New Van Registrations Up In May – First Rise Of 2012

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.

SMMT Van & Truck Registrations May 2012

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.

1 thought on “New Van Registrations Up In May – First Rise Of 2012

  1. Pingback: TNT Continues 5t Trials With Volkswagen Crafters - Van News: The VanRental.co.uk Blog

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