2023 was a year of gradual recovery for the used truck classified market

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Last week in our State of the Used Truck Market 2023 article, we rounded up the feelings of dealers and the trends in the year just ended, but there’s still time for a sneaky look back at the trends that we observed on the commercialmotor.com website.

As a whole, the market was down in December, but that’s always to be expected given the Christmas holidays and the timing for the industry, which often sees much of the business conducted well in advance of the big day. That’s reflected in the 8.3% dip in activity across the site, and also reflected in the viewing numbers for vehicle types.

Tractor units, the heavy lifters of the season with the upturn in trunking and general haulage as all manner of goods flooded the shelves, were bang on the site-wide average dip with an 8.3% decline. Rigids faired worse at -14.7%, with more seasonal industries like construction no doubt playing a part in the drop. Vans headed in precisely the other direction, as home delivery skyrocketed in the run-up to Christmas with a 14.7% rise in views. Views of trailers were down, but slightly ahead of the overall decline with a -7.3% drop. That was, however, enough to see them become the most viewed stock type ahead of tractor units – a feat we are struggling to remember being repeated recently.

Top of the manufacturers for the month was Scania with the most overall views, followed by Volvo. The pair were also the two makes with the smallest drop in views, down just 4.7% and 5.1% respectively. Mercedes-Benz was the fifth most viewed brand behind DAF and MAN, but with the third-lowest drop at just 6.4%. 

When it came to individual models in the month, the Volvo FH sat atop the tree, albeit with a 4% decline on last month’s views. The Mercedes-Benz Actros came in second, which explains Mercedes’ higher than normal position in the manufacturer rankings. That relegated the Scania S-series to third place and the Scania R-series to fourth. Top among the most searched for models, however, were the Mercedes-Benz Axor (+10.6%) and the MAN TGX (+10.5%), but leading the way was the Renault Range T, up 57.7%.

Less favourable returns were recorded for the Volvo FM (-23.3%), the DAF CF (-17.7%) and the Iveco Stralis (-13.2%). Overall, there were no obvious trends to the month, with both tractor units and the most common curtain-sided rigids all taking knocks or seeing little to no increase in interest month-on-month.

Looking at individual vehicle body types, the story is much the same. No one category really stood out, with largely flat results across the board. Despite the seasonality of the sector, vehicles listed as ‘tipper body’ type still topped the charts as the most viewed, down 5.5%. Tankers came next, though down 9.1%. Crane vehicles came third at -18.9%. The only significant positive movement inside the top 20 was for items listed as ‘bulk blowers’ (+10.1%), although temperature-controlled listings saw a modest 1.7% rise.

The honour of the most viewed item of the month went to a Scania P-series. It was closely followed by a Scania 660S, which also had the honour of being the most enquired about listing of the month. One other notable inclusion was a bulk-blower trailer from Muldoon that snuck into third position on the most viewed listings page – an unusual feat for a trailer, and even more unlikely for a specialist piece of equipment such as this.

As would be customary in an end-of-year round-up, we’d like to be able to give you some analysis of the year as a whole. However, due to Commercial Motor changing its website, and Google Analytics changing the way it interprets statistics, any sort of comparison would be entirely baseless. What we can say, anecdotally, from observing the rise and fall of the commercialmotor.com classified section over the year, is that we appear to be a lot closer to business as usual than we were 12 or even 24 months ago. Stock listing volumes are certainly up across the year, and the average age of the vehicles listed has fallen. On the whole, 2023 feels like a year of gradual improvement. We hope that continues into this year. 

- This article was first published in the 25 January issue of Commercial Motor.