The new truck market continues to slow down, and now the year to date figure is less than the same period last year.
Total new truck registrations year to date is 3726 as at September 30, 2015, as opposed to 3843 at September 30, 2014. The market has declined overall by more than 11%.
However, year to date figures shows that some brands including Isuzu Trucks, UD Trucks, Kenworth, DAF, and Scania are all ahead of their 2014 year to date figures.
Isuzu Trucks continues to erode into the market share of its competitors, year to date it has 838 registrations as opposed to 709 for the previous corresponding period.
Isuzu Trucks dominated the new truck market last month; it took 128 registrations for September 2015, three units more than the previous corresponding period in 2014.
For the month of September, Isuzu Trucks took 25% market share, followed by Mitsubishi Fuso with 16% and Mercedes-Benz with 13%.
Isuzu Truck sales and marketing manager Micheal Doeg says the distributor is happy with the result across the three categories, heavy, medium and light.
“We are certain that our lead in the heavy truck market that we achieved by one registration more than Volvo at the end of August will continue,” he says.
“But we are waiting for the official results to come through, so we cab be certain of this,” says Doeg.
Doeg says that the pre-orders for the new VC36 series Isuzu Giga have been better than expected.
“It’s been a progressive build up for the new model, but we have been very happy with the response for VC 36 pre-orders,” he says.
This pre-order response coupled with the success of the sales promotion for light and medium trucks concluding in August means there will be a steady flow of new trucks through the bodybuilder pipeline.
“We are very happy with our current market performance, and we are optimistic about the number of registrations we will see between now and the end of the year,” says Doeg.
Hino took 11% of the market share for the month of September.
Mitsubishi Fuso was second in new truck sales with 83 registrations for September 2015 as opposed to 76 in the same period last year.
Year to date Mitsubishi Fuso has just fallen behind last year’s tally. So far this year it has seen 491 registrations as opposed to 504 for the previous corresponding period.
In third place for truck registrations in September, Mercedes-Benz Trucks saw 70 registrations, three more than the previous corresponding period.
Year to date Benz has also seen a small drop; it recorded 283 registrations in September 2015 from 297 in the previous corresponding period.
Fourth placed Hino was down 27 units from 87 in September 2014 to 60 last month.
Hino had seen its year to date tally decline dramatically from 564 in September 2014 to 493 last month.
Used go against trend again
Registrations of used trucks once again bucked the trend with an increase to 144 units in September 2015 as opposed to 136 in the previous corresponding period.
Year to date 1289 used imported trucks have been registered up from 1061 at the same time last year.
Isuzu was the top brand in used trucks with 32 registrations, up 6.7%. Toyota was second with 31 registrations up 10.7%, and Mitsubishi Fuso saw 17 registrations up 6.3%.
