{"id":3393,"date":"2012-06-11T07:41:40","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T07:41:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/?p=3393"},"modified":"2012-06-09T15:33:27","modified_gmt":"2012-06-09T15:33:27","slug":"new-van-registrations-up-in-may-first-rise-of-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/3393","title":{"rendered":"New Van Registrations Up In May – First Rise Of 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

Throughout this year, new van registrations have been falling<\/a>, despite strong increases in truck (>3.5t) registrations.<\/p>\n

In May, that trend finally changed, with the latest figures from the SMMT<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Paul Everitt, SMMT Chief Executive, commented:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Small Vans Top Sales<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

As I’ve observed before this may be due to the fact that popular\u00a0small vans<\/a>\u00a0like 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.<\/p>\n

\"SMMT<\/p>\n

Graph courtesy of SMMT<\/em><\/p>\n

Rigids Up, Artics Down<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May’s new truck and van registrations show this year’s first overall rise in van registrations, with a continuing rise in rigid trucks and further slight falls in artic registrations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[1212,310,1328],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3393"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3393"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3398,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3393\/revisions\/3398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}