and June was another strong month for the small end of the truck market.
A healthy 1,103 LD trucks were delivered in June, up 5.4 percent (56 trucks) over June 2015.
The 2016 quarter two result was strong here, with 2,841 trucks sold, up 284 units over the second quarter 2015 result. For the half year, LD sales are ahead of the same period in 2015 by 9.7 percent, or 444 trucks.
TIC CEO Tony McMullan says that while year-to-date sales at the end of June were up over those of 2015, he is concerned that the current political instability may reduce business confidence and that this could continue to lead to ongoing poor HD sales.
“It is encouraging to see a good result in June and overall year-to date sales for 2016, however as we have seen so far this year, this result is brought about by some very good light and medium truck sales, while heavy truck sales continue to lag those of recent years,” McMullan adds.
“The indecisive federal election result from last Saturday could diminish business confidence and I could see that in turn business may choose to moderate their capital expenditure investments.
“This would particularly affect heavy duty truck sales which of course require substantive capital outlay.”