BATTLE OF THE BIG BOYS
WHILE SOME EXPERTS are saying the Australian economy is coming off the boil, there’s certainly no sign of the heavy-duty truck market cooling down to any great extent. None at all.
Sure, figures for the first half of this year suggest the market won’t reach the extravagant heights of 2018 when more than 14,300 heavy-duty units were delivered but even so, with the first six months of 2019 pointing to a yearly total approaching 13,000 trucks, national sales volumes are anything but lethargic.
The two big players, and certainly the two biggest beneficiaries of such a strong heavy-duty sector, are Paccar Australia and Volvo Group Australia (VGA), which collectively commanded just a fraction under half of all new truck deliveries up to the end of June.
With three brands in its stable – Volvo, Mack and UD – VGA remains the undisputed king of the corporates, notching 28.5 per cent of the heavy-duty category in the first six months of the year. Or, delivering 1,834 units across its three nameplates.
Some way back with 1,452 deliveries, Paccar’s pair of Kenworth and DAF accounted for 21.1 per cent of the heavy-duty category.
Yet despite the steadily increasing ascendancy of VGA, Kenworth continues to reign supreme as the top-selling heavy-duty truck brand in the country.
However, the once sizeable chasm between traditional market leader Kenworth and aspiring assailant Volvo had been whittled to just 50 units at the end of June, with Kenworth
