View Full 2023 Year Truck Sales Figures Here
UK truck registrations – fourth consecutive quarterly increase
Let’s start with some good news for a change. There actually is a triple whammy of good news to the start of 2023 – the registrations of new trucks were up over 17% on the first quarter of 2022, it is the fourth consecutive quarter of growth and it is was the best start to a year since 2019. Registrations of both tractor units and rigid trucks were both up – an indication that the growth is sustainable and started a little while back – the rigid trucks usually lag behind tractor units by two to three months as they have a more complex build and require more time. Over the years, once growth in the rigid segment starts to show, the tractor unit growth rate has already started to drop off.
Best Selling Truck Manufacturer of 2023? (Q1)
It comes as no surprises that DAF top the charts once more – it’s been decades since they weren’t market leaders. Their share of the market was up over 24% on 2022 – an impressive figure for a dominant market leader.
The news was better in Scania’s offices than in Volvo Trucks’. The former opened up a gap on the latter with Q1 growth up over 26% whilst Volvo’s registrations were stagnating with a drop of 1%. After being neck and neck in market share terms for Q1 last year, Scania now enjoy 17.75% with Volvo down to 13.83%.
Mercedes have performed well with their registrations up by over 50% compared to Q1 2022 and are knocking on Volvo’s door for third place in the UK HGV market for 2023.
Of the smaller players, MAN, Iveco and Renault Trucks, it was the latter with the only improvement over Q1 2022, now less than one market share percentage point behind Iveco.
Best Selling Electric Truck?
Despite being able to choose from no fewer than 20 models of electric and hydrogen trucks in the UK, truck buyers have not beaten a path to their doors. Just 0.3% of the market. In English, that’s about 35 trucks in three months or about 140 a year. This segment will have to start showing some growth soon, as in 12 years’ time the sale of diesel trucks under 26 tonnes will be banned.
Data from SMMT