Throughout this year, new van registrations have been falling, despite strong increases in truck (>3.5t) registrations.
In May, that trend finally changed, with the latest figures from the SMMT showing that van registrations rose by 6.7% to 21,303 units, when compared to May 2011. This was small beer compared to the 31.5% increase in truck registrations, but it is at least an improvement. It’s too early to say whether the turnaround in the van market signify’s a new trend — I have my doubts, given the state of the economy — but it’s a good start.
Paul Everitt, SMMT Chief Executive, commented:
“The truck market continued its strong progress, up 31.5% in May and there was a welcome return to growth for the van market, its first rise of 2012. It’s too early to know if the change in fortunes for the van market is a sign of things to come, but coupled with the strong truck performance, it is a welcome signal of increased confidence across the commercial vehicle sector.”
Small Vans Top Sales
In terms of vans, the biggest growth was in the sub-2.0t sector, where sales were 11.6% higher than in May 2011. However, these lightweight vans have seen the biggest falls so far this year, with new registrations down by 21.9% to date, so perhaps van operators are making up for lost time.
The same story seems to apply in the heavy (2.5t-3.5t) weight category; sales were 9.1% higher than at the same time last year but are still down 9.7% on the year to date.
In the middle weight sector (2.0t – 2.5t), the situation is slightly different, with sales only just keeping their head above water last month with a 0.7% increase in last May. However, across the year to date, sales in this category — which includes many variants of popular vans like the Citroen Berlingo and Volkswagen Caddy — are only down by 2.3%, the smallest fall in any weight category.
As I’ve observed before this may be due to the fact that popular small vans like the Berlingo have got heavier — whereas all models used to be sub-2.0t, now only the lighter payload models are. The heavier payload and long wheelbase models all have gross weights over 2,000kg, which I assume places them in a different weight category in the SMMT’s statistics.
Graph courtesy of SMMT
Rigids Up, Artics Down
As we’ve seen in previous months, the strongest growth was reserved for the rigid truck sector, with a 113% increase in sales of 3.5t – 6.0t rigids, a category that is up 58% over the year to date. At the other end of the weight scale, artic volumes were down slightly for the fourth consecutive month and are now down 6% on the year to date.
The growth in sales of light rigids is interesting, especially as they are limited to 56mph like larger lorries these days. Based purely on the vehicles I see out and about, I wonder if a lot of distributors and parcel delivery firms are scaling down from 7.5t – 12t lorries to this lighter, smaller and cheaper category. It would be interesting to know.
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