Amongst some very healthy heavy vehicle sales results for the month of June, two makes stood out for their performances and ironically they are both members of the same corporate family these days.
Scania gave outgoing MD Roger McCarthy a very favourable going away present by recording number sales for the month of June, notching up 124 units for the month according to the VFACTS stats, a rise of 20.4 per cent (or 21 units) over June 2016 but even more impressively for the first six months of the year the Swedish marque is up by 64 per cent on the first six month of last year.
Its VW commercial stable mate MAN also had a huge month moving 106 vehicles up a whopping 999 per cent (that is correct 999 per cent) on the same month last year when a paltry nine new MANs hit the road and that strong last month has taken the German brand to a total of 316 sales for the year to date up 184 per cent on the same six months last year. Interestingly the June sales result accounts for 33 per cent of MAN’s sales of 316 in Australia this year.
Scania PR man Alexander Corne said the result was a great going away present for Roger McCarthy and reflects some added effort by Scania to ‘even out the sales stream’ across the entire year rather than having a big rush in the last quarter.
“There have been a number of factors that have helped the result including an enlarged sales force which has more focus on lifting sales on a month to month basis, a great appreciation of fuel efficiency amongst fleets and the effects of Scania Finance starting to have an influence on sales particularly fleet sales,” said Alexander Corne.
“Scania also had a couple of large fleet deals come to fruition during June which helped but there is still a health order bank in the pipeline heading into the second half of the year,” he added.
Truck and Bus News approached MAN distributors Penske Commercial Vehicle for comment on their outstanding June figures and at the time of publishing had no comment. It is understood that most of the units were fulfilling an Australian Defence Force contract.
UD was another brand that performed exceptionally in June with 98 sales, a 69 per cent increase on the previous month and 31.9 per cent up for the first six months in a result that bolstered a strong performance from the Volvo Group overall.
Truck sales were up across the board by around 9.1 per cent on the first six months of 2016 with just about everyone up by substantial amounts including Volvo up by 24 per cent along with its sibling Mack also up by 24.7 per cent, DAF up by 28.6 per cent (off a low base) Hino and Freightliner both up by 3.8 per cent, market leader Isuzu up by 4.3 per cent, Mercedes up by 2.9 per cent while Iveco was up by 14.4 per cent and UD as mentioned another star performer in the Volvo stable up a massive 69 per cent.
The notable dips were with Fuso down 3.6 per cent on the month, which is believed to be due to low stock levels, and Kenworth which was off 4.1 per cent. The Volvo stable shifted 400 trucks in June across its three brands giving it further encouraging growth in primarily the heavy end of the market and puts the Group 600 trucks clear of the Paccar stable.
Isuzu is still the clear market leader with 986 sales for the month and 4225 for the year to date, which is more than the sales of number two Hino and number three Fuso combined, Hino having logged 497 sales in June and Fuso 349 for the month.
There is still a lot to play out in 2017 but if the sales performance across the industry continue through till December there seems little doubt we are in for a big year in commercial vehicle sales.
