Truck makers glad all over
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by Brian Weatherley
• New truck margins may be tight and haulage rates may be appalling but if last year's commercial vehicle registrations are anything to go by the recovery is well and truly on its way.
Last year the market for trucks and artics above 3.5 tonnes GVW rose by more than 23% to 44,738 units. According to 'yea) Ford Truck boss Alan Fox, 1995 could be the year that the much-touted "feelgood" factor finally catches up with the road transport industry.
Leadership
Fox has his own reasons to feel good. Last year IFT retained its market leadership, albeit with a reduced market share. More importantly (not least from parent company Iveco's viewpoint) IFT will declare a small profit for '94. Having lost close to £120m since 1991, "we're at last able to put that back into the black", says Fox. "It's been very hard, very difficult and a lot of pain to achieve that," Seddon Atkinson boss Bob Sculfor reports that IFT's sister company is also generating profits.
Traditionally most new truck are 7.5-tanners but the sales recovery is being led by tractors: this sector was first into the recession and it's first out of it with more tractors being sold than any other vehicle type.
All the leading manufacturers have recorded fast rises in tractor volumes but, apart from Leyland Dal, nearly all the major players have lost market share. A strong performance by the FH range has kept Volvo at the top of the tractor league.
At the 7.5-tonne HGV breakpoint Iveco Ford still dominates the market. Mercedes-Benz, with some good sales of chassis. cowls for minibuses, has overtaken Leyland Daf to move into second place. After a slow firsthalf the market took off: the arrival of the MAN L2000 has clearly put the major players under some pressure.
Leyland Dal had a storming year in the bread-and-butter 15tonne-plus two-axle rigid sector with strong demand for the 60 and 65 Series. Despite the Super Cargo and T5 Strata tag team the Iveco Group fell back to third place (Iveco Ford's 1993 figures were distorted by a major order for old-model Cargos in the run-up to the Euro-1 deadline).
The construction industry has yet to shrug off the full effect of the recession, especially in house building, but multiwheeler sales continue to grow. The Iveco Group, comprising Iveco Ford and Seddon Atkinson, took pole position in the six-wheeler market, thanks to a strong performance from SA's Strato six-wheeler.
In the eight-leg-ger market, however, sales rocketed. This
was the fastest growing sector in 1994 with registrations virtually doubling. Volvo finished head and shoulders above the rest followed by Leyland Daf.
And so to the predictions for 1995. Few insiders doubt that the market will continue to rise. Fox reckons the final figure will
be between 47-52,000; Leyland Dafs prediction is for 50-55,000 sales. But availability is already a major issue for many manufacturers. If demand continues to rise the difference between winning and losing a sale could well rest on who's got the metal to deliver.