The end of the financial year only did wonders for the Australian truck market as more heavy vehicles continue to fly out the door at a record pace
If the 2023 Australian truck sales was on par for a record year, June has completely blown previous figures out of the water.
Add up all of the vehicles sold in the heavy duty, medium duty, light duty and commercial van categories in Australia in June this year and a massive 6054 vehicles found their way to new owners in just 30 days.
As the race to the end of the financial year was compounded with the end of the previous federal government’s COVID instant asset write off program, truck buyers rushed their orders through in a bid to take delivery before the clock rolled over to the 2023/24 financial year.
This year’s sales results for June represent at 21.4 per cent increase on June 2022’s results – which, at the time, were celebrated for topping the 5,000 vehicles sold mark for the first time ever.
Truck Industry Council CEO Tony McMullan, whose organisation collates the monthly sales data from around the country, says cracking the 6,000 mark for sales in a single month is a fantastic result.
“This capped off a great second quarter result and combined with solid first quarter sales, finds the market at record levels at the half way point of the year,” McMullan says.
“These very strong sales numbers to June 30 this year, and strong numbers since COVID relief commenced, demonstrate how Government decision making in the form of an investment allowance can be successful in modernising the nation’s truck fleet.
“Australia as we know has one of the oldest truck fleets in the world and with each new truck sale comes a safer, cleaner, greener truck operating on Australian roads.
“With 24,395 new trucks on the road this year alone, this is indeed a good result for Australian road users.”
In terms of the enormity of June’s result it was only in June 2018 that the 4,000 sales mark, in a single month, was broken for the first time in Australia.
Prior to 2018 the best sales month was shared by June 2007 and June 2009 when 3,718 new heavy trucks were sold.
June 2007 was pre-Global Financial Crisis (GFC) with both the economy and truck sales flourishing, while the 2009 result was buoyed by federal government GFC incentives that saw a spike in sales at the end of the financial year, in a year that was otherwise quite forgettable for new truck sales.
Other records to tumble in June included the Heavy, Medium and Light Trucks categories.
All up, 2,294 of the biggest trucks were sold in the heavy duty categories, breaking the previous record of 1,594 set in June 2022.
In the Medium truck segment 1,077 trucks were sold in June breaking the previous record of 1,073 set back in June 2008.
Light Duty truck sales in June amounted to 2,034 “little trucks”, breaking the previous record of 1,751 set in June 2022.
In terms of the brand leaders for the month they were as follows:
Heavy Duty – June 2023
- 2294 sales in total for June, 8732 year to date
- Volvo (497), Kenworth (473), Isuzu (291), Mack (168), Scania (162), UD Trucks (133), DAF (109), Hino (107), Mercedes-Benz (105), Fuso (79)
Medium Duty – June 2023
- 1077 sales in total for June, 3971 year to date
- Isuzu (476), Hino (339), Fuso (184), UD Trucks (23), Iveco (23), Hyundai (16), Volvo (5), Man (4), DAF (3), Mercedes-Benz (2), SEA Electric (2)
Light Duty – June 2023
- Isuzu (827), Hino (436), Fuso (426), Iveco (129), Mercedes-Benz (65), Fiat (62), Hyundai (38), Foton Mobility (21), Volkswagen (13), Renault (12), Ford (5)
In the race for market dominance in the all important heavy duty category Volvo is sitting on 1798 sales for the year to date, with Kenworth chasing hard on 1759 sales. Between the two brands they account for 40.7 per cent of all heavy duty trucks sold in Australia this calendar year.