Used truck market stumbles in May market outlook

Will the summer ever come? May is usually a month of sunshine, hope and anticipation (usually of holidays), but for the commercialmotor.com classifieds it’s another month of little to no growth in the used truck sector. That’s perhaps unusual considering where the market has come from in the past 12 months. Speaking to dealers, the buzz word is ‘normality’: that’s normality for stock levels, normality for availability and normality for prices. What that means for the statistics on the CM website, however, is another month of small increases and small declines across the various categories that we keep an eye on.

Last month, we spoke about how April’s figures were down 9%, resulting in a some medium-sized drops for the main categories of vehicles. Trailers were down 21.7% in the month, rigid trucks dropped 13.2% and tractor units declined by 12.5%. The only riser was van listings, which were up 18.6%.

May paints a similar picture, but there’s a heavy drop for van searches off the back of their strong month in April. May searches for vans were down 27.9%, while the other categories recorded more modest declines. Tractor units were down just 3.4%, rigid searches dropped 5.3%, and trailers dropped 6.8%. This resulted in an overall decline for searches in the classifieds of 5.7%.

It’s a similar story in the list of body types. Looking back to April, once again certain body types posted impressive increases. Flatbed bodies had the best month of any category we track, with an increase of 21.2% throughout April. Other gains were made by curtainsiders (+11.6%) and hook-loaders (8.3%). There were other smaller increases for recovery trucks and insulated tippers, as well as beavertail and drawbar trailers.

May has seen flatbeds continue that success, up 4.6% alongside hook loaders – up 8.4% – but it has been a torrid month for interest in curtainsiders. April’s 11.6% increase was met with an abrupt fall of 24% in May. Recovery trucks, insulated tippers, beavertails and drawbar trailers also all reversed their April performance and were down between 3.4% and 8.7%.

The three most popular body types saw a slight shuffling of the pack, with grab tippers sneaking into third position, relegating crane vehicle searches into fourth spot. The most popular body type search was once again for tippers, which compounded their 12.8% drop in April with a 20.8% drop in May. Searches for tankers were second, down a massive 35.1% compared with April’s 13.6% fall.

Understandably with so many falling numbers, the statistics for searches of individual truck manufacturers don’t see any standout performances. Scania led the pack – as usual – but was down 20.7%, followed by Volvo with an 11.2% drop. In April, Renault topped the best performing searches with a 1.4% drop, but it’s Mercedes-Benz that can claim the top position, albeit still with a decline of 3.4%. Next best was DAF, down 5.3%, while Renault remains in the top three with a 6.1% fall.

As always, it’s important to look at these numbers and others within the context of the overall site drop of 5.7% as, on balance, the results essentially mean a static performance. It’s not the same story for the individual vehicles, however, where once again this year the Mercedes-Benz Axor leads the pack with a 16% increase in views. This long discontinued urban warhorse still clearly has quite a following as it regularly makes an appearance in the top three most searched for trucks, and it’s double-bubble for old Mercs as the Mercedes Atego makes an appearance in second spot, with a 5.2% increase. In third position, the DAF CF also builds on its +7.6% increase last month with a more modest 0.8% jump in views.

At the other end of the spreadsheet we find that it’s been a rough month for the Volvo FH, down 24.8%, its sibling the Volvo FMX (-28.4%), and the Renault Trucks Range T (-31.7%). That’s two bad months in a row for the FH, which was last month down 24.8%, and the Range T which dropped 35.1%. Fortunately, both models are well accounted for on the classified listings, and despite two bad months, the FH still manages to retain its title as the most viewed truck model overall.

Finally, the most viewed truck was a Volvo FH. This particular truck is a 2019 Globetrotter XL with a respectable 520,000km on the clock. But given that we’ve got an election coming up, maybe it was the blue paintwork that had scores of Conservative party event planners scouring the classified for a suitably-coloured tractor unit for the campaign trail. It’s also available in red. n