The Truck Industry Council (TIC) is looking to a 5 percent rise in sales this year after a hefty 10 percent rebound in 2012.
TIC described 2012’s 10.4 percent
increase on 2011’s result, to 30,745 vehicles, as encouraging but
noted the earlier year’s performance had been coloured by the
effects of natural disasters in Japan on supply.
Factoring this in, TIC sees the
underlying increase as measuring about 5 percent.
What it had not foreseen however
was the 21.5 percent rise in the heavy-duty segment to 11,378,
which it says “was chiefly responsible for growth of the total
market exceeding initial expectations”.
The TIC says the surprisingly good
result for heavy- duty trucks “seems to reflect the return to the
HD truck market by some fleets which may have deferred purchases in
recent years, as well as continuing demand from the mining
sector”.
Despite the pleasing growth,
overall sales remained 24 percent below the 2007 record of 38,131
vehicles
Taking December sales alone, 2012 was up almost 9 percent compared
with December 2011, at 2,720 units. However that figure is still
well down on the record sales of more than 3,500 trucks in December
2007.
For the fourth quarter of 2012, more than 8,500 trucks were sold
– 16 percent more than for the last quarter of 2011. And the second
half of 2012 was nearly 13 percent better for truck dealers than
the second half of 2011.
In the light-duty segment, truck
sales in December were almost 18 percent higher than in December
2011, and for the fourth quarter it recorded a similar increase.
The final tally for the year was just over 9,000 units.
Light duty vans were up almost 7
percent for the year to almost 3,400 units.
However the medium-duty segment posted an 11 percent decline
compared with December 2011, reversing a positive trend in the
previous few months.
The full year tally for
medium-duty sales of 6,725 units is 7 percent higher than for 2011,
but the medium segment is not keeping up with total market
growth.