Australian Truck Market is Cooling Down

On the evidence of the latest truck sales figures to be released by the Truck Industry Council, it is becoming clearer that although the truck market continues to go quite well, the Australian truck market is cooling down after the extremely high levels of demand we have seen since Covid.

The last six months has seen the incredibly high demand we saw in 2023 start to tail off. Although the numbers are still historically high, they do not match those we saw just 12 months ago. As a result of the cooling down in demand, it seems to have evenly affected the brands across the market. They all have lower sales figures than they did at the same point last year, but their market shares remain pretty much as they were in 2023.

There are a few brands who have managed to keep sales relatively high and those are Isuzu, who have grown overall market share from 27.6 up to 29.1 per cent, Scania, which has seen its overall market share jump from 2.5 to 3.2 per cent and Iveco with its market share in the overall truck market rising from 3.4 per cent last year to 4.2 per cent this year.

At the same time there are a few brands who, not only are they selling fewer trucks than they did at this point last year but are also running at a lower overall market share, these include Hino with its overall share dropping from 13 to 10.7 per cent, and Fuso with a drop from 11.1 to 8.1 per cent.

When it comes to the heavy duty market segment the battle royal between Volvo and Kenworth continues, but a massive 409 truck sales for Kenworth in June has seen the brand drastically cut the lead which Volvo has had for the whole of 2024. Overall figures for the year so far, see Volvo at 1748, just ahead of Kenworth at 1711.

At the same time, the sales figures for Western Star have seen an uptick this year after a hard 2023 during which truck supply was severely limited, but the fact that there are clearly now plenty of X Series on the ground in Australia sees their numbers starting to rise.

Looking at the medium duty truck market, Isuzu continues to increase its dominance of this market segment and has achieved 52 per cent market share for the first six months of 2024. In the same market Hino, having been relieved from their supply chain issues of 2023, have seen both truck sales numbers and market share increase for the first half of 2024. Fuso have seen both of these metrics fall away.

One of the metrics which clearly illustrates there is some structural change going on in the market is the fact that between them Isuzu and Hino now represent over 80 per cent of the medium duty truck market, up from just 64 per cent at the same time last year.

The light duty truck market seems to be the one which has taken the biggest hit, as the cooling down in demand in 2024 saw overall truck sales for the year so far, considerably down on the number achieved in 2023. Last year 8,778 trucks were sold in the first six months of 2023. That figure was just 7,093 for the first half of 2024.